Hello, it's DECEMBER 15, 2002, and you know what that means.

TOP 10 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR.

10. CLOSER MUSIK -- AFTER LOVE. This is not your older brother's synth-pop. It may be made with the same vintage instruments, but it's not synth-pop at all, it's equal parts playful house, lounge pop, and minimal grooves. Lo-fi and lovely.

9. SIX BY SEVEN -- THE WAY I FEEL TODAY. This year's Verve release. When the punk thrashing gets tiresome, "American Beer" forgives any transgression. But the screaming never stops. May they always be bitter and angry.

8. DELGADOS -- HATE. Certainly the best overproduced album of the year, it's also filled with gorgeous melodies that swoon, smash, blare, and wail across ten emotionally wrought tracks that deal with maudlin, anti-pop topics. Gargantuan stuff.

7. SCION -- ARRANGE AND PROCESS BASIC CHANNEL TRACKS. Is this really a *new* album? I've stopped caring -- whether it's a breathtaking DJ mix, a radical re-work/re-structuring of classic techno, a demonstration of how software continually redefines the music creation and recording process -- it just doesn't matter anymore.

6. TIM HECKER -- MY LOVE IS ROTTEN TO THE CORE. This mini-album tears a hole in hair metal, kicks and stomps it into quivering submission, but somehow retains it's wild-eyed spirit. Maybe because it's ten times louder than any 80's metal album. Or maybe it's the Van Halen samples. Electronic high-density mayhem done right.

5. LUKE SLATER -- ALRIGHT ON TOP. It's the album I'm not sure I'm supposed to like. If you have no burning desire to relive the 80's, when Luke Slater slaps that decade into working order by imposing his techno-funk sheen, even the toughest resolve will weaken.

4. AIDAN BAKER -- LETTERS. Two sublime, endlessly drifting tracks of chilled calm and ghostly looped anti-melody. The drones fill any sized room and it's thick tones prove difficult to peel from the walls.

3. SPEEDY J -- LOUDBOXER. Speedy's slamming return to pounding techno, it's the full album that last year's "Electric Deluxe" single hinted at. It builds you up, it spits you out, it runs from peak to mountaintop in ways that 99.9% of trance music can only hope.

2. HOLLOWPHONIC -- MAJESTIC. Remember when all Toronto bands used to suck? Remember the times when Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg or Halifax were the Canadian cities du jour for great bands? Remember when Slowdive used to be this really awesome band, but self-destructed, leaving the next generations of downtrodden shoegazers like Hollowphonic to pick up the mantle? Every time I hear "Majestic", I continue forgetting.

1. GODSPEED YOU ! BLACK EMPEROR -- YANQUI U.X.O. It's bordering on prog. You're probably bound to dislike some of it's overt politics. It wishes it were a live album. It's not as good as "Levez Vos Skinny Fists ...". But it's still essential.

TOP 10 GIGS OF THE YEAR. Through June, I kept up with last year's breakneck gig-going pace, but saw only four gigs during the second half of the year. In my present state of mind, this could be the last time I make such a list, for I may never again see enough gigs to warrant such a list. On that somewhat down note, here's the list:

10. Neil Halstead @ Soundscapes, February 16. As the rain drizzled down during his solo acoustic set, Neil Halstead provided an entrancing reading of his weary, weathered debut solo album. Lovely tunes, although I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't have traded the entire fourty-five minutes for one three-minute take on "Alison".

9. Merzbow, Promonium Jesters, DJ Skeeter, noCore/Schizoid, Unitus @ Kathedral, September 20. A mixed bag with some tumultuous peaks and valleys. Local noise bands, local crap metal bands, and Masami Akita. I'd be lying if I said the volume was cranked high enough.

8. Do Make Say Think, Creeping Nobodies @ Lee's Palace, April 4. My hippie self let his hair down and just couldn't stop the boogie. DMST really wig out live, they jam, now where are the crusties? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't honestly thinking that stuff throughout their whole set.

7. head/phone/over/tone, Cabana, The Electric Shoes, Hollowphonic @ B-Side, November 14. What might have been just another night out with a few nondescript local indie bands became a memorable night thanks to blowaway performances by Hollowphonic and head/phone/over/tone, not to mention some damned fine fuzz-pop by the Electric Shoes. I'd be lying if I lumped Cabana in with those accolades. I'd also be lying if stated I wasn't a bit embarrassed that so few people were in attendance.

6. Low, Mark Eitzel @ Lee's Palace, October 15. Low were their usual quiet but stunning selves, but Mark Eitzel arguably stole the show with his usual outspirts of verbal bile posing as lyrics for songs. I'd be lying if I denied that I honestly believed the gig's early start time (7:30 PM on a Saturday) was due to Alan and Mimi wanting to be up early for church the next morning.

5. Hood, I Am Robot and Proud @ Horseshoe Tavern, March 11. Hood's newest material hits this lo-fi hip-hop krautrock groove, and it's infectious to watch live. You can dance, but it feels kinda wierd to do so, because the music is funkadelic almost by accident, much like Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures". I'd be lying if I told you that I Am Robot and Proud looked cool sitting crosslegged on the floor smiling a goofy smile and ripping off Boards of Canada.

4. Jon Langford and the Sadies @ Horseshoe Tavern, February 2. Beer-fueled, rocking out, no nonsense, red blooded pub rock. I went to the show based on Jon Langford's semi-legendary reputation, and I'd be lying if I said he wasn't a billion times better than I thought he'd be.

3. Mens/Koolwyk @ SAT (part of MUTEK 2002), May 30. Pumping, minimal, nearly industrial, with the flickering seizure-inducing visuals to match. This year's MUTEK wasn't as much about the music as it was about the merging of visual arts with the supposedly boring live demeanour of laptop electronica. At least that's how I'll remember it. I'd be lying if I said I didn't rack my brain to figure out how I could better represent MUTEK on this list, for there were a good two or three other performances that might have merited their own inclusion on this list, but I didn't want to unbalance the Top 10 in the direction of any one single festival or event, so I considered just putting MUTEK itself as #3, but finally settled on representing the festival by my own personal highlight.

2. Bardo Pond, Mean Red Spiders @ Lee's Palace, July 3. Ahhh, I could listen to bands open their sets with "Two Planes" from now until the end of time. By the time they cranked out "Tommy Gun Angel", even the most stoic in attendance were swaying in a trance. Isobel Sollenberger remains the sexiest woman in rock. I'd be lying if I claimed I knew what the big deal is with Mean Red Spiders.

1. Scion + Tikiman, Tomas Jirku, naw @ Mockingbird, May 11. Scion and Tikiman were simply godlike, that's all there is to it, and I'd be lying if I said that any gig this year came even remotely close to touching their magnificent work.

More random "year in review"-esque thoughts.

Oasis' 593rd comeback single, "The Hindu Times" is their best single ever. I figured that they'd come back with an over-the-top anthemic singalong, and I figured right! But it rocked!! Definitely their best single ever. Maybe except for "Some Might Say". Ever.

Akufen sold a bucketload of "My Way" CD's, stayed huge all year, and had the #1 album of the year according to Exclaim! magazine. I still don't get the *really* big deal about him, he's good, but Mitchell Akiyama and Deadbeat (Montreal contemporaries) are still better for my money. Whatever, Montreal rules.

Primal Scream's "Evil Heat" is a lot better than the (in)-attention it's been given, but it's no classic. I'm obviously biased, since I would gladly mate with "XTRMNTR" and bear its children. Similarly, Speedy J's "Loudboxer" is WAY better than the reviews I've seen. People complain that it's just one hour of banging techno. But it's a storming, emotionally draining hour of banging techno. Granted, it doesn't open up new frontiers for techno and it's not as inventive as "A Shocking Hobby". It's structured like a DJ mix album (everything seamlessly mixed, slow start, big build, slow comedown) which means he's "confined" himself to more or less one style. But that one style is storming, emotionally draining, MINIMAL techno, so if you love that (as I do), you'll love this. (Disclaimer minimal = minimal, not "quiet")

In the 14 November NOW, there was a perfectly decent article about Lali Puna, who were playing a show in Toronto that week. There was also a pitiful and unneeded nod to Radiohead.

No wonder they don't like going out in public and talking to strangers. People must be coming up to them all the time and accusing/crediting them with being the first rock band in the history of the world ever to use electronics in their music, not to mention "making" bands through their mid-80's Morrissey-esque endorsements.

Now I can appreciate them turning a few more people onto Lali Puna, but I cannot accept that Lali Puna owe a good chunk of their present success to Radiohead. LP are on an incredibly hip label, Morr Music, and would have garnered most of their attention that way.

More gems from NOW: "Sigur Rós. The Icelandic space rock ensemble went from comfortable obscurity to object of global attention after playing a handful of shows with Radiohead". People forget that "Agetis Byrjun" was released in 1999. The people who forget that sort of thing didn't hear about Sigur Ros until 2001. It was a #1 album in Iceland soon after its release, but a distribution deal with famed UK music shop/label FatCat didn't come about until the end of the year. The initial FatCat pressings sold out in five seconds, and practically nobody in North America was able to get their hands on a copy for months afterward. During that waiting period, the hype surrounding Sigur Ros reached fever pitch among indie heads in the know. THEN, they supported Radiohead. By THEN, their record had become more easily available internationally, although Radiohead certainly had nothing to do with that. I'd be willing to bet that two-thirds of the people who heard of SR after they toured in support of Radiohead (whether they heard of them that way or not) don't know that they have a new record out now. Those aren't fans, those are curiousity seekers and bandwagon jumpers. Sigur Ros probably did more to make themselves by playing high-profile festivals such as All-Tommorow's parties, and the five dates they played in support of Godspeed You Black Emperor! that same spring likely earned them more long-term fans than the Radiohead tour in the fall.

"Warp Records. During his post-OK Computer meltdown, when the sound of guitars would send him bonkers, fragile frontman Thom Yorke plugged the "intelligent techno" catalogue of Warp Records to anyone who'd listen". I cringe whenever I read something like this. It's sickening that by 1991, Warp records had released as many legendary records as any record label in recent memory, and yet when their name is thrown around in rock circles, it's primarily as a "Kid A"-inspiration footnote. It's not Thom Yorke's fault that countless writers are too lazy to do a bit of homework, but he's most definitely guilty of discovering Warp for himself, acting as though he'd translated the Rosetta Stone and opened up new avenues for rock music by doing so.

Warp's catalogue was an electronic music template back when On A Friday were playing to six people in college beer halls. After dominating early UK techno with the infamous "bleep" sound, they overhauled it yet again -- only two years later -- with the "Artificial Intelligence" series, becoming the foremost flagbearers for giving techno as much credibility in a living room as it did on a dance floor. At this juncture in time, Radiohead's "Creep" single, a relatively bright spot on a blase debut album, had failed upon initial release and was being prepped for a second go around, at which point it was disturbingly hailed as a classic in the post-grunge slipstream even though it was nothing but a passable attempt to rip off Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine simultaneously. During the next few years, Warp expanded its repertoire, branching into sweet electronics melded with soul (Nightmares on Wax), pop (Broadcast), not to mention the usual bevvy of excellence from the usual suspects (Aphex, Autechre, Mike Ink, etc.). Thom Yorke was said to be still quite happy playing his guitar during this period, thank you very much. But he's never put up much of a fight when writers and fans put Radiohead into the vanguard of electronica. So, in this specific respect, there's loads of people who need to readjust their thinking and give Radiohead the credit they are due -- which is nothing, absolutely nothing at all.

It's been so long since I ripped on Radiohead, I'd forgotten how much fun it could be (just then, a solitary tear rolls down Barry's cheek, cutting a jagged path through the stubble to the bottom of his chin, and makes a faint splash on the space bar of his grey keyboard ... )

A couple of days ago, I had to kill time while waiting my hair dye to set, so I flipped on MuchMusic. Good music or bad, the station is quite often entertaining. First, I caught the end of the Justin Timberlake Spotlight. Yes, they ran a spotlight on someone with exactly one solo single to his credit. So obviously it was mainly NSync videos and Justin speaking during their interviews. I've now heard "Like I Love You" a few times, and I'm shocked to be admitting that it's actually quite good. I'm not shocked that it *is* good -- the top pop producers and songwriters working on his album have seen to that -- but that I'm *admitting* it's good, since Justin's sissy cute momma's boy look and blatant Michael Jackson mannerisms aren't the kinds of things that I would normally like. Nevertheless, I'm completely sold on the NME's view of his solo career, that is, with the people he's hired to work on his records, they can't help but be good, so the only remaining question is whether they are actual Justin Timberlake records, or if you could have stuck any old shmo in there, Phil Spector stylee, and achieved the same effect. Guess which side the NME and I picked.

Mere minutes later, "French Kiss" began, and the first video was "Symphonie Pour un Dingue" by K-Maro. I don't have the slightest idea what he was rapping about, I can't understand French too well anymore (let alone French rappers) but the video itself was a strange and bizarre amalgamation of styles and trends that was very refreshing. First, kudos for tossing "symphonie" in the title, I don't think any hip-hop artist has had the guts to do that since Maestro Fresh Wes' debut more than a decade ago. Then there's the cheesy synth strings over the music, and the -- hello -- 4/4 beat! In a rap song! But the best is K-Maro himself, dress and posture straight out of Eminem 101, styling and profiling with a club full of bodacious hoochies. And their vice of choice? A fattie?? Malt Liquor??? Hell no, dogg, it's WHITE WINE. Head boppin', booty talkin', mack walkin' guys and their hos and their WHITE WINE. I love French culture.

The new Sum 41 video "Still Waiting" is a parody of the Strokes et al. Complete with a skit starring Will Sasso as a bandwagon-jumping industry exec, he renames the band "The Sums" and they film a picture-perfect knockoff of a Strokes video, complete with low quality film, identical outfits, ridiculous mid-song tantrums, and gigantic shining letters S-U-M-S flanking the performance. Cute, and very, very clever.

But the real joke is on "The Sums" themselves. One fad poking fun at another? Sad, really sad.

The Warlocks are coming to town tomorrow, so I took a listen to one of their discs to decide if the show was worth seeing. This is an unfair trial -- I'm far more partial to wreaking havoc at home than going out to gigs these days -- but nevertheless, I spun the wheel of steel and was mildly impressed. The record proudly displays the octet's love of Velvet-y motorik trance. There are also sharp pinches of jam-band indulgence, which is fine for those who like that sort of thing. But I found their overall sound to be fundamentally at fault. I just couldn't stop thinking that there *has* to be a better way to use four guitars. Grooving along in quadruple-chiming Strokes-style with optional feedback doesn't produce the necessary volume. Nonetheless, this stuff must rock live like a bitch, not to mention the physical spectacle of eight people on stage churning out this stuff.

A completely different use of density comes courtesy of the Delgados, who are surely one of the most underrated bands in the world. If the Doves "Last Broadcast" could shift units, then there's hope for "Hate", the Delgados newest effort. The album springs to life with sweet tunes humming and blazing with ambitious overproduction. Your ears ring and then a flute or a string section plays a lulling melody beneath the din. One might read the previous two lines and believe I was writing about a Super Furries record, but somehow, the Delgados tread a completely different path by eliminating the bonkers preteen jumping on the bed feeling.

Not to pick on the Hives or the Strokes or any of the other "sweet, becoming sour" flavours of the year, but it's really hard for me to fathom why anyone would listen to one of those bands instead of the Delgados, who have massive and singable choruses, play at appreciable volume, and can pull off the difficult trick of being wildly creative without being the least bit indulgent. And if you really want to listen to dumb three chord songs, there's plenty of that being peddled by the Green Day wannabes. Or Avril Lavigne, who brings the added bonus of being really fun to look at.

As always, the key to success in life is to evolve or die. The Vines have dragged Phil Spector out of mothballs to produce their next album. Don't hold your breath waiting for three stripped-down chords. Pray tell, it will sound a lot more like the Delgados than the Ramones.

The US has some important elections looming this week, but the month's biggest decision is whether to buy the new Godspeed album on vinyl or CD. Obviously the vinyl will be better sound quality, but due the large amount of music per side (~20 min) the groove widths are narrower and the loudness suffers. Sure, you can just crank up the amp to compensate, but then you're dealing with amp or speaker distortion, plus the music doesn't seem to jump out at you (as much as it does when the record is loud to begin with). I found this a bit disconcerting with the last Godspeed record, it would come off a bit flat unless the volume was high enough, and then I'd be amplifying more hiss and unwanted noise. All this was passing through my mind after I bought a 12" original pressing of Jesus and Mary Chain's "You Trip Me Up". On one side, you have the Phil Spector-tastic single, with two supporting tracks on the b-side. There was clearly something very deliberate being done. First of all, there's maybe seven minutes of total music here, which means it's overkill to use a 12" format. Second of all, the grooves are significantly tighter on the b-side, meaning it's literally a third as loud as the a-side. Third, and most importantly, "You Trip Me Up" was cut with huge groove widths, we're talking two and a half minutes stretched out over half the area of the record, so the song EXPLODES off the record to the point that any CD version that you might have is rendered more useless than eating soup with a fork. It can be no accident that JAMC were hoping that some unwitting Radio Two DJ would throw this record on the stereo without testing the levels first, stomping a giant bruise on the toes of the A-Ha and Arcadia records that they'd have been playing immediately before, melting an country's hair gel to boot. You know, there's a book that's just DYING to be written that explains in non-technical terms why vinyl sounds better than CD, why music companies and retailers screwed over consumers by force-feeding them convenience in favour of sound fidelity (even though it's not true), and the sociology/underground cult of vinyl lovers who keep vinyl alive and flourishing even though 99% of casual music fans believe the medium is dead. I would love to be the guy to write this book, but it'd involve taking off time from my regular life for a few months.

Something has possessed Sigur Ros' American distributors because they're heavily pushing an album with no title and no song titles. My guess is they're hoping to capture lightning in a bottle twice -- call it Radiohead in a bottle -- and they believe the album can get by on a second round of word-of-mouth buzz, critical jism, and general curiosity. I have no idea if they're hallucinating or if this maniacal plan will work. My gut feeling, given the "Step 1: pop, Step 2: trash" attitude of the entire industry over the last few years, is that the long-term financial prospects for a band like Sigur Ros are practically zilch. In the meantime, they've turned out a fine bit of dreamy grunge (the soft-loud-soft formula is worked to the bone). It reminds me a lot of the first Verve album. That is, Sigur Ros are either delusional noodlers in love with Kid A, or a "white-knuckled, intense experience". The defense calls the final track to the witness stand, a track I instantly recognized as the final track they played in concert a year and a half ago. Such was the impression it left me with even though it was six seasons in the past. I was all giddy, and then I remembered that as good as it is, the final five minutes of the Godspeed record blow it away like yesterdays garbage, which made me calm down somewhat.

Primal Scream's "Evil Heat" is finally released in North America at the end of November (with a bonus DVD!). Hell yeah. It's about time. Why the hell are they waiting until the end of Nov? Did it take a while to get the distribution deal worked out, or are they trying to time it for release "just in time for Xmas"? If it's the latter (and it wouldn't surprise me in the least), then to hell with them. It's the new Primal Scream, not Elton John's Greatest Love Songs Vol XIV. Nobody buying Evil Heat cares when it's released. "OOOOH, 'Evil Heat', that's just what Mom wanted! We can get her that together with 'Celine Dion Unplugged in Las Vegas' and that dietary cookbook that we read about in Oprah's magazine!!"

It is 3:30 AM. I'm feeling a bit tired, and I'm undoubtedly not at my sharpest. I've been managing to drag myself into bed past 3 AM for the past week or so, and although some people can keep up this semi-nocturnal lifestyle almost indefinitely, I am not such a person. Tonight, however, is different, and my frame of mind is perfect for it. I am about to hear the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor album. The new album that is released one month from now. G-d bless Kazaa and whoever got this stuff on it, whether it was leaked, stolen or previewed legitimately. I don't care. I'll buy the album anyway. Hearing it now -- this means something to me. This is exciting to me. It's 3:30 in the morning, why else would I be staying awake to do this if I wasn't such a passionate fool. I'm a peon for my music, for my trade, bless me, curse me, be jealous of me. Whatever. After two years of gigs previewing this material, after all the bootlegs and frustrating non-information "communicated" by the band, it's here, It's the FUCKING ALBUM OF THE YEAR and if "Motherfucker = Redeemer" takes the rest of the night to download then so be it, I'll sit here and wait.

This record begins with "09-15-00", which is the renamed "12-28-99". Sure, they renamed the band by changing the punctuation, might as well change the date on the song title too. I think this album contains deep rooted themes of Godspeed's dislike of American culture. Nevertheless, they enlisted an American, Steve Albini, to "record" this album, and it definitely shows. The guitars chime, attack, blare, and trumpet themselves far over everything else. This used to be a relatively quiet track but now the buildup within it is dauntingly massive. Even, the "outro", usually almost inaudible during live performance, is bathed in echoes and the lonely wailings of sweet electric guitar. I'm certainly not complaining. I love volume. Also, it was obvious from the gigs that the new material was meaner and angrier than their previous work. Tracks like "BBFIII" can be said to grow in volume to raise the drama. "Tazer Floyd" does not. It begins tense and barely restrained. It explodes and does not inch toward extinction, it just lays uneasily dormant. When you're writing these types of songs, you need the guitars. You need lots of them. When fifteen minutes isn't cutting it any longer and you feel the need to stretch "Motherfucker = Redeemer" to thirty-five, while also creating a need to drone and improvise your way through such an epic length, then you need a person in the studio who can capture this careening, spontaneous, live dynamic. Call the master. By the way, this is only the first track, although it's 22 minutes long which makes it seven minutes longer than your average boy bands' career. And it's going to get better.

The Song Formerly Known As "Tazer Floyd" is now called "Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls". This is basically a good thing, since the former title is a cute pun, but altogether inappropriate considering Godspeed are a deadly serious symphonic rock outfit and therefore are not permitted to have a sense of humour. This is the price you pay for acting as the political watchdogs for the rest of us comedy-laced Canadians. The latter title sounds far more like it belongs to a Godspeed song. The content is far more accurate as well. "Tazer Floyd" sounds like some hippie commune bullshit featuring enlightened acid casualties going cross-eyed in a $50 million light show while a bunch of stegosaurus play a meandering song called "We Hate The World and Everything In It" containing synchronized video/sound montages right down to the sixteen separate guitar solos. On the other hand, "Rockets..." is a great title because this track is about as loud as a rocket taking and packs the punch of a rocket crash landing into the ground. Six minutes in, the fake ending begins and the track pounds onward for far longer than you'd think necessary (but in a good way). It fades away into little more than a slow insistent beating of the bass drum, gradually and inexorably building into the shuddering climax which makes my teeth chatter in fear and admiration. This building process persists for FAR longer than you'd think necessary (but in a VERY good way) and it's just beyond loud, beyond awesome and beyond emotional. I'm breathless.

I said I'd wait all night for "Motherfucker = Redeemer" to finish downloading ... but right now it isn't downloading and I'm having a near apoplexy with worry because I can't put a claim to reviewing an album without hearing the final half of it. It has to finish, and it will eventually, but (*loophole*) if it isn't downloading at all, then it's not exactly fair for me to wait for it. Particularly since it's almost 5 AM. So I'm heading to bed, my "exclusive" report shall be continued ...

... sooner than I thought. I could not go home. Not long after I finished typing the words above, the download restarted. Like the episode of ER from this past week, my download showed a pulse mere seconds after I had already declared it dead. So it is now 6 AM. I suffer for my art.

It starts small. No really, I'm a bit shocked. Two minutes of gentle chimes and xylophone drift by before the tick-tocking guitar and violin riffs click in. We trot along, the metronomic rhythms gelling the piece in contrast to the barely controlled chaos of the Live Versions I Have Known. And again, I speak too soon, as blazing ear bleeding hell breaks loose about seven minutes in. I brace myself for the middle, spacey droning portion and hope beyond hope that I won't fall too entranced and fade into unconsciousness.

But again it starts small. The guitars are shuddering away while background flutters gradually begin to force their way into the background. I'm thinking that the arrival of the bass signals a shift into complete stasis, but I'm wrong again and they recede. Only fifteen minutes in. Lots of time.

The next several minutes metronomically pace themselves along. Lost, lonely vocals weave their way underneath the click of the guitar. Twenty minutes in, it's another fake ending. One of the many beautiful things about this song is that a listener can barely recollect the fireworks at the beginning, because this song is so *damned* long. The beginning is another eon ago. Yet, through repeated listens one can appreciate how each movement flows into the next without a sudden stylistic change.

Twenty two minutes in and it's building again. I dare not write that the guitars aren't droning loud enough and the chaos is controlled or some other junk like that, because I'll just be proved wrong within seconds. See, there it is, the guitars are howling. Still, louder boys and girls!! Ah, ask, and I shall receive. It's running, speeding up, showing no signs of stopping. This is the big, and I mean BIG finish. The drums tap away in the background, they're barely audible above the racket. And finally, twenty nine minutes in, it's fake ending #3, and it's the best one yet. Swirling guitars make way for the march-like percussive effort that screams this track, and this album to a close with a fist-clenching, headbanging, and sinus clearing rock out. And in the end, the droning cuts off abruptly/

It's really not fair. I knew what I'd be hearing going into this. Godspeed have been sitting on most of these songs for months and it's been only a matter of time before they figured out a suitable method of translating the live fury and intensity these songs requite onto a disc. Then would come the easy part -- releasing the album to a rapturous audience. That said, I knew what I'd be hearing. And it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that this album is insanely good. This is the record where Godspeed, musically at least, storm out of their snowed-in Montreal bunkers and strike out with anger. Anger at what? I don't know. I have things in my life to be angry about. Everyone does. Pick yours, put on "Yanqui U.X.O." and rage until your fingernails puncture your palms. It'll feel good. I promise.

6:52 AM.

Vinyl is a lot like the Yiddish language. The Yiddish language is a lot like vinyl. Most people think that it isn't around anymore. They think it's faded away, it no longer has any contemporary value, and has been replaced by something better. True, it's popularity and usage has drastically receded since it's peak of a few decades ago. It reached a nadir in the early 1990's but has been making a comeback ever since. More and more people are discovering it for the first time, or rediscovering it for the first time since their youth. Mainstream tastes may have passed it by, but modern-day enthusiasts know that you just can't get the same stuff from anything else.

The Year in Review: Early Edition!

Normally, I'm maliciously against any kind of review until the last week of December, but I've written so little about current music lately that I felt the need for a bit of "State of the Union"-style sermonizing.

I severely curtailed my spending after buying 48 291 records and CD's while in California and Montreal. I returned home and realised that I was going broke, so I stopped and became yet another enemy of the music industry by downloading huge amounts of stuff from Kazaa. Most of it has been bootlegged live music (the same was true of my downloading habits from the Napster era) so before the president of the RIAA comes knocking on my door, you wouldn't have seen that money anyway, so leave me alone. Therefore, most of my summer was spent trying to catch up with my purchases and downloads, while shopping and gig-going came to a near standstill.

But there wasn't much happening anyway. Fall and spring are the best times for new releases and concerts, so I don't feel as though I missed much. Still, immersion breeds passion, so I do feel somewhat dirty for not being more excited about the release of the new Primal Scream album (in August). Instead, my thoughts were centred on when I'd find the time to spin records and not wake up everyone in my building, and why it was so damned difficult to find Mogwai live tracks from 2001 and 1990's wrestling matches from All-Japan.

I've been on a vinyl fix for about a year now, but vinyl junkies are just that -- junkies -- and extending your financial resources comes with the territory of being a junkie. So now, I can take a hard look at my recent albums without the distraction of wondering about the best way to get Kennziffer records. And my first reaction is that there have been very few excellent albums so far this year. Again, there's a few good releases still expected in the next three months. Also, I was singing the same lament at this time last year (and even later). The only things which have truly blown my mind have been Hollowphonic and Speedy J, and that should surprise nobody given my yen for guitar noise and aggressive minimal techno. Primal Scream's newest is no XTRMNTR, as the Kevin Shields/Scream bipolar monster of noisy dance fear-mongering has failed to spread it's pixie dust over the album as a whole. Scion released a simply astounding compilation of reconstructed Basic Channel material, but I'm hung up on whether to call it a "new" album. Where is their proper album?? With "My Love is Rotten to the Core", Tim Hecker proved himself as the first artist (that I've heard) to expand on the beauty/pop/noise hybrid crystallized on Fennesz's 2001 release "Endless Summer".

The new Godspeed album is out in a month. What will be on it is anyone's guess, I can't find a track listing anywhere. But they've featured three new songs prominently in their concerts: "12-28-99", "Tazer Floyd" and "Motherfucker=Redeemer". The latter is over thirty minutes long, and doesn't the title kick major ass? One of the finest song titles of all time. So, that's over an hour of material from those three tracks. I've been saying for months (and now I'm writing it -- I'm now accountable) if those three tracks alone make up the new album, and the recorded versions do a decent job of capturing the live versions, then it's the album of the year, hands down, lights out, everybody go home. I just recently learned that Albini worked on the recording, so that should answer the question of "capturing the live versions" with a resounding "hell yeah". Keep your fingers crossed.

Movies based around the songs of a particular artist are a bad idea. Exhibit A: "Muriel's Wedding". The director claimed that he'd have seen no point in making the movie if they hadn't gotten permission to use the ABBA songs. The first thirty minutes or so were great but things went rapidly downhill after that. The final hour was nearly intolerable and I've successfully blocked it from my memory. No really, I literally can't remember a single damned thing about the final hour of "Muriel's Wedding".

Exhibit B: "I Am Sam". I haven't seen this one, but anything precious enough to feature a Hollywood Cute Kid (TM) isn't likely to draw my money anyhow. In this case, they were dumb enough to assume they'd be able to use any Beatles song they pleased, even to the point of filming the scenes so that events on screen unfolded were synced in a specific way with the music. So when they didn't get the song rights after all, it presumably ruined some of the movie's message, so an 11th hour collection of songs by other musical artists was recorded as a hasty Beatles Tribute Record. Except that the songs had to still synch up to the film, so everyone had to perform note-by-note renditions of the tracks, meaning the soundtrack was completely devoid of inventiveness and musical interpretation.

I watched Exhibit C last night, I present to you "Magnolia". I actually heard the soundtrack a few weeks previous, so I knew the songs but obviously not their context. In the liner notes, director P.T. Anderson of bloated "Boogie Nights" fame writes about how he'd long conceived of a film based around songs by Aimee Mann. The first eighty minutes absolutely flew by and I was deeply engrossed in his intricately linked characters. Then, I began to notice the Aimee Mann songs creep in, then I noticed the drawn-out, panting soliloquies, then I started getting bored and the time started dragging on. I mean really, somebody get Anderson an executive editor whose sole job is to take the director's cut of his films and chop one hour of total length -- no matter how long the film. One hundred forty minutes in, every character (all in separate locations) started singing "Wise Up" simultaneously. At this precise point, I gave up all hope of this movie recovering and pulling it all together for a strong ending. He may have been striving for the bored, contemplative glamour of the George Michael "Listen Without Prejudice" videos, but it came off as a light farce more in tune with the opening number in "Rocky Horror Picture Show". Even worse, the scene with Philip Seymour Hall and a seemingly comatose Jason Lombard singing was downright goofy (and certainly unintentionally so), recalling George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" video. All the Aimee Mann songs in this film are great, but I refuse to buy into the cinematic "concept" having ten people all so haunted by the awesome power of "Wise Up" that they instantaneously start behaving completely different for the remainder of the movie and throw away almost two and a half hours of character development as a result.

And the ending, which is the most outrageously nonsensical final ten minutes of a motion picture that I have ever seen, leaves us with Mann's "Save Me". It leaves a pleasant hum in the ears but I can't be expected to leave on a moderately high note and forget that the writer/director didn't have the balls to write a proper ending that runs deeper than "they lived (relatively) happy ever after".

Basing a movie around an artists' music must be a hellaciously difficult job. My theory is that it rarely works because the directors have close connections with the songs or the artists. That makes them no different from anyone else, but trying to recreate this appreciation on the big screen is their failure. Trying to tell their audience what a song means to them by projecting their close personal feelings through their characters is their failure.

I have never been a big fan of Cat Stevens, and I have never seen "Harold and Maude". I've been told that I should. After writing this, maybe I will.

At its heart, [American Idol] is an old-fashioned talent contest, in the mold of "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour," "The Gong Show" and "Star Search." But it added a few twists for the new millennium, noted Robert Thompson, head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

"This is to 'Star Search' what modern quantum physics is to Newtonian gravitational equations," he said. "It's big, so much more sophisticated and so much more conscious of how you gather an audience." -- from cnn.com

Physicists will understand why that last quote is asinine. For the rest of you, sorry.

But I did succumb to pop culture temptation and watched the finale of "American Idol". The public and the judges choices notwithstanding, I think the wrong person won. Kelly is by far the better singer, although her voice doesn't offer me anything new that we all haven't heard from Christina, Mariah and Whitney. These days, everyone is dead bored of Christina, Mariah and Whitney, so I guess Kelly qualifies as something new in that respect. But Justin is the "American Idol". He's an average singer at best, but the guy should teach a "Teen Idol 101" course in university. Effortlessly, and without seeming the least bit forced, he has every wave, smile, hand shaking with screaming girls, playing to a rabid crowd -- every last damned thing that you need to be a nice guy pretty boy teen idol, the magic that has impelled 14 year old girls from the 50's to the '00's to run to the nearest mall to buy posters of their favourite boy toys. Kelly has the voice, but to paraphrase Paula Abdul, she doesn't have "it". She's less congenial than Justin. Watching her reach out to the outstretched arms of her "fans", acknowledging the cheers, every smile -- it's as if she's following a checklist. In short, Kelly performs these nuances as though she feels she NEEDS to do them, whereas Justin does it because he WANTS to. Whether this accurately represents their true inner selves is not the point. This is the image they convey, and conveying a pop star image is what the show is all about.

And for a double bill, I watched "Josie and the Pussycats" immediately afterward. A more appropriate pairing of viewing enjoyment could not be possible. "Josie" is the best music satire film ever. With all the in-jokes, cool one-liners, and wonky characters, it boggles my mind that this film wasn't heralded as the new "Austin Powers" immediately upon release.

I haven't bought too much music lately. This is partly because I've had KazaaLite humming away happily for most of the summer. But it's mainly because I haven't yet recovered from my massive hauls from my vacations this summer. First, there was five days in Montreal for the MUTEK festival, and I came home with an armload of vinyl and ten new CD's of yummy electronic goodness. And only two weeks later, I was off for California, and I hadn't come close to fully absorbing my Montreal purchases. So I wasn't at all prepared for my prodigious West Coast haul. No scratch that, I wasn't ready for Amoeba.

Trying to prepare a person for their first visit to Amoeba is like trying to prepare them for their first Mogwai show. You try and tell them how loud it's going to be, that it'll be the loudest gig they've ever heard, play them the albums and live mp3's, and they say "yeah, yeah, all right" because in their minds they're thinking "why's he getting so worked up about telling me how loud it's going to be, it's not like I've never been to a gig and heard a band play loudly before", but once they go, they're all like "Christ, I had no idea it'd be THAT loud and there was nothing you could have done to convey the sheer volume of the experience". Similarly, I thought I was prepared for Amoeba, because my friends had told me how big it is and how the music is really cheap and that you can spend hours there but I was thinking "yeah, yeah, why are they getting so worked up about telling me how great the store is, it's not like I haven't been to a billion music shops before, and some of them were very big too, you know".

I walked into the Hollywood Amoeba and for the first time in my life, I was in a music store and I didn't know what to do. The floor was so bloody huge, with the kind of floor space usually reserved for furniture departments, and there were racks upon endless racks of music and upon even a perfunctory flip through any random bin would reveal ultra-cheap jewels, so the continuous, pressing quandary was "WHERE IN THE HELL DO I LOOK NEXT?". After two hours, I forced myself to leave since I'd only planned to spend an hour there before heading to Venice Beach. And I hadn't even glanced at the vinyl sections because I didn't want to risk the records getting dirtied by the sand or melting in the car. Plus, I knew I'd be visiting the San Francisco Amoeba in a few days. I walked in and told my friends "I'll see you in a few hours". The timing worked out quite well. They shopped for a bit, left, got drunk, returned, and I had just gotten into line. I would love to take six months off from my normal life, move to San Francisco and work at Amoeba. That would be killer. I know as much about music as any of them. I even have long hair and can pass for a hippie if I need to.

On August 8, at around 4 PM, I listened to Whistler's "Faith in the Morning" CD. I'd bought it at the SF Amoeba for a dollar. I'd been back from my California sojourn for more than five weeks and I'd finally heard the last of the 37 CD's I'd bought while I was there. More than half of those were from Amoeba, many of the rest were from Streetlight, a chain which can best be described as "Amoeba Lite", i.e. selection and size a notch below Amoeba, yet still ten different shades of awesome for those keeping score at home. Of particular interest to me was the VAST selection of used electronic music. Average CD price $5-$6. That's just insane. I found Speedy J's techno headrush of a new record "Loudboxer", for five bucks. I loved his industrial funk direction, but I'm glad to hear him doing pure techno again. How about a John Acquaviva Frankfurt mix CD for six bucks, and a Dietrich Schoenmann mix CD for five bucks. I found Surgeon's "Force and Form", a CD I'd been searching high and low for for two years (I couldn't bring myself to fork over $35 to special order it) for $12, brand spanking new.

The ultimate slap in the face/epiphany moment is finding something for dirt cheap that I can't even find out here. Where can you get Loop CD's these days? I found "World in My Eyes" for four bucks. That's criminal. I picked up Chapterhouse's "Whirlpool" for fifteen, my most expensive single purchase of the trip, but still, WHO THE HELL STOCKS CHAPTERHOUSE THESE DAYS??. Just SEEING the CD was worth my $15 USD, the fact that the music on it is actually really good is a bit of a bonus. I got not one, but TWO Amp albums, neither of which I even knew existed. One of them is a live recording, the other is a two CD guitar+dark ambient recording. That's 150 minutes of rare Amp. Total cost: $22. I found a noise compo for two bucks, the classic first Sons of Freedom record (which sounds WAY ahead of its time for 1988, well, three or four years anyway, and "The Criminal" is still one of the finest pieces of music to spring forth from Canadian minds) for a dollar, a lousy DOLLAR folks.

Oh yeah, I bought some vinyl. Ritchie Hawtin, "Orange". Classic, ball-busting shit. Three bucks, mofos. I found Petar Dundov records for a dollar. Warp's second compilation, the "Tequila Slammers" collection, two discs, five dollars. Huh? Where do they FIND this stuff? 808 State vs Jon Hassell. Excuse me? Those guys made a record together? Actually, it's the former remixing the latter, and it's mine for three bucks. Don't worry, I'm not going to rant on and on about every single item, but hopefully I've managed to pass on my enthusiasm and convey how occupied I've been with my masses of recent purchases. If you're on the West Coast, for G-d's sake go check these places out. Don't be afraid to buy cartloads of music because you've got to remember, it's not how much you spend, it's how much you save. If I'd bought all my stuff in Toronto (if I'd even been able to find it all), it would have been easily equivalent to the amount I spent in CA, plus the price of my plane ticket. So hey, never mind "if you're on the West Coast ...", just GO to the West Coast. Your trip will pay for itself!!

Phish suck. You probably already knew that. However, I've been gaining a greater appreciation for the music of the Grateful Dead, at least some of it. Even though they would often belabour a simple theme into a fifteen minute wank-fast, the Dead's music was deeply rooted in folk and R&B. These roots shine through in their sweet harmonies, their choices of traditional material for cover versions, and the succinct folk-pop of stuff like "American Beauty". Phish may be rooted in the same musical bloodstreams (their musicianship is too polished for them to be complete charlatans), but they don't show it. Phish sound as if they've only listened to two musical acts -- the Dead (extended jams, overlapping genres) and Frank Zappa (we want to be always clever and witty, even at the expense of being goofy for goofiness' sake and/or saying absolutely nothing of substance).

I want to form a band. My band, coincidentally, has little in common with any of the aforementioned bands. First, I need a drummer. Second, I need a keyboard/electronics player. I don't want to have a bass player, so I need to add a bit more low end to the sound, preferably the thick drone of a Hammond organ. Also, this person can handle the samples, loops, echo boxes, etc. to add further layering to the mix. Finally, I need five or six guitarists. But there is a caveat: none of the guitarists can be any good. I define "not any good" as "unable to pick with reasonable competency or play a guitar solo of any kind". I can play about six chords and I'm not so swift with chord changes. That's the kind of acumen we need. People who want to show their licks are not welcome in this band. The music would vary between Loop/Spacemen 3 "let's pound one or two chords until we froth at the mouth" drone-rock, and atmospheric, drearingly eerie ambiance.

Once upon a time, I decided that if I was in a band, it would be Stereolab. But Stereolab no longer provide the minimal krautrock feel that I need. Then I decided that it would be Spiritualized. But since "Pure Phase", they've distanced themselves from the wibbly feel of that record in favour of tight pocket symphonies. Therefore, there is far too much formal talent in that band, so I wouldn't have anything meaningful to add. So I'll have to do my own thing.

I've missed shows due to sellouts, Jewish Holidays, cancellations, etc. On the 1st of August, I broke new ground by missing two shows in one day. At 8 PM, Badly Drawn Boy played a free set at Soundscapes. I biked by at around 6:30 and the place already appeared to be packed. It was little surprise then, when I eventually arrived there, that the store was jammed, with was a lineup of people stretching around the block. As it happened, I likely could have seen some of the show had I gotten into the line at that moment, since the heat inside the store was so sweltering that people had to be shuttled through due to the uncomfortable conditions. Word has it that the set was really good, and kudos to BDB for sticking to his vision and wearing a woolly hat throughout his set despite the ridiculous heat.

I then made my way to the Phoenix, making the 40 minute walk with leisurely aplomb because HEY!, I was about to see the Nesh tour by Warp Records, a label showcase by one of my favourite all-time record labels. I got to the Phoenix, but the venue was black, with a note taped to the door stating that the gig was canceled due to a bus breakdown. My first thought was "it's a lie", fondly recalling the days of ten years hence, when border difficulties had been the probleme du jour for the rave scene, but I later discovered that the freak bus breakdown story was indeed real.

Recently, I finally caught the episode of "Classic Albums" focusing on Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours". It's a candid look back by all five band members, but is lacking in a certain lucidity. There are revealing moments into the recording process and the bands' state of mind during the albums' creation, but they are often disguised behind thick veils of cryptic wordplay. Keep in mind that I adore "Rumours", it came out in 1977 but is still miles better than any punk album ever made.

Ex. A. Christine:"Mick's the Big Daddy. He became Little Daddy for a few years because we were all a bit worried about him. But he's the Big Daddy again, he's bigger than ever, he's Mighty Mick, he's great. He's been the gel, the glue behind Fleetwood Mac. This is his life".

Christine's comments are generally quite concise and to the point, certainly compared to the rest of the FM bunch. I love her finely textured accent. Here, she throws around monikers like candy in reference to Mick Fleetwood. But somehow, the "Daddy" imagery is disturbing, particularly since Mick looked more like a Mad Hatter than a cuddly Santa back in the 70's. Definitely more Pimp Daddy than Poppa. Mick says that "Oh Daddy" is about him. The lyrics plead for acceptance with a childlike wonder. Hey, wasn't it Stevie who slept with Mick? But the image of Mick as the gangly pusher is just too strong.

Ex. B. John:" [Chris] saw me at the worst one time too many, and bless her heart, she said "Enough. I don't want to be around this person". And, so we talked about it and made the decision, but at the bottom of all that stuff was, we have something musically that we can achieve".

This is more like it. John McVie takes a sludgingly morose 45 seconds to say these lines. It's as if he just walked off the set of "Eyes Wide Shut". That's how he talks throughout the entire show. I'd worry that he's fried one too many braincells over the crazy years, but in the archived footage he's STILL speaking this way. On second thought, I believe he's reliving the moments as he retells them, and has to keep pausing to recover from the horror.

Ex. C. Mick:"I was not spared at all. My best friend was having an affair with my wife Jenny and he was sort of still a friend, and he still is. He's a great chap. And I was sort of happy that if someone was going to do that, it was him rather than someone I didn't know, it was like a weird ... that was all twisted too, it was a total mess, and that's how we made that album".

"Hey, remember me? The guy who the band is named after? I may have been the odd man out in the pre-Abba-esque double couple splitsville arrangement, but I was just as messed up as the rest of them! My wife was boffing this other guy, man! Great guy, him, fantastic geezer. Boy, am I ever glad he was riding my wife. I kind of enjoyed it, actually. It warmed my heart to know that my best friend was stabbing me in the back rather than some wanker who I didn't trust or anything. Jeez, there was some wacky, wacky stuff going on back then. I think I drowned my pain in illegal substances, but hey, what a great geezer he was to be doing my wife on the side like that. Hmm ... I've got a bit of a twisted mind myself, don't I?"

Ex. D. Stevie:"'Gold Dust Woman' was a little bit about drugs. It was about keeping going. It was about cocaine. And after all these years, since I haven't done any cocaine since 1986 I can talk about it now. At that point, it ... I don't think that I've ever been so tired in my entire life as I was when we were doing that. It was shocking me, the whole rock and roll life was really heavy, it was so much work and it was so everyday intense. Being in Fleetwood Mac was like being in the army -- it was like, you have to be there, you have to be there, you have to be there as on time as you can be there, and even if there's nothing you have to do you have to be there. So, 'Gold Dust Woman' really was my symbolic look at somebody going through a bad relationship and doing a lot of drugs and trying to just make it, trying to live, trying to get through it to the next day".

Ah, yes. Another endearing chapter of "Pop Stars Acting Coy About What Their Songs Represent and Denying the Obvious Even Though We All Know the Answer". Line this one up next to recent stuff such as Jason Pierce claiming that the album "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" isn't about drugs, and the Spice Girls claiming that "Goodbye" isn't about Geri. Stevie changes her mind every five seconds as to what the song is about. Is it about survival or about drugs? Or is it about surviving drugs? Make up your mind! Of course, it's quite obviously about drugs. "Gold Dust"? Come on. If cocaine were flour, these guys were inhaling a loaf of bread every day. The song is far darker and menacing than anything else on the album. Drug hallucinations/comedowns, anyone?

I can't stand it when people cite the "rock and roll lifestyle" as the source of their problems. That's a cheap, flimsy excuse. There is no such thing as a rock and roll lifestyle. If you play rock and roll and you choose to get wasted on drugs every night, that's your problem, it's not the music acting for you and impelling your hands to grab the nearest mirror. If someone goes to college, drinks all the time, and flunks out, that's entirely his own doing. He flunked out because he was screwed up all the time and did poorly in his course work. It's NOT because the "college lifestyle" is so hard, and you always have to be in class, and you always have to be on time for your exams. If one lets the "college lifestyle" get in the way of, you know, "college", then the "lifestyle" is the cause of the hardships, not the effect.

I'd like to hear more rock stars say "Yeah, I did drugs. I did them because I wanted to", rather than, "Yeah, I did drugs, but everyone else was doing them too, so don't just blame me!".

Ex. D. Lindsey:"You really have to address it in terms of the times, and the times were a lot crazier. There was a sense of expansiveness in the business, of anything being possible, of budgets being unimportant, and certainly there was a subculture of drugs that was considered almost a norm in the business back then as opposed to today when it's more of an aberration. That was sort of the last period of time when maybe there was a kind of 'us vs them' feeling, of 'establishment vs anti-establishment'. It was grinding to a halt as the biz got tighter, but in the mid '70's there was a sense that you could do no wrong".

Here is a startling bit of revisionist history, spoken with an embarrassed semi-smirk. One one hand, it's 40 minutes into this program and someone's FINALLY owning up to drugs being a key element of the Rumours-era turmoil. On the other hand, based on these comments, Lindsey Buckingham must think he's living the 80's again, but without the drugs, it appears he hasn't listened to anything new or picked up a music magazine in about 20 years. First off, Lindsey, people still do drugs these days. They're different drugs than the ones you were doing, but that's the evolution of mankind for you. I understand that I'm generalizing here, but I'd say that drugs are more of a problem these days because of the increased problem with "diluted" substances, i.e. E dealers who alloy their product with a bunch of other chemicals to keep their costs down. You can literally have no clue what you're ingesting these days, and that's scary. But when budgets aren't important, you can afford to buy the really quality shit and thus have a better idea of what you're getting. Crazy times, indeed.

That sense of expansiveness was the bloating of the rock and roll industry, which is why punk had to happen. Strangely enough, Lindsey saw these times of mega-tours, mega-albums, and mega money as just another chapter of "us vs them". News flash: when you sell millions of albums and can afford to sit around doing drugs all day, you ARE "them". It's just surreal to watch him saying this stuff, looking to come off as the rebellious rock star who was sticking it to the Man, as my TV flashes old footage of FM at a glossy press conference/photo op.

Once rock stars felt they could do no wrong, rock lost it's ball-busting primal sex appeal and rested on it's aristocratic laurels. "Sure, stretch the guitar solo out for another ten minutes. It's not mindless noodling because we can do no wrong!".

To finish up, let's blast off into outer space with comments more cryptic than the Sunday crossword.

Ex. E. Mick:"Christine could have cut ['Don't Stop] ten years before it was made and the difference would have been, was not having this cream on the top that took it into a whole different zone where musically and rhythmically it wasn't just a shuffle, and it's like, that's what it is, and that was this powerful marriage where we were just taking that and running with it".

What in the name of G-d is he talking about? I listen to him, and read these lines over and over, and I'm lost every time. Mick, if you don't remember recording the track, it's OK to just say so. I THINK he's saying "The song is piano-based, so Christine could have written and performed it herself. But when doing it with the whole band, it turned into something much more special".

Ex. F. Lindsey:"I had met a young lady that didn't turn into being anything heavy but what it did do was sort of put a little wind in my sails in terms of having sort of a regenerative spirit and sort of move on, which I hadn't been able to do for a little while".

Who talks like this? What's with this Wordsworth meets Timothy Leary free-form naturalist garbage? Translation: "I was having casual sex. I liked it".

Hey, I knew I hated Korn for a reason other than the fact that their music is crappier than a backed-up toilet at a refried bean eating contest. Guitarist Munky thinks that Hitler went to heaven. Why? Because he did what he believed was right, and if you always do what you believe is right, boys and girls, then you too can go to heaven.

Hey Munky, the next time you and your asswater stupid bandmates come to town, maybe I'll hunt you down like the ignorant mama's bitch that you are, take a machete to your neck, drink your fresh blood, hack off your testicles with a cheese grater while you're still alive and feed them to my dogs, and piss in your eye sockets just before you take your final breath. Because if that's what I believe is right, then damn, I'll go to heaven no matter what the law does with me afterward. And I guess I'll see you there, eh?

Drugstore aren't just a great band. They're also a great covers band. They've been tossing acoustic covers into their live sets from their outset, and through the wonders of internet P2P software, I've found a few wonderful artifacts. Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" strays close to the original but adds a hint of country-tonk swagger, much like the kind on the last album's opener, "Baby Don't Hurt Yourself". "Black Star" comes off as melancholy and defiant (think "Favourite Sinner"), ditching the overblown quiet/loud histrionics of Radiohead's version. Best of all is The Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly", which is somehow more playfully silly than the original. If you didn't think the band could pull off cheeky and cute, take a listen. Why they're so good at this stuff is anyone's guess. My guess is that Drugstore are already so adept at acoustic dirges, so it's easy for them to cover songs with their own signature stamp in an acoustic format. The same logic could apply to Johnny Cash's recent American Recordings III (or any of the scores of cover versions he's done).

MUTEK Day Five. Besides my "dessert" theory as previously explained, there's another important reason for looking forward to the final happy hour at SAT. It's Toronto in the hizzouse and I'm stoked to see my boys represent. As I arrive, Jay Hunsberger has just begun his DJ set and I'm thrilled beyond belief to state that techno, hard, minimal techno, not tech-house or IDM or some clicky gliche - TECHNO has FINALLY made its debut at MUTEK 2002 (Deadbeat-Monolake feels like SUCH a long time ago). I check out Hunsberger's skills and chill out to his gloriously rough records. Then it's time for transplanted Torontonian Mike Shannon's first ever live gig. Despite not playing live before today, Shannon is hardly an unknown, particularly in his present home of Montreal, and a good portion of the crowd this afternoon seems to be here just to see him. If he feels the pressure, he sure doesn't show it, bringing home the bacon with aplomb courtesy of a solid hour of sweeping, panoramic TECHNO while everyone in the building dances their asses off. Finally, Pan/Tone gets the funk out with his gritty, urban take on minimal TECHNO, although I certainly could have done without his afro-endowed friend who tagged along to do a couple of freestyles with the music and sit on stage, smoke, and try to look cool. This afternoon may have been the best two and a half hour stretch of the festival, and maybe my opinion is skewed because I'm so happy to hear some TECHNO, but it sure as hell feels right. T.O. rules.

Somewhere deep inside me, I've been dreading MUTEK's final night. The programme promises a Latin-tinged evening. Tribal and Latin flavoured house is probably dance music's ugliest scourge, the rhythmic overload is an unnecessary frill, in my opinion. Plus, it reminds me of dirty crusties and shallow ravers and all the other bad stuff that MUTEK manages to expertly avoid. Furthermore, if tonight is meant to be MUTEK's dessert night, it implies that we'll hear music that is fluffier and more lightweight than the previous two nights, and I've already given my opinion about those, so you can imagine my concern.

Alain Mongeau starts by spinning downtempo click dub. So far, so good. Then, Murcof brings to the table one of the most original styles of the festival. Backed by nature visuals in blurry, soft pastel colours, the music is a mix of glacially slow house beats, lush droning backgrounds a la Gas, and the soulful ambient spirit of Em:t label (RIP) ambient. Nobody knows whether to sit down, stand up, or dance, so all three end up getting done. I'm not as emotionally stirred as Murcof may want me to be, but I certainly respect his unique direction.

And I respect Juan Self for a different reason - TECHNO! Latin-tinged my ass, the advertising was false because he plays nothing short of in-your-face, pounding TECHNO. That assessment changes a bit toward the end as the tunes pick up more of a house sensibility, but any negative feelings about that are negated by his live electric piano solo, a sparkling bit of musicianship that I can't ever recall seeing during a one man show. Plus, the obvious fun that he's having on stage is infectious.

In the five minutes following the conclusion of Juan Self's show, the number of people in SAT appears to have doubled. The place is now as jammed as it was for the Sunday performances last year, and the impatient wait begins as equipment is assembled for the remainder of the evening's performances. With Uwe Schmidt, aka about a billion aliases with a billion varying styles, you can never quite be sure what you're going to get. But I definitely didn't think we'd get his interface on the video screen and find something straight out of the land of the long-lost Commodore Pet. And then he launches into highly minimal, electro-laden TECHNO. And I wonder why software needs to be so complicated. The latest issue of Grooves magazine has twenty-five pages of software reviews, and most have them feature interfaces that look like airplane consoles. I've seen simple and complicated software this year at MUTEK but Schmidt's takes the cake hands down in the rustic conservatism category. But it's absurdly simple - he loads up a bunch of audio files, synchs using MIDI loops, adjusts the levels of a sixteen-track equalizer that strangely reminds me of playing Space Invaders on my Vic 20, etc. He likes to throw free-form synth solos near the end of his greatly extended tracks, he likes to wear a straight-from-the-70's pink suit with a wide collar, and he's managing to confuse a hell of a lot of people with his performance. Yes, songs over 130 bpm do exist!!! And sometimes they even hit 160 bpm such as his final, DbB-inflected track. But the humming bass and minimal stylings have sold me no matter what the tempo. Uwe Schmidt is groovier than the surface of the moon.

Unbelievably, this evening is just hitting its stride. Dandy Jack's name may suggest that he's fruitier than an apple orchard, and the programme may suggest more Latin influences, but Dandy Jack says "to hell with that, I know what the people want and it's TECHNO, quaking beats, honest-to-goodness TECHNO" and proceeds to do just that, bringing Copacapannark levels of madness to SAT. And I realize a flaw in my earlier theories - I may have found the litmus test for tech-house, but it's a lot harder to distinguish between hard house and TECHNO. That's certainly the case with Dandy Jack's stuff. Frankly, I don't care about it too much at the moment because I'm too busy dancing my ass off. Dandy Jack's dancing his ass off as well, somehow finding the time to play music as well. And yet, the evening is still just hitting its stride.

Dandy Jack's performance segues directly into the "jam session" with Schmidt and Villalobos. The sight of the three of them on stage, playing and dancing in front of Schmidt's green and black and straight outta Commodore Pet video screen reminds me of how much I regret not having a camera with me. Last year, the screens were adorned mainly with web-cam shots of the performers, instead of the stunning visual images that are in abundance this year. Even Metropolis, whose Eurodisco image clashes with the MUTEK aesthetic, (which, like it or not, is still strongly correlated to the notion of one person, a darkened room, a laptop, and a bedroom floor) still produced some startling would-be shots of bespectacled wizards like Farben bathed in purple light and dry ice smoke. And the jam goes on, with Dandy Jack throwing spine rocking beat over spine rocking beat, Villalobos making his electronic toys squeal and purr, and Schmidt on solo synth. The beat counter on Schmidt's screen repeats 1..2..3..4.. and counts the same two bar loop, all the time, over and over, even after Schmidt bows out and sits to enjoy the rest.

Ric Y Martin rock on and on, and though many people have left due to the late hour, those who remain show absolutely no sign of tiring. And neither do the two Chileans, who shape and mold their simple beat structures into hills and valleys of TECHNO like an Underwood remix gone haywire and left to its own devices. The remaining people, let me call them the "MUTEK faithful", are thus named for creating this beautiful situation in which I find myself. They've stuck around to give the festival the brig, bright, happy ending it deserves, and whether they'd still be doing so if it was some flimsy house DJ up there is not my concern at this moment. The point is, they're here participating in an endurance contest masquerading as a nightcap, and it's not for the weak of heart. They keep up the raucous atmosphere until the energy has mostly drained away come four AM. Nonetheless, Dandy Jack and Ricardo Villalobos continue with conviction. I'm in complete awe of these guys right now, still cranking out killer material while the sun begins to rise outside. Dandy Jack has been on stage for four hours with hardly any rest. I've got to pack it in, I have a train to catch in the morning. I lose. You guys win. TECHNO wins.

MUTEK Day Four. Midway through Losoul's set at Metropolis, I think I've figured it all out. I have a couple of minor revelations while I dance with little enthusiasm. I've edited Alain Mongeau's 2+2+1 theory, putting my own +/- 9 theory in its place. The theory is as follows: MUTEK events which begin before 9 PM are the "main course". The rest is "dessert". These nights at Metropolis have been fun, but it's doubtful that I'll remember them as anything special six months from now. Like chocolate cake after a multi-course meal, it's nice to have but I would survive without it. The main course, however, is a taste I'll remember for a long time.

Hours before, I'm seated in front of the stage at SAT for an afternoon soiree of music from the Ortholong Musik label. For this showcase, I head in with a clean slate (having not any reading up on the artists), a notebook, a comfy chair, a couple of the free mags distributed by MUTEK, and a beer. I'm going for the full monty happy hour vibe, it's going to be a long afternoon so I need to properly settled.

Stephan Matthieu takes the stage. So much for happy hour. The lingering, billowing tones are not dissimilar to those featured in his Thursday night set, but they are much, much louder. Soon, he adds a low-end drone that plugs itself straight into my ears - it literally seems to muffle all other sounds, like earplugs would. After half an hour, he releases the spell. Matthieu is something else. Even when the volume becomes menacing, his music remains oddly soothing. The world badly needs more loud ambient music.

Timeblind's set is cut short by a couple of computer crashes, but not before he puts in a solid forty-five five minutes of downtempo beats, much in the style of Asphodel records. A bit slow for my bag, but I'm game.

Then, a real treat. AGF, who is this month's XLR8R cover star, takes us on a journey through the 21st century's haunted house music. No spooky screams and cackles, just dense, shifting moodscapes with her own near-whispered, angelic vocals on top. It's haunting in the sense that it is continually unsettling. The closest comparison I can think of is Mira Calix in that they both make you feel uneasy, and are adept at incorporating noise and other unpredictable sounds into the music. I mention the magazine cover as a tip of the hat to them for the prominent feature on a musician whose talents, pleasant Bjork-ish vocal style aside, place her in a "strange and wonderful hidden gem" category that lies so far to the left of the electronic mainstream. I'm also incredulous that it costs only eight dollars to sit in SAT and hear all this stuff. It's almost criminal.

As if she hadn't worked hard enough, she's then joined by Vladislav Delay for a set of deep house with her unconventional vocals and his unconventional stutter-rhythmic beats. The smiles on their faces are obvious, and these bonus beats certainly keep the smile on mine. Finally, Philip Sherbourne gives further props to San Francisco, spinning a set of house and two-step to end an afternoon of delicious chillout and groove treats.

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Ben Neville begins playing to a near empty house. There was such a large anticipation for the Friday night show that it is natural for the Saturday night show to become easily overlooked. Neville is playing video games on the huge screen behind the stage at Metropolis. Actually, he's put his software interface on the screen, but controls it with what suspiciously looks like a joystick. A quick check of the MUTEK program reveals that Neville is doing an interdisciplinary Masters in music and engineering, working in music software design. I'm fully behind anyone who wishes to narrow the ordinarily cavernous music/physical science divide, even if he is an engineer. Anyhow, Neville stares intently at the huge screen, as relaxed as can be. You'd think he's wasting a Sunday afternoon in his living room, instead of performing at one of the most prestigious electronic music festivals in the world. Meanwhile, I work at trying to understand his interface. He improvises wildly, constantly looping new sounds into the mix. I have to laugh at some of the file names - "porn kick" for a particularly bodacious beat, and "chick groove" for his most accessible bit of deep house as the set nears a close. Sure enough, girls (and boys) go wild for it, proving that Neville is a subversive genius.

Even more astounding is the set by Farben, which pulls off the exceedingly difficult double play of staying true to the "I bet you thought it was dead" click-dub sound of a couple years hence, and yet thoroughly winning over John Q. Standardclubgoer in 2002. The smooth and mellow basslines effortlessly hypnotize the crowd (which has been rapidly swelling in size), while the vinyl crackles and pops add further depth and texture to his already full sound. After making loads of new friends, he cools them off with a fifteen minute beatless quake-dub session. This set-long progression from hard to mellow is a beautiful art to behold.

Losoul are another matter entirely, as I spend a great deal of his set flip-flopping opinions and engaging myself in musico-psychological discourse. First, I discover the difference between good tech-house and bad tech-house. If it's good, when you speed it up, voila, it's TECHNO (i.e. Repair, Salz). If it's bad, when you speed it up, you've got house music played at +8 (most of the rest). As I am congratulating myself on how smart I am, Losoul starts playing a stripped-down minimal house track in which he gorgeously wigs out and stretches the track over many a tantalizing minute. Ah, pleasure. But I still like my theory.

Nonetheless, Farben's amazing performance aside, there's nothing tonight that blows my mind, as was the case last night, which leads me to my second theory: the MUTEK evening events have been somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, the pre-9 PM events have been consistently astounding. Events that started after 9 PM have been fun, yes, but there's little so absolutely essential that I wouldn't have dared miss it. . And isn't that the definition of dessert? It's tasty, but it's not sustenance.

I take time to rest at the beginning of Ricardo Villalobos' set and it's fortunate because he plays hard, jacking, hard, and did I mention *hard* house littered with interludes of dark sci-fi experimentation. The intensity of it all would have floored me, and from the looks of it, many in the audience are having that exact problem. Instead, I wait for the linoleum-smooth minimal house grooves of Luomo, aka Vladislav Delay, who is making his second appearance today. Delay's story is intriguing. Revered for his work in '99-'00, one of the top draws for the clicks-n-cuts-heavy edition of MUTEK 2000, but now somewhat damaged goods due to his name's close association with the CnC genre, whose name in turn now causes everyone to run and hide their eyes. Through it all, however, he was producing amazing house music that garnered comparatively little attention. Personally, I found his clic…ah, your know…work too disjointed, his use of irregular rhythms failed to excite me. And furthermore, I couldn't imagine why he'd want to bother with that esoteric stuff when he was capable of making such incredible house music, particularly when his angelic good looks would make him an instant poster boy within the genre to boot. So, Luomo gives the evening a comfortable dance-friendly conclusion.

MUTEK Day Three. The last discussion panel of the week attempts to address nothing less than the question of what electronic music is and where it is headed. This is such a ridiculously complex and involved piece of subject matter, and with the brainpower in attendance today, the discussion could have easily gone on for the entire week. That is no exaggeration. The entire discussion demonstrated that the question of "what is electronic music?" is nearly an unsolvable problem, at least in the sense that across-the-spectrum agreement appears to be an impossibility. But the input of suggestions from individuals is certainly welcome and is actively encouraged.

As you'd expect, software is a recurring subject. Recombinant Media Labs' Naut Humon wittily questions whether a gig these days is "music or a software demonstration". Tim Hecker, aka Jetone, states that electronic music used to be an elitist domain. It used to be that only hands-on electronic gurus with money to burn could make this music. Now, anyone with a computer and about a grand for the software can get involved. Throughout the afternoon, it is extraordinarily tricky to get the sense of whether anyone here believes this is a positive or negative thing.

Yet it's clearly not that accessible, since the most common criticism of electronic music is that it's, um, not human, it's mechanized, there's no soul. A lengthy discussion about expressionism vs predeterminism takes place. It's essentially an extension of Naut's previous comment, i.e. who is making the damned music? Is software just doing it's own thing, or is there any evidence that the artist has spent a great deal of time learning about the software and exploited it in a wholly original way?

Matt Herbert, aka Radioboy, feels that electronic music must become a "sharing experience" in order to gain greater acceptance. Performances must have an intimacy similar to people singing along while somebody plays an acoustic guitar. In this way, everyone feels as though they're part of the music. In my thoughts, I recall Janek Schaeffer's performance from last night as a possible candidate for a "sharing experience".

Philip Sherbourne (doing another fine job as chair of this emotionally charged session) makes comparisons with rock music, specifically punk. When punk happened, everyone and their uncle started a band, and most of them were crap. The cream rose to the top, their music evolved, and everyone else quickly ran their course. If exactly the same thing is happening with electronic music right now, then should we be worried about it? It's an excellent point that I wish had been given more weight. Contemporary performers can learn a lot from past trends, but there are also some unfair dichotomies between rock and electronic music. For instance, I've never understood how Oasis can climb onstage, stand around doing absolutely nothing, and it's called a "transcendent rock performance". But if someone with a laptop is onstage doing equal amounts of nothing, then it's boring. Sherbourne is on to something: some of the "criteria" (What is a "live" performance? Who can make music and what "should" their skills be?) must be revised, but others need not be.

This session runs more than half an hour overtime, which is expected when the people present are discussing their livelihoods, and feel the need to defend their reputations even when they're not at stake.

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Closely tied into this is the question of who attends MUTEK, for the wider one casts the net over what is posited as "electronic" and therefore "appropriate" for MUTEK (whatever that means), the greater the variety of people that will attend, which in turn is a prime indicator of the mood or vibe of MUTEK events, which is key in defining what MUTEK "is". One can interpret this as literally as one likes, since if it is indeed impossible or unwarranted to define electronic music, the same should apply to MUTEK itself. Last week, I considered the issue of the MUTEK attendees at some length, so I won't attempt to address the whys once more. I will attempt to interpret the whats, though. Bear with me …

Xenofonex and Capsule blend their performances together, which is sensible since it involves the same people. The first part is warm, luscious ambient and then the schizophrenic reaction takes place as we switch to a mixture of beats, electronic effects and (live!) heavily treated guitar. A bit too prog and middling (guitar solos? Why?) but huge, cherry-topped kudos to anyone incorporating guitar effects into dance music.

Camp offers a fun pack of treats, from Chain Reaction-esque minimalism to ambient to pounding beats. As he rocks the place, yet people stand around, I notice that things have changed. The crowd has changed. I peer out from my spot behind the stage and look closely - lots upon lots of people wearing black clothing. I look around me - same thing. Lord, the VROMB crowd has eaten the MUTEK crowd.

Worlds are colliding both musically and socially. Not only does VROMB's harsh and noisy style clash with much of the material at MUTEK, there is very little overlap between the fan bases. To the MUTEK crowd, VROMB is "emerging", but he is already a big name in industrial circles. And he lets loose with a startling forty minute set of rhythmic noise, steamrolling bass vibrations, and controlled chaos. The industrial fans eat it up, I could tell because some of them were tapping their feet. He leaves to deservedly thunderous applause, since he just blew away 90% of what MUTEK has to offer.

Now it's time to get serious. The afternoons and evenings of the snooty, polite applause for obscure, willfully uncommercial artists that real clubgoers don't give a fuck about are over and done with. All week, there's been a heavyweight fight kind of buildup to this night at Metropolis. The star power involved is formidable. It's the bittersweet homecoming for Montreal's biggest minimal tech-house star, Akufen, and a celebration of his newly released album "My Way" on the prominent Force Inc. label. And most importantly, MUTEK attempts to fill a huge venue, the sleek Metropolis, and prove that she can hang with the big boys and draw sizeable crowds and money.

Steve Beaupre fires up the sound system with quality bass-heavy beats, leading into the set by one of Toronto's finest, Repair. They begin on a slightly rough footing, playing unspectacular house music with the ethereal-voiced Dawn Lewis. The Thibedeaus don't get settled in until Dawn leaves the stage, then they hit fourth gear running with the sublime, deep and minimal tech-house which is their forte. Adopting these grooves to include choruses and tinkly keyboard melodies is fine (hey, they can do what they want), but it's a shame to be spending some of their time with it when they can make world-class material in a different genre. Repair end up getting what they deserve - a room full of people dancing passionately to their music.

Now sufficiently warmed up, Copacabannark look to be out to destroy the mood despite the execution of yet another Wonderful Idea I Wish I'd Thought of Myself. In Copacabannark's world, the insanely hard, jacking house beat is tweaked every twenty seconds and rhythm is frequently and rudely interrupted by piercing high-frequency squalls and bombastic blankets of grey noise. Against all odds, the crowd totally eats it up, popping like five-day old pimples for each of these bizarre breaks, thus providing MUTEK 2002 with its very own Philippe Cam moment. It helps that Cabanne plays the part of Ralf from the Muppet Show, furiously headbanging away as he causes eardrums to break for the umpteenth time with noise squall #374A.

I close my eyes and open them repeatedly, but each time I see the same thing. I see performers on a stage, set back from the crowd and surrounded by mysterious dry ice smoke in front of an adoring audience that cheers them like rock stars. In short, it feels like an ordinary club gig. During the year and a half of MUTEKs I've attended, the artists performed on a centrally located stage and freely wandered and danced among everyone else. That's how conferences and conventions function. The speakers/artists are really no different than those who hear them. The opportunities to mingle allow people to freely share ideas, stories, experiences, and technologies. What we have here is a gaggle of club kids who came to dance and then go home.

But they also came to gaze at musical stars, which is why the front of the room becomes jam packed for Radioboy. Matt Herbert's done a zillion different genres during his lengthy career and most of them contain more creative worth than what is featured during this Radioboy performance. But who cares? The music is chaos. It's the soundtrack for him to get on stage and destroy the merchandise from companies and institutions he despises. He doesn't put his soul into writing melodies, he puts it into a path of destruction and gleefully samples the results. This is an unabashedly brilliant bit of politicizing. He is willing to partially sabotage his own music, his livelihood, to leave extra energy for the spectacle of annihilating these cancer-ridden wares. He is even willing to economically support companies like Starbucks and Gap in order to do these performances, all in the name of a greater good. He strikes ridiculous yet proudly triumphant poses such as a militaristic stance while staring intensely at the audience and raising a Big Mac over his head. The point is emphatically made, but damned if I know exactly what it is. It was unspeakably cool though, and I cheer wildly just like everybody else. Regardless if we don't feel as strong as him about the corporate evil, he's up there wreaking havoc in a matter that we'd all jump at the chance to do, for it looks like so much bloody fun. And if, in the course of observing this fun, one is made aware that Nike and Disney are corporate behemoths with questionable politics and business practices, then Herbert's accomplished everything he could have realistically hoped for.

The place doesn't exactly go wild for Akufen, except at the very front nearest the stage. I notice that there is a disproportionate number of musical artist, journalists and generalized Wednesday/Thursday MUTEK milieu. The rest of the floor dances politely, but without serious conviction. Akufen is preaching to the converted. As he gets deeper into his set, this vibe spreads until everyone is well and truly into until burning out near the end. Is this because 90% of those at Metropolis tonight haven't been taken in by the buzz from a series of acclaimed vinyl releases? It is a formidable task to hype a new CD cold, without that year of anticipation from the vinyl.

Due to hype burnout and exhaustion due to the late hour, most don't stay to hear Hakan Lidbo. A massive second wind develops, the dancefloor gets madder than at any previous point in the evening, and the clubgoers, those who supposedly only came for the dancing, feel Lidbo's beats in their bones. The building shakes with some of the most powerful bass I've ever heard, and I can't help but dance until it's all over.

MUTEK Day Two. The panel discussions are held in a lecture hall at the Goethe Institute. They're chaired by journalist Philip Sherbourne, who proves his mettle as chair over the next two days by being extremely eloquent and inquisitive, and always keeping the discussion moving fluidly.

The purpose of these events, as I see it (besides making MUTEK's activities more interdisciplinary) is to assemble a great number of differing opinions in one room so that all in attendance are exposed to as many ideas as possible. It becomes readily apparent that there are few things that the panel or the audience members can agree on. That's not to say that the discourse is combative, actually it's the complete opposite, as the speakers from the panel and the audience speak in a refined and academic manner. But I'd expect nothing less. Firstly, many of the attendants are artists, journalists, or label reps, so they naturally spend a non-trivial amount of time thinking about these issues during their daily lives. But more crucially, "electronic" music fits a substantial number of styles and definitions under its umbrella, which in turn draws a gigantic hodgepodge of people and opinions to MUTEK events. So never mind looking for agreement on a definition of what electronic music is or what it should be (stay tuned for tomorrow's panel). People haven't just wandered in for this afternoon's event, they've brought their axe to grind.

I'm no different. Yesterday, I wrote about how easy it is to find information and articles about MUTEK in the Montreal print media. The writing "style" of these articles was indistinguishable from the articles covering any other type of music. That doesn't surprise me in the least because they were "general" entertainment publications. This year, there's a small mural at SAT beside the merchandise booth made up of print articles about MUTEK and its performers. They're all from the "general" media. Rupert Bottenberg, the music editor for the weekly Montreal Mirror, is himself a big fan of electronic music, but admits that when writing about it in his paper, it's necessary to cater to the "lowest common denominator", i.e. readers who likely know almost nothing about the scene. At least, that's how I interpret the phrase "lowest common denominator".

If you open a magazine such as Grooves or XLR8R, there's more that separates it from the writing in the Montreal Mirror than just name dropping. Reviews are written with long, complicated sentences where adjectives are more than comfortable to roost at their will. There is a lot of effort in precisely describing what the music sounds like, just as in the main articles, artists are precise, sometimes absurdly so, about what their music sounds like and what their composing philosophies are. It is a far denser form of journalism, and it's a style that I am completely clumsy in trying to emulate, so I don't bother trying anymore. But do magazines like Grooves dictate the "style" of electronic music journalism? Does electronic music need its own journalism style? I enjoy electronic-centric magazines, but personally, I find articles in the general publications to be livelier. And it's not merely due to the simpler language, it's because there's a stronger emphasis on storytelling and personalities rather than the hows and whats of the music making process.

It's a journalist's job to dig beneath the surface and learn something new about a subject. The panel agrees that readers don't want to hear only about the music, they want to know what happens before the music is made. They want to know, points out journalist Heath Hignight, why if you gather a bunch of electronic musicians in a room (like this very spot) and ask about their pets, you'll find that there are "many cats but not as many dogs".

There is much discussion about how artists behave during interviews. The journalists agree that the people making the best music may be a terrible interview, and vice versa. Undoubtedly, these impressions can affect the way an artist is marketed. However, the culture tends to breed reserved geniuses who make music in their bedrooms, instead of those who dream of being flashy rock stars. Often, touring is a much more effective promotion method. "Touring is everything", states Force Inc.'s Jon Berry. Touring gets local press, so even if the CD is over a year old, it becomes relevant again.

CBC's Patti Schmidt feels that the "vigilantly curious" rave kids will withdraw from clubs and buy electronic music. That's as fine an opinion on the subject as I've ever heard.

I grind my axe on the subject of vinyl. Does the panel feel that the accessibility of the vinyl format is a major issue? If an artist releases most, or all of his or her music on vinyl, how do you market it to people who don't own record players? Jon says that the do send white labels to journalists, but the real problem is the turnaround of the magazines. Journalists can write about vinyl releases, but by the time the review gets printed, the record is no longer in the stores. He's certainly correct, but I don't feel that the panel (or anyone else I talked to on the subject, for that matter) feels that vinyl is a major issue. Just wait for the tour or the CD and let the publicity from them take over.

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I'm somewhat dismayed to find that SAT's free Emergence series has used a different layout this year, putting the artists on the stage rather than in a cramped corner at the front. I liked last yea's setup because having the artist physically marginalized created a novel "happy hour" feel, with the beer and the socializing taking center stage with musical accompaniment just happening to be provided by cutting edge artists. It soon becomes apparent that at least one reason for the metamorphosis is the need to use the video equipment. This afternoon becomes a meshing of the visual with the aural, on par with anything from the previous night at Ex-Centris.

Ten seconds into the Monolake-Deadbeat webjam and my eyes are transfixed on the video screen, my ears already taking delight in the riches pounding forth from the nearby speakers. Their music-making interface is displayed for all to see, with the various components (bass, clicks, beats, metallic sounds, etc.) laid out into easy-to-follow horizontal eight bar sections. To add a note or sound to the music, all one does is point and click at the desired spot in one of the stanzas. Scott's additions are in blue, Rob's are in red. All is composed on the fly. In real time. And following it is as easy as watching the bouncing ball - white dots sweep through the stanzas indicating the position in the music.

It appears so simple and so much fun. And by its nature, unpredictable since one's partner in composition is thousands of miles away. Thus, Deadbeat finds out what Monolake is doing at exactly the same time as everyone else in SAT. And therefore, it is challenging as well. A veritable subplot to the performance consisted of following Deadbeat's mouse around the screen as he contemplated his next move.

Oh yeah, all this sounded exactly like Deadbeat jamming with Monolake. What did you expect?

They stop after thirty minutes and I'm exhausted. My eyes are tired from keeping up with the chess game on the big screens. The next two artists also project their wares on the video screens, but knowing next to nothing about gear, I find it more difficult to follow. Alexandre Burton has an resembles an interface electronics setup, that is, a series of boxes and meters linked together by straight coloured lines. His rumbling, out-worldly ambient music begins with one such circuit and begins to grow into a bustling colony of circuits via the copy and paste. Not only is he composing music, he's composing art. Eventually, the screen and speakers are abuzz with activity, until his computer crashes and truncates the performance.

Some people can watch this stuff and talk gear, but I expect that most are ignorant like me. But watching the music get made removes the mystery, and dare I say it, fear of the unknown that can be experienced when confronted with an otherwise well-adjusted young male making a large room shake and quiver via a mere click of a mouse. This type of full disclosure can only breed respect for the tasks the artists perform, and I'd even go so far to say that it adds the face to the prototypical "faceless" electronic artist. However, the Deadbeat/Monolake show has something else going for it that the others do not - a palpable DIY aesthetic. Yes, it had a conventional 4/4 beat structure, which is intuitively easier to follow than anything beatless or abstract, but I couldn't stop thinking "gee I'd like to try that, and I think I already understand how it all works". That sort of thinking is very punk. It inspires people to create their own music or at least glean enjoyment from it, both of which they previously had been too reluctant or intimidated to do. Wanna market electronic music to a general audience? Let them watch these performances. Remove some of the mystery. Open up.

I'm hopelessly lost trying to comprehend Zach Settel's x-y graphs and clueless as to when he cues the hip-hop beats, but duul_drv soon calm me down with their mellow ambience and comforting visuals (coloured dots, pale sunset hues, etc.). At this point, the "show" starts competing with the "background music to the after-work" vibe and the latter wins out as the performance goes on. But I suspect that dull_drv expect it that way. Their music is so calming and their mannerisms so subdued. Eventually, I give in.

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The evening brings me back to Ex-Centris, the building with the hardwood floor so immaculate you can eat off it. Although nobody does, sitting, lounging, and prone position are again in abundance.

A detailed description can't capture the mood here tonight, or at least I am not the person to provide the appropriate words. Suffice to say that the performances were deeply rooted in avant-garde and musique concrete, found sounds and echoes are thick in the air, and each performance lasts several tens of minutes yet seems to pass in five. That is, except for local talent Ghislain Poirier, who may have wandered into the wrong venue. Yes, his unconventional bears and thick layers of echo are enjoyable, but he has little in common with the other three artists.

Helen of Troy does something I've always longed to see: repetitive sampling. He plays the violin, samples a few notes, plays some more, samples that, builds a massive chorus of violins and continues sampling and sampling his samples and sampling that … until the timbre decays into an eerie wail, recalling the hard-to-find layers deep beneath the heavy guitar gauze on MBV records …

Stephan Mathieu, flanked by a glacially chameleonic video screen, soothes me to the core with drones resembling a cross between chimes and choruses, and electroacoustic hum which is so calming, I stretch myself out (never feeling tired for a moment) and reveled in putting my ear to the floor and listening to it purr.

Janek Schaeffer has set up his gear on an ankle high platform and the crowd gathers around him like folkies with guitars around a campfire. I mark out every time he touches his two-arm turntable, marveling at the rustic homebuilt instrument and try to pick out the vinyl sounds within the mix. It's difficult at times, but it's remarkable how much the mood of the music changes with a simple twist of the pitch knob - from dreary to spellbindingly intense with just a slight turn. He commands just as much attention after his performance as during, for people gather around, eager to study his gear and ask questions. Thus, he holds court, patiently answering all questions asked of him. He tells me that he cuts his vinyl in the old-school fashion by feeding back sounds through a grammophone and using the stylus as a cutting tool. He demonstrates how the arm slips from groove to groove, which is essentially a random occurance but can be influenced by changing speed or putting objects on the record. I watch as he places a double A battery on the record, lets it go, and observe how the arm hits the battery, causing the needle to jump to a different groove, each time a different groove for each rotation, turn after turn, again and again. It's hypnotizing, much like watching a fire.

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Some of the star power has been subtracted from the nights' events at SAT, as "Gescom DJ's" were a late scratch. Skam, the label, may not be as mythic as Gescom, the artists, aka Autechre (+various others?) not-so-secret side project. With the DJ's absence, the question of who exactly would have shown up remains a mystery. Yeah, I could probably find out if I wanted to, but I'd prefer not to. I want to preserve the myth and not risk disconsolation in the answer.

Thus, this night has no real theme or direction, since there's no Skam doubleheader, so it's now a random collection of artists. Plus, none of them are featured on the MUTEK compilation. The combination of these likely relegates the night to great anonymity, for without the "theme" and the omission from the prime historical record (the CD compo), this night will be remembered as inessential.

It starts with yet another 80's revue, with Solvent vs Lowfish bringing back memories of primordial electro and EBM. It continues with the mythical Bola, whose appearance does not disappoint. When one goes years between releases and live gigs, you'd expect nothing less than all the stops pulled out. And he complies by mainly avoiding the blippy curiosities that have surfaced on Skam lately, and covering his songs in the lush ambience that he's best known for. This is accompanied by a gorgeous set of visuals, treading the metallic roboticism meets organic naturalism of Warp's "Motion" video from so many years ago, a concept which holds up brilliantly today. The organic side, which I've found to be lacking in recent Skam releases, holds up its end during the newer, funkier numbers.

Without Gescom, the vibe is completely lost following Bola's performance and many don't bother to stick around for Ensemble. His tendency to blow apart a perfectly good beat of serene moment with enough noise to make Merzbow proud keeps people flowing toward the doors. I am of the opposite opinion. The noise is a welcome part of his set, and a hearty middle finger to those who can't be troubled to hear it.