MUTEK 2010, Postscript

-- I saw performances by 51 acts, totaling approx 40-42 hours of music plus another four hours spread over three panels/Q&A sessions, for about 44-46 hours of MUTEK activities. This included possibly the longest day of live music ever in my life (Day Four, fourteen hours from start to finish, about ten of those hours were spent watching live music). That's my best estimate, since I didn't keep track of the clock like I did in 2003, when I saw "just" 42 h 45 m of performances plus panels/discussions. Well, that explains why I was so tired by Day Five. Actually, it wasn't so much that I was tired, I wasn't exactly dead on my feet, but I was far less enthused about spending a fifth straight day going out to the clubs. Then again, I've never been to any sort of conference where I wasn't almost completely burned out by the fifth day.

-- The best five performances of the festival were:
1. Nurse With Wound
2. Shed
3. King Midas Sound
4. Aun
5. Moritz von Oswald Trio

In the second tier I'd put (in no particular order): Minilogue, Henrik Schwarz, Matmos, Nathan Fake, and Theo Parrish.

On paper, the lineup wasn't as strong as it has been in the past, for instance, both Gas and Moderat performed last year and I would have given my front teeth to see either of them, which I wouldn't say about anyone who performed this year. However, the acts I was most anticipating were all fantastic and more than delivered on my expectations (namely, my entire top five minus Aun, who were new to me), and there were no duds, so you can't ask for much more than that.

-- I was trying to tell my story by using the photos to guide the narrative, with the limitation of one photo per act (the exceptions were Senor Coconut and Theo Parrish). I tried to take pictures of everyone, but not every band I saw was pictured in the blog recap. If the pictures weren't good or interesting enough, I didn't include them even if I liked the performance. Although as you might expect, if I was really enjoying the performance then I generally went more out of my way to get quality photos.

-- Most disappointing section: A/Visions 4. Vladislav Delay didn't bring anything new to the table, and although his set was a nice throwback to the Clicks and Cuts era, he was always one of my least favourite Chain Reaction artists. CM von Hausswolff was excellent, Tim Hecker was subpar (this was the fifth or sixth time I've seen him, and this was easily the least enjoyable set out of the bunch), and Ben Frost was good but not as overwhelming as I had hoped. The Hecker/Frost collaboration at the end was great, but far too short. I thought that sound quality was a big issue here. It wasn't nearly loud enough, which was odd considering how much these guys talked up the need to "feel" the sound of their live performances during their Q&A.

-- Best session: Nocturne 5, and I never would have predicted it. Four superlative performances, four completely different styles of music. I was burned out and was expecting to leave a bit early, but I was energized and entranced by nospectacle and Moritz von Oswald Trio, and Brand Brauer Frick provided a further shot of adrenaline. After five days of techno and experimental wibbling, MUTEK needed Theo Parrish. I was seriously burned out, I needed to hear something different, I needed Theo Parrish too, and I had no idea how much until he actually hit the decks. And from the buzz in the room (hardly anybody left before 2:30 AM, on a Sunday night no less), I'm guessing that Montreal needed Theo Parrish too. Out of the four MUTEK's that I attended, this was the best concluding section (although 2003 comes close).

-- The festival was originally conceived in order "to explore the intersection between sound, music and new media". This more academic side of the festival is now almost completely absent. Besides the one workshop that was sponsored by Roland (I didn't go), the whole "sound design" underpinnings, the idea that you could go to MUTEK and talk to people about software design and laptop culture, has virtually disappeared. MUTEK is a big party, you don't have to be "in the know" to enjoy yourself, you don't need to ponder the potential ramifications of Force Inc. opening an office in Montreal. I would suggest that this is the single biggest reason for the festival's rapid growth over the last few years. Picnik Electronic is a symbol of this shift in thinking.

-- A short follow-up to that point: in 2003, nearly all the performances were centred around laptops. Almost every performer in 2010 incorporated a laptop into their setup, but in plenty of cases, the laptop was nowhere near the centre of the spectacle. There were a startling number of "band" acts this year (MvO Trio, Matias Aguayo Band, Nurse With Wound, Marsen Jules, Guillaume Coutu Dumont, Senor Coconut, Brand Brauer Frick) plus other acts that rely on guitars or keyboards or live sampling or some other sort of "physical" type of sound creation (Matmos, Bernier and Messier, [The User], Jon Hopkins, Aun).

-- Another possible follow-up: is it just me, or has the average age of the performers gone way up? This would be due to: a) the scene itself is older, so naturally there are more veterans of the scene, b) laptoppery is more of a young man's game, the increase in the number of "bands" leaves more space for people who would otherwise be alienated from that side of the game.

-- MUTEK's programming schedule is starting to mimic that of the Montreal Jazz Festival, namely, with regard to the number of free live shows. Like the jazzfest, you could have a perfectly good time at the festival without buying a single ticket. The free shows feature mainly Canadian artists, with a few big international names sprinkled in, while the more devoted fans of the music will buy tickets to the clubs to see the bigger, more elaborate shows. Considering the success of the free show headlined by Senor Coconut, I'd expect that they're looking to increase the number of outdoor concerts in future years.

If you include the two Piknics (which are so cheap that they're practically free), then it adds up to nearly thirty hours of free music, with about half of it taking place outdoors.

MUTEK 2010, Day Five

Sunday's Piknic Electronik was moved indoors to Metropolis because of heavy rain. Which is really too bad, because who wants to party indoors at three in the afternoon? The picture was taken in the nearly empty club just as Dave Aju was replacing Nicolas Jaar.

Dave Aju's supremely funky set was packed full of positive vibes, punctuated by his own energetic live vocals. If this had been held outside in the sun in front of a crowd of hundreds of people of all ages (like Minologue's set from the previous day), it would have been remembered as one of the highlights of the festival. But in front of fifty people indoors as the same venue that hosted an all-night party twelve hours earlier ... right guy, right style of music, great performance, wrong weather. Nobody's fault, of course, but Aju gave it his all and I salute him for that.

The crowds finally turned up for Pepe Braddock's DJ set. It must be a French thing. This was the only point in the afternoon where it felt as if there was a real party happening in Metropolis' main room.

Chris McNamara presents nospectacle -- ambient house par excellence.

The first ten minutes were a bit shaky and disjointed, but once Moritz von Oswald Trio found their groove, they were unstoppable.

Brandt Brauer Frick lit a fire under the crowd at SAT. Who are these guys and why don't more electronic music bands use "live" drummers?

I was exhausted even at the start of the day and didn't expect to last much past midnight. As it turned out, after five days of techno and experimental weirdness, I couldn't imagine a better finish to the festival than a set of funk, soul, and downtempo house from Theo Parrish.

The end of MUTEK 2010, well after 3 AM on Monday morning.

MUTEK 2010, Day Four

If anyone needed convincing that MUTEK isn't a party for laptop geeks, then this was the day to see.

My day at the festival started near 3 PM with this:

and finished nearly fourteen hours later with this:

OK, we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Starting from the beginning:

There was steady rain up until about 3 PM, and then again after 5 PM. Inbetween those hours, the utterly fantastic Minilogue played to mostly sunshine at Piknic Electronik. Coincidence? You decide.

Near the back of SAT during Vladislav Delay's set. For forty five minutes, it's the sound of the year 2000 all over again. After yesterday's discussion panel about the use of performance space, and the emphasis on listening to a performance rather than being distracted by visual displays or what have you (everyone performed in near complete darkness), I decided to stand in the centre of the room for most of A/Visions 4, to maximize my listening.

Nearly nine years ago to the day, at the start of Saturday night's activities at MUTEK, I was lounging on a mat in SAT listening to Dettinger at around 10 PM with maybe fifty other people (Dettinger was awesome, but that's not the point I'm making). Today, this is the start of MUTEK's Saturday night:

If you were going to pick one guy to headline the biggest concert in MUTEK's history, to draw in curiosity seekers and make the broadest spectrum of people happy, then there was really no other choice. Who can resist Senor Coconut and his Orchestra? Their 10th anniversary concert, no less! Boring people might complain that they played a number of Kraftwerk covers even though they promised to retire those songs here at MUTEK seven years ago. Why hate on fun?

Warming up the house with Move D at Metropolis.

Why can't all jazzy house sound more like Guillaume Coutu Dumont and the Side Effects? These guys don't just lay down a track and throw on a sax loop, they play live dammit.

The view from the balcony, where my second wind kicked in thanks to Henrik Schwarz's storming set.

As Dixon took over on the decks (that's Henrik Schwarz relaxing in the background), I knew I was done. But on the way out of the venue, I peeked into the Savoy room ...

Konque are like dubstep on helium. As I watched people get freaky to this stuff in Metropolis' hot, sweaty side room, it almost felt like the real party had been in here all along ...

MUTEK 2010, Day Three

Pimmon, CM von Hausswolff, Tim Hecker, and Ben Frost discuss "The Physicality of Sound". This was a fantastic panel discussion, one of the best I've ever seen over the years at MUTEK.

The cheekily-named The Square Root of Evil played industrial-rave over bizarre video projections featuring cats and raining sushi. How this was supposed to connect to the music, I have no idea. Fun but forgettable.

Thierry Gaultier opens the A/Visions 3 session, the longest and most soothing one yet.

Marsen Jules Trio (with VJ Nicolai Konstantinovic) brought the electroacoustic spirit of Em:t back to life. Or at least that's how it was for me.

The mood of the night change changed abruptly as I dashed out of A/Visions 3 (which ran long) and down the street to Club Soda. One minute you're watching Marsen Jules create drones and feedback by amplifying and processing the resonances of water glasses, the next minute you're brushing past the prostitutes hanging around outside the strip clubs on St. Laurent. I was in a hurry for a good reason -- to catch the final minutes of Orphyx.

Techno packed in the crowds tonight. Actress played second on the bill and the place was already jammed.

I caught the first twenty or so minutes from Cheap and Deep and dashed down the street to SAT for ...

On record, King Midas Sound are a bit sleepy. But live ... wait, I thought that Kevin Martin would actually put people to sleep? This was every bit as extreme and intense as anything else he's done in his career.

Club Soda stays jacked thanks to Jacek Sienkiewicz.

The sweatiest set of the festival thus far belongs to Shed. If you've never heard his music, it's a combination of hard techno beats (much more aggressive than most "minimal") and extremely simple, sometimes even quiet and subtle melodies. OK, that formula might not sound particularly original but the secret to Shed is ... well, there's actually no secret. He just does that style really really really well. Shame about the 3 AM curfew. This entire session really should have taken place at Metropolis, switching places with the MoM/Nathan Fake session.

MUTEK 2010, Day Two

Q&A with Matmos, interviewed by Wire's Derek Walmsley. Funny guys! (yes, it goes without saying)

A revealing and very personal Q&A with King Midas Sound.

Perhaps I'm the only one who was reminded of Coin Gutter's set from MUTEK 2003. Dark ambient music constantly bristling with almost unbearable tension -- the world premiere of Sebastian Cliche's "Restless Inertia".

Aun present their piece entitled "Black Pyramid". Another world premiere. A riveting performance that combined shoegazer noise and blistering, heavy drones. People slowly filed out during their performance. Being hungry is not an excuse for leaving early!

A/Visions 2 felt like a series of video installations set to music, not the other way around. The videos were nearly too good. Freida Abtan's exquisitely lush videos were really something else.

The Caretaker presented a slide show of his drink and debauchery exploits in Berlin while drinking a bottle of whisky and doing very little else.

Blood and gore dripping from the walls and ceilings, human beings burned alive in their beds and living rooms, yes, it's Nurse With Wound, and they were everything I could have hoped for.

Nathan Jonson AKA Hrdvision strikes one of his many poses on the night.

Jon Hopkins, photographed from the upper deck at Metropolis as I relaxed with a much needed beer. His brand of robo-funk was delivered using a quite the physically demanding rig.

Mouse on Mars got the crowd hot, but not "headlining at Metropolis" hot. IMO, they were out-dueled at their game by Jon Hopkins.

Nathan Fake, our prog/noise techno saviour.

MUTEK 2010, Day One

Passersby stop to slip on some headphones and listen to The Mole spin an impromptu set during rush hour. I found out about this event while it was happening via MUTEK's Facebook updates. Thanks MUTEK -- you've kinda preempted my photo essay idea before the festival has even officially started!

Gemmiform opens the festival.

The noises emanating from Bernier + Messier's elaborate "sound boxes" were somewhat superfluous, but it was fun to watch them tear up their "instruments". Their music rings and echoes through the elegant Monument National's main concert hall, and I think about how far MUTEK has come since the days when we had to stretch out on the floor of Ex-Centris.

Matmos' combination of humour, weirdness, and pastoral mid-70's Kraftwerkian jams will be tough to top.

[The User] twiddle the knobs from the pit. On stage there are fifteen ancient computers, their screens, and their printers. Those machines ... they're alive. Sadly, this performance wasn't as maximalist as I was hoping for, but as a visual spectacle, it was one of the most arresting I've ever seen.

Straight from the files of "It Could Only Happen in Quebec": the vampire-ish Georges Rebboh hypnotizes his goth girl partner Dominique Petrin and forces her to abuse a piano while he processes and manipulates the sounds. If you're a fan of experimental music and are looking for the next level shit for spicing up your sex life, look no further.

The performance took place in almost complete darkness. The blue blur is Petrin's dress lit up by fluorescent lights. The orange dots came from a sack of fluorescent stones, after she hurled them on her piano she proceeded to spread them around by writhing on the floor and moaning into a microphone. Genuine or not? Either way, it's no wonder why I skipped the start of the Comeme showcase.

I still can't stand most Latin-flavoured house or techno, but even I couldn't resist Matias Aguayo and his Comeme label-mates.

MUTEK 2010, Day Zero

Cold opening. I'm back at MUTEK (and in Montreal) for the first time in seven years. It's amazing to think about how long ago that was, and yet in many ways it feels like it just happened yesterday. Maybe it's because that festival was so important in defining my musical tastes for much of the past decade. Maybe it's because Montreal seemingly hasn't changed at all in seven years (it's scary!).

Each year I attended, writing up the happenings at MUTEK from 2001-2003 became more exhausting. It's something that I can't imagine doing ever again. I don't write the same way any more, I'm too fussy and perfectionist these days, I no longer have the willpower to write two thousand off-the-cuff words for each day of the festival, taking notes sometimes during the gigs, writing up my thoughts between sets, running to the computer at the end of the day to while memories are fresh. That's not happening this time, I'd procrastinate and never finish.

This time it will be different. I always regretted that I never took any pictures during any of the three MUTEK's I attended. In 2003 in particular, I struggled to describe the visual elements of each performance, my vocabulary barely managing to keep up with the rapid evolution of ideas for accompanying electronic music. At these gigs, the eyes had become equally important as the ears, both senses were absolutely necessary for experiencing what the festival had to offer.

MUTEK banner on St. Laurent, flanked by Montreal's wonderfully seedy institutions. I love this city.

So this time, I'm going to present a photo essay of MUTEK. I'll do my best to provide no more than fifty words of commentary for any one photo. I don't want the pressure of writing about the festival this year, instead, I'm going to take on the possibly equal pressure (or greater pressure, considering that I'm a complete amateur) of telling my story through photographs.

This could fail miserably. But I'm going to give it a try.

American Idol S9 - The Fix is In

In Season Four, Carrie Underwood was the clear favourite from the top 11 onward, so your mileage for that season likely depends on how whether you liked her or not. As far as the producers and judges were concerned, most of the season was a project in keeping the praise for Carrie somewhat muted while they busied themselves in concocting a halfway credible challenger for the finale.

And this season we have a redux. Lee DeWyze was handed the #1 contendership around the top six or seven, once it became clear that Siobhan Magnus was too streaky and unpredictable to be taken seriously. Lee has to be the most bland and unexciting finalist in the show's history. I can't see any sort of successful career in his future, he's not as edgy as past rocker successes like Chris Daughtry and Adam Lambert, and doesn't have nearly enough personality to engage an audience once he's not stuffed and propped up on a stage on national TV each week.

Lee reached the final in part by getting picked to perform Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" with a gospel choir and all the fixins, while Casey James was forced to sing a sleepy John Mayer song off in the corner of the stage. The favouritism shown during Top Three week may have rivaled Season Three, when the judges all but escorted Jasmine Trias from the show in order to ensure that Diana DeGarmo took on Fantasia in the finals. Jasmine sucked and had no business being in the top three, but that's not really the point. Meanwhile, Diana had no shot against Fantasia.

Even Crystal's performances have seemed a bit boring for the past few weeks, although I have a feeling she'll pull out all the stops on Tuesday and remind us why she was the clear and obvious best all-around performer this season. During the finale -- and you can bank on this -- the judges will award Round One to Crystal, Round Two to Lee (albeit narrowly), and take a non-stance on Round Three (featuring a crappy winners ballad that doesn't fit either contestant's style).

Caribou, "Swim"

I get the feeling that a lot of people are still waiting for Caribou to step out from under the shadow of his breakthrough album "Up In Flames". Why does that album stand out so much? The first Caribou album (released as Manitoba) was a pleasant little Boards of Canada clone, while "Up In Flames" (also under the name Manitoba) was a completely unpredictable about-face. Leaping from IDM to an album of 60's-drenched psychedelic pop was quite the surprise, and people remember surprises. Years later, one can naively view "Up In Flames" as a convenient precursor to the freak-folk records that people would be tripping over themselves to praise for about five minutes in the mid 00's. It's kind of like how some dance music with tenuous links to electroclash still gets fawned over, even though the it was popular for maybe four months (and sucked, for the most part). People seemed to pine for the Caribou sound of '03 when they heaped praise upon "Andorra", which was largely a retread of "Up In Flames" with a few more bleeps thrown in. And of course, every 00's poll seemed to definitely prove that every major artists' best work was released from 2000-2004. Nothing they put out from 2005-2009 could top it.

"Up In Flames" was far too homogeneous to be a great album. "The Milk of Human Kindness" was a great album -- part psych-rock, part Animal Collective sit-down jam (back when they used to do that sort of thing), part faux-Can white funk. But "Swim" is even better. It is far and away the best Caribou album. You want surprises? How about "Odessa" pulling off modern-day space disco better than Lindstrom ever managed after eight years of trying? How about "Bowls", which masquerades as an dubbed-out early Death in Vegas number until the 80's house licks unexpectedly show up? And what can you possibly say about "Kaili"? After countless listens, I still can't place what I'm hearing. I hear some "Technique"-era New Order in some of its sun-drenched, hedonistic melodies, but the last two minutes fall into a blizzard of free jazz squawks -- its another combination that shouldn't possibly work, but inexplicably does. Its fraternal twin, "Lalibela", is a throwback to Flowchart's version of lo-fi shoegazer house, with "Kaili"'s vocal melodies recycled in achingly maudlin form at the close of the track.

If juxtaposing such a curiously bizarre mishmash of styles was really so easy, then we'd all be doing it. Instead, we'll have to settle for listening to "Swim" and trying to pick up on the master's clues.

Spiritualized and Cocteau Twins, the early years

I found these four gigs on the always excellent Shoegazer Alive blog (no direct link because they've already been shut down and had to change their URL a couple of times, just go here http://shoegazeralive4.blogspot.com/). These eras are underrepresented in terms of quality bootleg recordings, so if you're a fan, stop reading this and start downloading!

Cocteau Twins - Newcastle (England) (29.04.1983)

Very early Cocteau Twins has always left me a bit cold. One of the most fascinating things about them, for me, was how they were hatched almost fully formed. There were no humble and awkward new wave or synth-rock beginnings, gradually leading up to the sound we'd come to know and obsessively love. From the very start, it was all there -- the otherworldliness, the unintelligible, gauzy vocals, the strangled squalls of guitar. However, the songs from the early days were darker, heavier, and overall less melodically distinctive from what they'd accomplish just a couple of years later. If you liked the bludgeoning, raw style that was collected on the "BBC Sessions" discs, then this is the live recording for you. I have trouble getting through "BBC Sessions" ... it's uniformly good, but it's just too much for me. In that respect, I found this brief (11 songs, 40 minutes) gig to be the perfect fit for my early Cocteaus attention span. They're totally in the zone here, completely focused, barely pausing between songs.

Cocteau Twins - Tiffany's - Newcastle Upon Tyne - Newcastle (England) (19.04.1984)

Recorded just one year later than the above, this gig couldn't be more different. These tracks are among my all-time Cocteau Twins favourites. Compared to the songs in the set from '83, all their noisy and alien qualities are still present, but they'd perfected the art of writing these sensationally huge choruses to go along with them. "Hitherto", "Kookaburra", "Sugar Hiccup", "Pearly Dewdrops Drops" -- singing along to words you couldn't even remotely understand had never felt so powerful. But the gig itself is a bit of an oddity. It might be due to the sound quality (which isn't as good as the '83 show) but Liz Fraser's voice sounds much more upfront in the front, and she's throwing out strange vocal inflections into nearly every line, oversinging almost everything to the point of almost showing off. The gig isn't what it could have been, and not what I hoped it would be.

Spiritualized - Leadmill - Sheffield (England) (03.05.1992)

I have yet to hear a really solid, high quality sound recording of a complete gig from the "Lazer Guided Melodies" era (1990-1993, and that includes "Fucked Up Inside", which sounds weak and tinny to me). If you want to hear SPZ at their best during those years, you should pick up the Radio Sessions Volume 1 unofficial disc. The version of "If I Were With Her Now" from Mark Radcliffe's show in April 1992 is worth the price of the disc all by itself (although the sound quality, sourced from the radio, is far from perfect). At the time, they opened all their shows with "If I Were With Her Now", but would stop doing so very soon after this, to the detriment of nearly every gig they've played since that time. I have no clue why that song stopped making the cut once "LGM" was released, and why they've never brought it back since.

Whoever cut off the end of "200 Bars" should be shot.

Spiritualized - Roseland Theater - New York (USA) (28.04.1995)

This would have been recorded during their opening slot on tour with Siouxsie and the Banshees. I went to the Toronto stop on that tour, which was just a few days before this. It was the first time I ever saw SPZ.

These sets were fascinating, and they deserve to be more widely heard. They didn't simply pick out the highlights of their usual set, they restructured entire songs with the aim of compactifying the SPZ experience, showing the complete range of what they could do while still keeping the set cohesive. The "All of My Tears/Take Good Care of It/Shine a Light section" almost comes off like a medley. They still find time for going long ("Electric Mainline"), older rarities ("Things'll Never Be the Same", which later became a fixture on some tours but at the time Jason simply wasn't playing S3 songs other than "Walking With Jesus"), for playing "Let It Flow" every night (overrated on record, arguably their most underappreciated song when played live).

By the time of their fall tour, they'd fallen into the "Cop Shoot Cop"/"Shine A Light/Electric Mainline"/"Electricity" rut that seemed to open all of their sets for the next seven years. Those fall '95 gigs weren't nearly as unique and adrenaline-fueled as the stuff they were playing in the spring while opening for Siouxsie.