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Re: [microsound] mutek just as you're missing it, part 1/4



summary re-cap of last night @ SAT ... stolen from the notes
of a drunk and raving journalist ..

-hellothisisalex: perhaps another honest performance of Warp-ish
IDM .. interesting .. open .. all gear, no laptops .. they were
young .. but I still begged the question that perhaps there were
others more deserving of a Mutek slot

-Nova Muta ... I wrote down
notes like "speed organ metal solos" and
"andy kaufman meets tomas brinkman with a
12" polish sausage stuck in his stage
Yamaha synth" ... "deep duchadelic" ...
I mean what do you say to a performer who
lip syncs a story for _25_ minutes about
how the birds of socialism told his uncle
to play an organ in an eastern european
factory and then he goes a little crazy and
dies and bequests his musical project to
his nephew -- nova muta?  jesus ..

then he plays out of tune and a bit off to
his beer hall techno rhythms and his paper
with all the programming info gets all mixed
up and he swears in poor english  and gives
away records for answering pop quizes about
his uncle ...

or felix kubin who can play three synths at once --
a pro pianist -- and composes techno waltzes while
wearing high heels and a tear-away white sparkle
suit which reveals a shiny silver and red
space suit with a king's crown on the front
because he thinks he is the reincarnation
of kind ludwig 2nd ?!? and his mad music -- what
is with these germans, these eastern europeans
anyway?!-- mad insanity that at points resembled
the spark of minimal techno save for the S+M
organ and weird choruses (sung live) such as
"hit me! provider! I've lost my mouse -- oh no!"

and felix kubin CAN sing ... it's inspiring and
I left at 4:30am feeling like eastern europe is
the place to be because that's where all the acid
is -- just one look at kubin's video will confirm
such suspicions -- I cannot even begin to explain
what was essentially ultra fucked colourful 1969
surrealism (no computer graphics here, all filmed
scenes of felix with silver hair in space suit
getting probed by weird doctors and twin girls in
highheels and weird green dresses in a set with
atmos and "1969" drawn in psychedelic colours
everywhere .. cultural funding ?!

tobias

> out of sheer desire for public involvement, i have decided to grant all the
> non-montrealers with the real deal as to what is going on in the worldwide
> capital of sin(e waves), glitch & cute girls.  for 5 days the city is going
> to groove to forbidding tones & shudder in complex intellectual poses.  my
> own self-assessed goal thus is to report directly, on a daily basis, in
> order to keep is as real as real is, & such forth.  so i'll (also) keep it
> short or everybody's going to get bored quickly.  now, if the festival
> lasts 5 days, why make it a 4-part thing?  well, the reason is that i will
> be in québec on the last day.  which is the techno night if i understand
> well, & isn't that convenient.
> 
> i arrived late at the *personal & non-transferable* mutek cocktail, for
> important people only.  i used this time to practice my social skills &
> "talk business" like the real boys.  you know you've got a lot to emulate,
> kid, if you wanna go somewhere.  okay, what i really gathered from this
> cocktail were 2 free beers (despite what they say about free beer!) & my
> passport for the rest of the event, so there.  akufen's set was
> ridiculously groovy & not very serious.  which was quite appropriate given
> the casual atmosphere.
> 
> but who am i, teasing the friendly crowd of the insiders, you know that the
> real deal is the music & mutek has some little jewels to offer on this
> edition.  we've got some visit from "the rest of canada" this year.  one of
> these is vitaminsforyou, which is one guy, his laptop & his mixer.  he
> opened the festival with a honest set.  he had a good thing going with his
> mixture of IDM & microsound, & i might have not been the best public for
> it.  i thought there could have been something more, but what?  the sound
> itself however is quite intense, some bass pulses really got inside
> me.  amazing wooden floor, i must say.
> 
> i really much preffered snd, & anyway i was looking forward to hear
> them.  i don't like every single piece that they did but i like their
> methods.  tonight they were doing it real-time, creating the song as it
> went, & the results were ambivalent: either it was stellar, or it was
> nice-sounding dross.  they did things they don't do on CD (that i heard),
> like incorporating long backgrounds of sounds, or building songs mostly out
> of loud bass drums (to an amazing result, i must say.)  at first it didn't
> seem to be going anywhere but as soon as it picked up i really enjoyed it &
> it was quite the caliber i was expecting from snd.
> 
> the next 2 installments had video in them.  the first, by a montréal duo
> named dioxyde, was by far the highlight.  i never heard about these people,
> but their video was so good i barely paid any attention to the music; it
> seemed more as though the image was controlling the sound than the other
> way around (which is what was actually happening.)  put simply, it was
> improvisation & it gave me the same sort of intense sensorial pleasure as
> watching a good norman mclaren film does.  the sounds would have been
> ordinary out of this context; here, they complement the images very
> nicely.  it only started getting less interesting when the same shapes &
> effects begun to reappear in the last piece/movie, but that piece
> incidentally was more interesting on the sonic side, so it wasn't
> completely wasted.
> 
> lastly, after some technical problems, the mens/koolwyk duo started.  here
> the video was decidedly more simple & oldschool, looking more like ascii
> effects (think jodi.org with a 1000% zoom...)  i must say it was actually
> quite cool, but overall it was much more repetitive & accessory than
> dioxyde's, so one had to rely on the music...  & the music was this sort of
> murky 4/4 thing which i didn't really get into.  anyway, my last beer was
> finished, so i decided it was time to go check what the next show at the
> SAT was like.  upon leaving the ex-centris complex i found that it was
> raining like crazy so i decided it was really time to go to the comfort of
> my flat.  because of the unfortunate delays at ex-centris it was already
> too late for hellothisisalex anyway.
> 
> tomorrow: i'll be missing the free 5 PM show.  please don't take it
> personally, i have a vernissage to attend.  i'll try to make it in time for
> duul_drv, who plays last, & who doesn't come to montréal too often.  the
> 8:30 PM show (helen of troy, ghislain poirier, stephan mathieu, janek
> schaefer) is the highlight for me, though i suspect it will be
> "atmospheric" it should not be "soporific".  this is followed by a 11 PM
> show with solvent vs lowfish, bola & ensemble (in lieu of "gescom
> djs").  bring your berlitz autechre pronunciation guides!!@#
> 
> have a nice day
> ~ david
> 
> 
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tobias c. van Veen -----------
http://www.shrumtribe.com
http://www.targetcircuitry.com
------------- tobias@xxxxxxxxx
---McGill Communications------



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