MUTEK 2024 | Colin Stetson Harder Than Ever

by Alain Brunet

The PAN M 360 team is criss-crossing the entire MUTEK 2024 program, observing as many artists as possible during this 25th edition of its Montreal version. Keep up with our experts until Sunday evening, as no other MUTEK event promises such extensive media coverage!

Another hipster darling reinvented himself at MUTEK as part of L’Événement spéciale de MUTEK, and not the least. Colin Stetson has been wowing the crowds for the past fifteen years with his novel use of saxophones. The effect of admiration lasted a long time, but we were due for a conceptual relaunch as we were losing interest.

A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan’s famous university town, Stetson chose Montreal in the 2000s, and has been seen playing with Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre and Bon Iver, as well as in spectacular solo and duo performances with violinist Sarah Neufeld, with whom he was in love for several years, and even with a chamber orchestra devoted to Henryk Gorecki – Sorrow, in 3 movements. The power of his circular breathing to produce a continuous sound, the use of contact microphones on his instrument and his own body, and his penchant for loops of notes recorded and superimposed in real time – these are just some of the features that have made his playing famous.

That said, this free-jazz and electroacoustic approach has tended to run out of steam in recent years… until Wednesday, that is, with the audience at New City Gas!

On the saxophones, including the imposing bass sax, Colin Stetson stayed the course as blower and (sometimes) simultaneous vocalist, using the same techniques, but this time with a post-industrial, darkwave, noisy, in short, much more violent version of this already highly dynamic music.

Stetson usually expresses himself with an overlay of three or four separate tracks, usually created in real time. This time, however, it was very muscular, very hard, and no one will complain. For those interested, the material played at MUTEK was recorded in the studio, and the album The love it took to leave you is due out in September on the Envision label.

Photo credit: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

Publicité panam

Electronic

MUTEK 2024 | Patrick Watson Electro-Instrumental, The Key to His Continued Success

by Alain Brunet

When you look closely at the work of a songwriter, you realize more often than not the recurrence of certain chord progressions and melodic trajectories. This is certainly true of Patrick Watson, not to mention the use of his high, counter-tenor head voice, less willing to use his lower, differently textured body voice. At a certain point, however, we may grow weary of this recurrence, which seems to become redundant.

Did Pat Watson feel that way? It’s safe to assume that the Montreal artist understood the stakes, as he succeeded in re-launching his musical proposition with this electro-instrumental evening. Held at New City Gas on the second night of MUTEK 2024 as part of its special event, and to a packed house.

What we’ve discovered and enjoyed here will eventually be filtered, transformed and improved until we have a permanent recording, to the delight of his fans. As far as I’m concerned, this is the key to Patrick Watson’s continued success in the years to come. Without denying himself, he had to do some brainstorming and brainstorming to refresh his proposal without denying himself. That’s what he’s agreed to do now, and that’s what we witnessed on Wednesday.

The opening bars of this concert entitled Film Scores For No One led us into a richly textured, horizontal ambient form, i.e. without significant variations. The trio was made up of keyboards including PW’s custom-made modular synthesizers and proverbial upright piano, percussion deployed by Olivier Fairfield (Timber Timbre, FET.NAT, etc.), bass and electronic complements by Mishka Stein (a regular of PW, but also of TEKE::TEKE and more).

Little by little, the compositional patterns of the main player gradually reappeared, notably those French impressionist piano ambiences (Satie et cie) or American minimalist ones (transposed to synthesizers) slipped through natural or synthetic sounds, filtered, transformed for the most part.

The sound bank had been enriched with a host of textures, colors and patterns, and we were forced to watch as lighting and moving-image projections hit the translucent canvases to create a rather homemade but beautiful 3D effect, hipster as it should be. The concert concluded with an unsuspected vocal performance by the normal singer. The voice was vaporous, sometimes modified, autotuned.

I confess I was expecting less rather than more, as the notorious changes in Patrick Watson’s work seemed more and more behind us. So it was more than less. Which is why it’s all the more gratifying to remind everyone that there’s always time to reinvent oneself if need be, as long as the heart beats and the noggin works.

Photo credit : Frédérique Ménard Aubin

Publicité panam

Ambient / Experimental / Contemporary

MUTEK : Évènement d’ouverture au New City Gas

by Rédaction PAN M 360

Cet événement marque le lancement de MUTEK 2023. Pour la première fois de son histoire, le festival investit l’espace industriel local mythique du New City Gas. Place à l’inattendu : conception et jeux de lumières, ambiance nébuleuse et mystérieuse, un joueur de shō japonais, musique intense et envoûtante. La promesse d’un démarrage éclatant.

Avec Grand River et Tim Hecker & Vincent de Belleval

The grand opening of MUTEK 2023. For the first time ever, the festival takes over this mythical industrial local venue. Expect the unexpected: light and movement play, mysterious atmosphere, emotional peaks, a japanese shō instrument, intoxicating and intense music. A launch to mark the minds.

With Grand River and Tim Hecker & Vincent de Belleval

POUR ACHETER VOTRE BILLET, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de MUTEK et est adapté par PAN M 360.