Driving 500 miles!? Haven’t you heard of peak-oil crisis? Oh wait, I’m going to Canada? It’s like America, but better, according to Michael Moore. They don’t have guns, I can break all the bones I want, and they don’t have that whole Puritan mentality in their public consciousness! That is basically my thought process before attending Mutek, which consisted of five days of partially government-funded electronic music goodness. With nearly 100 DJs, knob-tweakers, and audio engineers from 20 countries talking about production techniques, creating ambient soundscapes, and playing sets way past my bedtime, how could I refuse?
We arrive in Montreal, Quebec a few days into the festival, and we’re surprised to find most nearly everything is in French. Uh oh -- I thought Canada was like America, but people peppered their sentences with an occasional “aboot.” Kids who look like they are 16 are running around on the streets after midnight (I’m informed the drinking age is 18); I see signs for “Sexoteques” next to fusion Pho restaurants in commercial districts; and the majority of pan handlers are crust punks with signs asking for “4:20” (I later find out that Critical Mass is occurring). So this is the metropolis that birthed Vice Magazine... To top it off, the combined taxes on food purchases equals almost 10%! Canada, or Montreal rather, is not like a Rick Moranis movie. Be warned!
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{Ben Frost (Theatre du Nouveau Monde)}
Unfortunately, I had eaten a large amount of poutine, French fries covered in gravy and topped off with cheese curds, before I settled into the seats here. The theater was completely covered in darkness, save for some occasional moments of brief soft light that covered the Australian-born composer Ben Frost. In some respects, this really enhanced the performance. It’s said that people who are deficient in one area of sensory perception have developed heightened senses in others; a blind person might have exceptional hearing, like Dare Devil, the blind Marvel superhero with super hearing, for example. In this case, the music was literally all that the audience had to focus on, Frost’s compositions gained an added layer of hypnotic intensity.
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{Modeselektor & Pfadfinderei (Metropolis)}
Sometimes bodily injury is unavoidable and even a welcome part of the show-going experience, like a shirtless, 300-pound guy stage-diving onto your head at an Earth Crisis show, or falling off a stage during a Dan Deacon gig and cutting your leg on broken beer bottles. The next day, I noticed an intense pain in one of my knees from dancing so hard. All I have to say is, "Thanks Modeselektor, Hello Aleve!" This was the most all-out, totally in-my-face performance of the festival. The visuals from Pfadfinderei, a multimedia collective, perfectly complemented the Berlin duo’s nearly 2-hour-long set. The audience was bombarded by everything from neon punk elephants to a glowing hypnotic HAL-like orb. If you have any mortal enemies that have epilepsy, this is the event to invite them to.
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{Fennesz (Theatre du Nouveau Monde)}
By the time Fennesz’s set began, my struggle with the poutine was over and I was feeling the boost of pure energy that only grease, fat, and an accumulated amount of Octane 7.0 (a Canadian equivalent of Red Bull), could provide. Fennesz was accompanied by video artist Lillevan, who was responsible for the visual landscapes that were projected over the duo and on the screen behind them. The visuals reflected a new-age-y water theme, which was appropriate for the set, as the music and visuals transitioned from the feelings of drowning to a slow elemental ripple.
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{The Field (Metropolis) }
Axel Willner kept it simple during his North American debut, translating his studio project as The Field into a live instrumentation trio, which I had doubts about. I love 2007’s Here We Go Sublime; it’s just that it seems more suited to non-focused listening, something that gets put on before bed or when you’re behind on a deadline and staring at a blank MS Word document. I was wrong, and this is one of those times when I’m happy I’m wrong -- not, I’m wrong and I just walked ten blocks in the wrong direction.
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{Radio Slave} (Metropolis) }}
Radio Slave isn’t so much of a DJ as a master of mind control. Just when the feeling in my feet returned and the dancing crowd slowed to a zombie-like sway, he would mix in a slow build-up that would result in much fist-pumping and lighter-waving (I’m not kidding). The audience also liked to clap their hands to the beat of the music, A LOT. Sometime around 3 AM, I ran out of dance moves and resorted to cheesy candy-raver moves (think the running man). At this point, a pair of high school-looking kids come over to me and ask me where the pills are. I shrug, and they walk over to the girl who is rubbing her face into one of the speakers. His set didn’t end until around 6 AM, at which point, like a drunken fairy tale, the spell was broken and we were released outdoors to the sounds of birds merrily chirping.
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There’s nothing like traveling to shatter your pre-conceived notions of the world, pieced together from ’80s movies and Nickelodeon horror series. Would-be visitors, my only piece of advice is to check out Casa Del Popo -- it’s a venue and eatery run by members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and the sandwiches won’t punch you in the gut.
