MUTEK Montreal: Day 1

Started my Mutek experience by getting royally rained upon during the 5pm trip from my host's house to the Downtown ticket office. Seriously drenched. But it was a warm rain--the kind so foreign to my West coast experience--and though I stayed damp for most of the rest of the day, it wasn't an unpleasant experience.

The first official Mutek event "Experience 1" was, coincidentally, going down in the same room as the passport pickup desk. House/techno and $7 beers in a window-lined room on the fifth floor of the 2-22 building downtown. I stuck around for a few minutes, but nothing about it felt like "my scene," so I took off shortly after I arrived.

Just around the corner, I hopped in line for the "Dromo" immersive A/V performance at the Satosphere. Had a really interesting conversation with an old-school sound artist during the wait, mostly about the relative merits of considering aural composition as a constructive process (starting with nothing and adding pieces to reach the final work) vs. a destructive process (starting with pure white noise and removing pieces to reach the final work). Would have liked to have continued that mental exercise, but as we began filing into the semi-spherical performance space I learned my first Mutek lesson: passport holders still need to get get tickets for some performances. By the time I made it back to the box office, the event was already almost full, so I just picked up a ticket for the next day's identical performance.

I used the little bit of extra time I'd gained to wander a few blocks into Montreal's Chinatown district. A fascinating shift of culture from a kind of Westernized-French to Asian in the space of one intersection. I grabbed some coconut water from a shop and headed back up the street to grab a seat for the first A/Visions performance at the Monument-National. I got my seat in the almost empty theater about 30 minutes before the show, and with no WiFi available, was forced to actually engage with the world around me. :0 I had a really nice conversation with a ten-year Mutek veteran who happened to be sitting near me. She filled me in on the performances she was most excited about, gave me a few festival tips, and told me about how the event has (and in many cases hasn't) changed over the years. Closer to showtime she was joined by a jovial and extremely talkative friend, and I had a nice time learning more about Mutek from him and observing the often comical push and pull of their interactions with one another.

The program that evening was presented in two parts: a 45 minute experimental film, with audio and visuals generated in real-time by the artists, and a concert-length conceptual performance by Mathew Herbert (and a few associates). The film was a mild assault on the senses, with rapid fire still imagery providing a rhythmic foundation for the abstract drone/glitch soundtrack. I felt entirely engaged for the duration, and really enjoyed drifting from passive "pure aesthetic input" mode to a more analytical stance throughout.

Matthew Herbert's performance was built around the life of a (factory?) farm raised pig. Much--maybe all--of the audio source material was created from field recordings. Five performers were involved in the piece: one person on percussion (triggered electronic and a physical drum made from the cows skin), one on keyboards, one on some kind of phrase sampler, Matthew Herbert in what appeared to be a kind of Brian Eno-esque live mixing role, and one person playing the pig cage. The pig cage (my name for it) was a boxing ring-shaped space create from four drum stands with strings tied between them to form "walls". Each string was connected to a sensor, and by touching, plucking, and pulling the strings the central performer was able to trigger samples and manipulate FX parameters in a very physically expressive way. About halfway through the performance a chef emerged on stage and began preparing a pork dish in a pair of hot plates, and before long the smell had filled the theater. Overall I found it an effective performance, and I experienced an appropriate amount of dread leading up to the musical representation of the pig's slaughter.

After the show, I headed to the first Play sessions, an event featuring music with a more ambient/drone/noise aesthetic. I teamed up with a fellow Couchsurfer for the show, Diana from Mexico City, who's living in Montreal at the moment finishing her Masters degree on psychoacoustics and the cognitive perception of music. The three performances we saw varied a lot in quality, but they were all quite different from what I'd normally see at a show, and I felt grateful for the experience. Afterward, Diana and I hung out at a bar geeking out about music and gear until early in the morning, when I finally drifted home to my host's house. A full day in every sense!