Two stages, two atmospheres. And always more dancing. For this evening of January 25, 2025, the Igloofest team decided to offer us a particularly different program between the main Sapporo stage, and its little Vidéotron sister. While the former was an ode to house music, the latter was a blend of traditional North African and contemporary electronic music.

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VIDEOTRON: Manalou, Mnsa, Nadim Maghzal, Cheba Iman. 

Deconstruction, reconstruction, hybridization between different genres… The sets on the small Videotron stage shone through their sonic interweaving and interweaving. And even though the stage is four times smaller (we didn’t take the time to measure, but we can imagine!), the sets by these mostly Canadian artists melted the snow beneath our feet.

Imagine the setting. We flee behind the main stage and enter the Videotron stage through a tunnel of light. What awaits us there? An audience literally jumping to the beat of the percussion.

Afro-beat, drum and bass, drill, downtempo, hip-hop, but also tech-house, all mixed with traditional Arabian music.

Mnsa, proudly wearing his Palestine scarf, was like sunshine on a winter’s night. With his contagious good humor and his succession of sounds at different tempos, he didn’t let the audience down for a single minute. Between pop classics, heavy bass lines and traditional Arab music, all mixed against a techno backdrop, my fingers, previously chilled by the beer in my hands, quickly warmed up.

A perfect opening for Nadim Maghzal‘s set, who, in his own way, took up the torch and brought the crowd – literally – to the front of the stage. What’s on the bill? The kind of percussive electronic music we love, always associated with North African sounds and UK Bass.

These four artists, from Manalou to Cheba Iman – who also offered us some particularly singular performances – proved the beauty of the synergy between North American and African music. They also showed us how being a DJ is above all about community, and sharing a certain joie de vivre, together.

SAPORO: Lia Plutonic, Syreeta, Dennis Ferrer, Skepta (under his house label Mas tiempo) “HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE

A word that resonates as I dance in front of the main stage.

From Lia Plutonic (Residente Montréalaise) to Dennis Ferrer, house music classics follow one another, all remixed in their own style!

Sapporo

Behind the four DJ-producers of the Sapporo scene, four different visions of house music and its variations. A genre that crosses time and space, and that brings together an audience from diverse backgrounds. 

If Syreeta offered us sounds a little more rooted in the British house music culture (where she comes from), her mix between techno, melodic voices and UK house rhythms proved to be a particularly fertile ground to welcome her colleague from overseas: Denis Ferrer, an influential artist of the electronic scene for more than fifteen years. 

While Syreeta and Lia Plutonic surfed a little more on the hybridization of house and techno, Dennis Ferrer clearly returned to the roots of New York house, to offer us a very disco-funk-tech-house set. Very melodic, very progressive, very 90s, with classics like Ain’t Nobody (Loves me better).  At the front of the stage, a crowd of all ages danced. Proof, once again, of the unifying capacity of house! 

Their very vibrant sets were able to welcome with undisguised joy the main artist of the evening, Skepta, performing under her project Mas tiempo, which quickly increased the BPM a notch. Although he is better known for his performance-productions as an MC-rapper, the London-based artist has been able to stand out in recent years with his very rhythmic mixes, sometimes deconstructed, but nevertheless particularly progressive and always very house. 

On the agenda: UK Drill and Grim, drum and bass, house, to finish on techno prog. The crowd was already unleashed, while more than a dozen couples saw, from the top of my terrace, climbing on each other’s shoulders. There are balloons flying in the air, bodies colliding while dancing, voices screaming and snowflakes falling on the tops of our heads. 

A very nice end to the winter evening, for a very nice program of this Saturday evening of Igloofest.

Marked with wild musical contrasts and daring approaches, this second night of Igloofest is another reminder of Montreal’s vibrant local scene. We once again witnessed the power of breaks and bass in full effect as big name dj’s turned the dial up, and saw the rising starpower of local homegrown harvest legends in a perfect exhibition of dance music.

Headlining the Videotron stage was none other than Marie Davidson. In this dj set, her emblematic synthwave sound revealed its origins in a steady stream of late night analog techno crowned with some of her own tracks like “Work it” which had the crowd losing its mind. Marie Davidson showed us a guideline into her musical genius and as in her live shows, the wide-eyed presence and honest spoken word effortlessly enticed the crowd into her unapologetically bold aura.

Matching this energy, Honeydripp proved once again to be the queen of kinetic sounds as she liquefied genres into her own spaced out mix of breaks, bass and a groovy remix of Fergalicious. Playing with silence and space, her rhythms teased the line of recognisable patterns, occasionally broken by bassy dub influenced sections which shook the stage.

Ending on a high note with chopped breaks going in and out of time, homegrown harvest’s reputation for long nights dancing was not let down. As Dileta put us in a time warp of progressively rich drum patterns and acid bass sequences to tear the roof off, the crowd quickly understood this was an experience like no other. Dileta’s vast selection of dark leftfield tracks, seamless transitions and sharp accents of retro samples had people young and old grooving from side to side in unisson.

Meanwhile on the Sapporo stage we witnessed an ascent into craze as Jeska displayed a virtuoso performance of drum and bass, accelerating from a wide sound with minutely precise breaks into head banging, hard style territory. Imanu had no problem keeping this energy up with his feel good, synthpop textures and kept the crowd bouncing to classic pop samples mixed between densely energetic house.

It seemed the night would go on in this boundary breaking succession of increasingly ecstatic sounds until in a sudden turn of events, classical music from Apashe’s repertoire transformed the entire festival into a scene from Dante’s inferno.

As the haze from the river gradually blanketed the fluorescent lights, people started slowing down, almost expecting a ballerina to come out in “pas chassé”. But this was all part of Apashe’s master plan. After a solid 20 minutes, a manifesto appeared on the screen and in an instant the scene was flooded with strobes. The rest of the night belonged to Apashe’s, and with his artistic conception of EDM combined with the stadium scale scenography and sound, it will be one to remember. Notable to his “majestic” style was the display of cinematic visuals paired in synchronicity with transitions and instruments that created a mesmerizing audiovisual experience. After an emotionally evoking set, Apashe leaves us once again with the soft sounds of an orchestra walking us out into the streets. The buzz of the crowd turns into screams and we all know what we just witnessed. Igloofest is living up to the hype.