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I've already fallen behind the ball on this month-long celebration that has aurally-inclined Montrealers doing cartwheels for an entire moon-cycle. June comes and stalks us once again, and thanks to the fine folks who run the Suoni per il Popolo festival, it is a true test of endurance to keep a person's set of ears up to date on all of the wonderful sounds that hit the stages of la Sala Rossa and Casa del Popolo over the festival's run of 30 days. On Sunday, the first day to roll around, I scrambled up to Sala Rossa and sat in the warmth spread by the deep-red walls. Shalabi Effect were setting up, and the quartet's piles of aural toys cluttered the stage. Sam Shalabi, himself, sat tucked in a corner, up-stage-left, entirely obscured by the upright bass of Alexandre St. Onge; from here, the Montreal band's namesake maintained a quiet control and mystery. Their songs, winding and elegant, wove pulsing basslines and homemade and traditional Indian percussion with fuzz-soaked slabs of endless guitar lines, electronic voice manipulations, oud drones, and jelly-roll slide-guitar into dreamscapes. Shortly the room was hypnotized, half a dozen folks lying on their backs to try to hold-dear the meditative electricity that Shalabi Effect washed over them. The group landed several sharp psychedelic stabs to remind those who weren't bent over in bliss that their lush sounds were a layered and living scape. Excepter shortly climbed to the stage, slowly building a glowing electronic hum: the chanting of an invisible mechanical beast. Usually incarnated by six operators, this mechanical beast clamboured to its feet, which helped to shake the remainder of dream-sleep from the audience's ears; this night, only four were required to bring the beast to life. Of Excepter's sound operators, one lovely lady in robes slunk to the stage wearing layers of masks wrapped around her head, which she shed as she ploughed into command of a digital drum-panel. This became the beast's footsteps; it was steered by a laptop from the rear and drove in time, rather than space. Behind glasses whose frames were disco beats, one of Excepter's operators built a heartbeat by pounding together rods of dark-matter that the beast perhaps stole from another star. The beast shifted and swayed, tugged by a shimmering synthesizer rope; its movements stumbled and struggled in the darkness of a foreign solar system. Truly the beast of Excepter's sound exists in outer-space, sometimes, its skin decorated with glistening kisses from solar flares and cloaked in the rumbling clutter of space dust. The audience reached and stretched their arms, hoping to hold Excepter's mechanical sound beast, but as their fingers groped closer and closer, some grabbing on to the beast's fingers, Excepter's journey slowed to a roll before planting its feet sturdily. Heads spinning, it took the audience some time to comprehend the quest they had just attempted to follow. Expect to hear much more, here, about Suoni per il Popolo, for this festival still offers more than fifty concerts over the course of the next several weeks. Right this moment, I'm training my ears, in hopes that they will be able to handle the excitement that this festival offers. If you happen to be in the Montreal area, or are in any way capable of making it this way, key your way to http://www.casadelpopolo.com/suoni/about.htm to find a full festival schedule, images of some of the delightful silkscreened posters for some of the shows, and many sorts of wonderful and helpful informations.
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Isn't it fun being on an island? It is more than a little peculiar that novelty holds, over a visit to Parc Jean Drapeau, for the visit to an island since the island park that hosts Osheaga Music and Arts Festival is no more an island than is the city itself. Montreal is a city surrounded by water, and buoyed by dreams, and these dreams are carried across the bridge to the Parc, in hopes of spreading some of Montreal's particular brand of magic onto this fledgling festival. Osheaga just survived its second year in existence, and for that it deserves some credit. Though still an infant, this is still a major music festival which is certain to grow manyfold in coming years. But what, organizers clearly have wracked brains over, will best help Osheaga grow into a festival known and admired the world over, as is the city's Jazz festival. Depending on where one peered first, one of two changes were likely to leave the first impressions: ticket prices swelled, and the name-recognition for headliners grew. Certainly the Smashing Pumpkins were due to draw more fans than last year's laureats, Sonic Youth -- but raising ticket prices by over a third is no way to invite a larger crowd to the island. But all this can easily melt away once one has stumbled through the gates and into the swirling mass of music-crazed Montrealers and visitors alike. I was disappointed to realize, upon arriving, that Donzelle had already played, knowing from her performance with local rapscallions Les Temps Liquides that she takes no toil to stir vast amounts of party into any audience. Instead, I was greeted by the howling psychonautic hurrahs reverberating from the River stage, where Blonde Redhead pounded holographic prisms into the ears of an eager sea of sunshine-soaking spectators. Their synthetic geometrics easily expand to the dimensions of a ginormous stage. Mere metres away, Patrick Watson kicked in to some soaring swirls of windchimes hanging by threads of delicate pluckering from the swirling clouds. Nearby, a maze was built of treasures from recent poster-art by some of the city's finest postercrafters; as soon as I untangled my eyes, and uncovered the end of the maze, Sixtoo's beats came crooning on my eardrum's doorsteps, and wriggled crunchy waves along my jawline. Adam Kesher swung round oodles of glowing turtleneck dancefloor ribbons, preceeded by a pounding from Panthers' drawn claws and sandpapered riffs. I found myself bouncing back and forth between the smaller stages -- the tree stage, partially curated by VICE, sat alongside an enormous corn-roast, and also played host to Fucked Up, who I'd been anticipating. Buzzsaws shredding bone, Fucked Up's guitars ploughed through the swirling, writhing crowd, etching room for the vocalist spin like daggers through the spines of those on the dancefloor. Still battered and bruised, the crowd braced for CPC Gangbangs, a local act who drag coffins from the garage, weld car doors into tinfoil helmets, and knock out teeth, row by row. For this special set, CPC were joined by Andre, who also weilds an excalibur for Aids Wolf; the added teeth helped to shred through my musculature, and nearly wore my feet down to nubs. The island chilled down very quickly, forcing sweaters and goosebumps to clothe the stumbling piles of people, and I peered through the trees and excessive promotional booths to gaze upon a strewn-and-hidden series of mutant beasts which haunted the foliage around every which walkway. Shortly, Ohbijou drew themselves to the tree stage, and piled pancakes upon my forehead, standing on stilts overhead and sprinkling brown sugar, always just beyond the reach of my tongue. Their licks were delicate, yet still moaned with movement. Unfortunately overlapped, Explosions in the Sky stormed the MEG stage nearby, wandering to well-light heights, aching and stretching, building on sharp sculpted edges. They would rattle forth a nominal momentum, build a hatful of tension, before squandering it in a dead stop, continuing to tease the audience without ever producing a climax. Much more satisfying were the costumed cohorts, Hank Pine & Lily Fawn, accompanied by another anthropomorpercussionist, a bear attacking the snares. Hank carried his copper muscles high, his dark hat nearly blocking out the moon, while his goggles and tinny microphone-mask rumbled through the most appetizing of storytelling flavours, counted along upon his oilcan guitar, and intertwined with the antlered coos of Lily who appeared like a dentist, plucking wails from the teeth of her worbling saw. Hank & Lily were, sadly, scheduled at the same time as the Smashing Pumpkins. Conflicts are inevitable at any festival, of course, yet I regret not a moment spent squandering my only opportunity to see lights reflecting from Billy Corgan's head. Some acts twinkle and glow, steam, and grab the audience, dust off worries, and inject pure delight. Hank & Lily did, certainly, stick me with quite the dose of glee -- but still I regret. It's quite the great shame that their audience was so slim, having had to compete with the heros of the hopes and dreams of the youths of many Osheaga attendees. I only hope the festival's organizers toil to uncover more vibrant, strobing acts of such magnitudinal colour, all in the sake of the festival's future.
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Well, well, well I think I'll open up
the oven door by clearing the facts -- I haven't been to New York
City since I was about eight, when I was gripping my parents' hands
and romping through the park. Fair? Alright. So sardined in a red
minivan, six other fellows of the Montreal contingent rolled on up to
the Blue Hook, the host of the Now-Held-In-May annual noise blowout,
No Fun Fest. Long anticipated by my traveling team for its sheer
tenacity in shredding eardrums, I'd more than logged enough minutes
polishing my earplugs in anticipation of this festival, burrowed and
tucked in cozy-clean in dear ol' Brooklyn.
This year's festival, for the first
time, is running concurrently with Victoriaville's International
Musique Actuelle Festival, and is sharing a few names off of that
bill, of whom I was, at the time of typing this down, very-heavily
anticipating -- Keiji Haino and Merzbow, for instance -- as well as
featuring an extended duration, clocking in at four days, this May,
compared to just three days when it was held last March. The subtle
shift in calendrical coordinates from the previous three No Funs has
steamed a small grin onto the faces of many attendees who, at
previous editions of No Fun, would have frozen while sucking back
smokes next to the backyard barbecue; now, though, the air is just
ripe enough to satisfactorily sit on a corner of concrete -- or,
should one's bones be enough fortunate, a chair -- and enjoy the
grilled grub while muffled drones, clicks and hisses stream out of
the Hook and into the air around.
I'd planned to introduce the festival
beforehand, bust sadly, within the complications of travel
arrangements, I couldn't squeeze a single syllable of thoughts about
No Fun, or my anticipations before the van vroomed off. Still, No Fun
is leaving upon me some quite-hefty impressions, starting naturally
with its home-base environment, the Hook. Just as we skittered out of
the van and down the block to the venue, we could see a line formed,
splitting out the door in two directions, and a pair of enthusiastic
folks hollered about the lineup and fitted every arm with its own
little wristband, something I'm not used to seeing. Perhaps I've just
been attuned to Quebec's lax policies on drinking, but the little
blue wristband provided me with a novelty which is still pouring
through, up until the moment I clipped them from my wrist, this
morning.
There is something particular about No
Fun, given its combination of a massive inundation of heavy, strange
sounds superimposed upon one another, along with its nearly-top
secret location, and chewed with the overwhelming fangs of New York
City's blistering host of a mouth. I've come to realize that No Fun
can, in certain circumstances, be synonymous with fun – but not in
the lighthearted, amused sense to which many of us usually subscribe.
Instead, No Fun is a variety of fun for those wishing for an
experience both overwhelming and exciting, intoxicating for its lofty
aims, and thrilling for its form, barbaric as the festival is
grandiose. There are no sponsors for No Fun fest, nor are there ads
lining subway walls imploring folks to 'plunge' into any different
waters; No Fun spreads by word of mouth, and embodies its own
particular synonym for fun through its dynamic and engaging
character, and through providing all its attendees, congregated from
the world's furthest corners, with as complete a festival experience
as any fest magnified to many times No Fun's size.
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Day 3 – Friday -- Popping through the week
Yikes! Well,
all, sorry for the astronomical delays. Suffice to say hands have
held mine own away, letting the keyboard stand cold.
More choices left
me ambling, dizzy, about the Plateau and down below. I already had to
deal with depleting batteries (something from which I'm still
recovering), and had to choose between not only more shows than I
could count, but also simply more splendid performances than I could
even imagine choosing between. Especially at the hot hour of
midnight; when the clock's hands met at the top, Glass Candy,
Islands, Panopticon Eyelids, Dischord of a Forgotten Sketch, Tim
Hecker, the Royal Mountain Band, the Russian Futurists, and Henri
Faberge & the Adorables all hit the stage. Those are just a few
of the ones I knew I'd like to hit up. Still, throughout the evening
and beforehand, just thinking of what to see made my brain fizzle,
sizzle, and squeak to a halt.
I couldn't get my
legs in gear in time to catch Brian Seeger, but made it to le Divan
Orange in time to see the Expectorated Sequence grinding their heels
into the stage's spine and spinning spiked batons at pyramids of
milkbottles. They grated their vocal chords with lumps of coal and
beat on oildrums with sped up and motored lathes. Soon, though, I
heard my bike calling, snuck through the thick molases crowd and
popped out the door, pumping through the dozen or so blocks to Cafe
Chaos.
Here, my legs
wouldn't fail; I would dream of letting them. I've seen Panopticon
Eyelids a slew of times, and I'll see them again any chance I can
get, and even with the plethora of happenings, figured that my time
would be doubtless best spent under the swirling sludge psychotropic
skyscapes.
The Saffron Sect,
middle on the bill, were winding down their windchime wailings when I
stepped inside. They spun cotton-candy into kites and ran through
ditches full of tall grass, swinging their limbs to try to swim
through the leafy forest, spinning in circles more than running any
great distance.
After basking in
the deep room, Panopticon Eyelids stormed the stage and whipped slugs
from velcro pockets, stretching their tails and sprinkling tiny bands
of worbling blues. They spun shag rugs into wings adorned with full
skeletal frameworks and flapped, explosive devices clinging to
backpacks, along snowy mountainpasses. Their percussive engineer shot
strobing UFOs into the audience from a twirling wand, in actuality,
and I caught it, scuffling my toes on the floor and swaying in and
out of the sharp beams from the air-conditioning.
Though PE spun
through many miniature nations, their songs could keep on ambling
into my ears, and I'd stay, ears cocked to the ceiling tiles, for
endless extensions. Still, they eventually wound down, and I
reassembled with a small group for a steaming poutine injection,
feeling the necessity of a hot, greasy lump of food, and not really
surprised that L'il Pip's secret performance had wound itself down a
might earlier.
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Welcome to Day 2 of PopMontreal, flashes neonsignposts across my inner eyelids. Then into the havoc and excitement I spilt, across the streets, my eyes assaulted by the
abundance of Pop Montreal posters, every lamppost, postbox and wall
plastered face to knees with bleeding colours, jagged lines, scrawled
addresses, and superhero-meets-indie-rocker deathmatches (the latter
of which created with a mildly dark humour by self-proclaimed famous
artist, Jack Dylan).
Part of the
uniqueness of this festival is its distinct lack of centrality; it
really is pandemonium, hipsters and music lovers scrambling and
ambling about the streets, bikes as mighty steeds, all attempting to
cover as much concert content as their little legs can manage to
deliver to their hungry hungry ears. I, of course, couldn't think to
exclude myself from this, trusting my own oiled wheels to roule sur
les rues, between and around scurrying traffic, hoping to cover the
many musimagical pockets tucked in on the Main and beyond, some
straggling down as far as the Village, down treacherous hills and
through torrents of nighttime human traffic. In hopes of help, I
enlisted a friend for an account of Joanna Newsom's performance at
the Ukranian Federation, while I scampered off to pick up Telefauna's
synthlines.
The Ukranian
Federation, a grand old theatre, which once upon a time was a
synagogue, carries about it a quiet reverence and a glowing warmth
which captivates the ethereal energies of the mind; this building was
an excellent choice for the coquettish Joanna Newsom. The harper
(not-ist) crocheted her way along the spinning vertical axis of her
stringed suitor, her face sometimes giving off secret cakely images,
her breath popping the kernels of several sailor songs. She plucked
with a supple and expert touch, stopping her fingertips to grasp at
tea and shied about her doll-like, tumbling hair. When came time for
her encore, her voice wavered, faltered in an adorable fashion, and
when her lyrics vanished from her tongue, one enthused fan was
helpful enough to shout the words on out for the rest of the theatre;
she handed the audience its own dizzying dream, pluck by pluck, until
her blistered fingers could weather no more.
Down at la
Balattou, a nightclub erected amidst the Main, plucked straight from
a time-machine parked in the later mid eighties, I ambled inside,
amazed by the mountains of mirrors, as Telefauna tickled their many
keys, their battered synthesizers churning out spin cycles which
rinse and tumble dry music sheets plucked from the pockets of more
genres than Webster's could define. They wailed, cooed, screeched and
swaggered, painted murals on the crackled skins of old-growth oaks
and whinnied across checkered dinerfloors, shuffling enough to scuff
bushy moustaches atop envisioned tile- cheekbones.
As time sputtered
back to what some hastily call the 'naughts, I rolled down a few
blocks to a grizzly hole, Barfly, to catch the Ecstatic Peace
showcase, owing to my unflinching fondness for their troopers the
Magik Markers, Mouthus, and Sunburned Hand of the Man among others.
So, seeing a lineup that included Black Helicopters, Montreal
familiars Tam, and Awesome Colour, as well as Toronto's the Cliks, I
figured this hole'd hold the times to be had. Sadly, by my arrival,
the Cliks were nearing doneness, leaving only Black Helicopter to
spin sounds. The Cliks jaunted through a deck of straight-up rock
ditties with an all-lady twist; they pumped and swayed a little, but
couldn't grind enough cheddar to puff my cheeks with any jagged
tingles.
Black Helicopter
welcomed themselves by commenting on their succeptibility to stronger
Montreal skunk than their usual Boston herb, all of the aging gents
looking spaced, sounding spaced, but cranking jams particularly
situated space-timelike at least a couple years before people figured
out that 2000 was actually pretty much the same as 1999. If only
Black Helicopter had magic-wanded a little more thrash, or opened a
portal-or-two more with feedback doorknobs.
After easing out of
echos of punchy powerchords, a pocket of us swam out into the night
to scuffle up some dancefloors, convinced our legs still had a little
Pop left in them.
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I'll start off by
apologizing for the recent silence; life's been hectic, as I'm sure
all are familiar with. But recently, it's become complicated more by
choices than anything, something one must expect – especially when
walking in to a five day festival with untold hundreds of bands
performing at a number of venues nearly incalculable by modern
mathematics.
Last night,
Wednesday, was the first official night of Pop Montreal, yet another
of this city's bevy of international music festivals. This festival
is, for those unacquainted, generally geared towards the booming
indie sensibilities of this city (whatever 'indie' means anymore),
with many veins spiraling tangentially towards quirky pop, thunderous
and gritty rock, grimy soapsludge, psychedelic folk, drone, and
really many more categories than I could care to try and name. All
this, and I haven't even begun to think about any of the various art
and film segments of the festival. I'd be more surprised if I don't
collapse into a dizzied stupor than if I didn't, before the madness
ends on Sunday night.
Mind you, given
choices I'd, myself, made, I had to skip out on a performance from
folk legend Ramblin' Jack Elliot, as well as Vashti Bunyan, and a
vernissage of Jack Dylan's apocalyptic art soundtracked by Dishwasher
and Miracle Fortress (two sideprojects from the gents of Think About
Life). Still, fortunate I was to at least catch Fort Miracle (the
undisguised alter-ego of Miracle Fortress).
See, the choice I'd
made was to join a band (Gold Sword), myself. We're a quartet who
attempt to harness the kindred intuitions of free jazz and noise,
among othernessyness and such. So we wound up sandwiched between Fort
Miracle and infamous sludge mechanics, Cousins of Reggae. This would
be the Havoc in Heaven showcase, held by the people, for the people,
at Casa del Popolo. Here, I'd like to point out that the Casa is
perhaps my favourite smaller-sized venue in the city.
Once all was set to
go, Fort Miracle chartered the evening's aeronautics, his fingers
tapdancing along the fretboard in acrobatic formations as his toes
plucked and poked away at a lengthy string of pedals. Graham, the
Fort's real name, plunged through islands of pings, drones, and grimy
cloudscapes, sewn together with peatmoss from under the Jolly Green
Giant's fingernails. Right as the amp cut, DJ KVLT 667, the neighbour
of the beast, laced the walls with wizardly chuckles from
neuveau-wave warriors descended from countries penned only in
invisible ink on most maps and globes.
Soonly, the four
golden warriors, myself included, hopped upon the stage, and we
churned and rattled with our wires and boxes, pattered on xylophones
and recreated vengence scenes, spilt poetry on hardwood shambles, and
swung T-Rex off his axis in time in hopes of chartering time travel
on tape loops. As we wound to a close, my fingertips sighed relief
at our electric reception by the tiny venue's packed crowd, and
crawled to the bar to exchange tickets for beer, and then tapes for
those of other local sound manipulators.
Within moments, and
with hats of extreme professionalism, Cousins of Reggae scooped up
the stage, twisted their drumheads into headlocks, and ground their
guitar-strings into fine faeriedust with razor edges. With the
Cousins, one will find one of the very few occasions where the words
“killer jams” can be used as a legitimately accurate description.
They swept hypnotic sludge from underneath the floorboards and swung
it, lasso around neck, through the Casa's scrap-barred windows.
Forgive me for not
letting slip too many high-coin names, however, I have this penchant
for ducking bigger bills, in favour of squeakier, cracklier, noisier
holes where electricity may always be guaranteed to careen off the
walls – just as at Casa last night. By the end of the evening, I
couldn't tell which direction my eyebrows ought point, and lapped up
the dizzying romanticism of clicking my heels the whole short walk
home, hoisting my amp as I strolled.
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Osheaga Music and Arts Festival day1, part2
On my way back to
the MEG stage to catch We Are Wolves (Nous Sommes Loups, en
francais), I picked up a few minutes of the Shys at le scene des
Arbres (or the Tree Stage), who oozed a quickity-split throbbing and
kicked up a galactic whistle-match with comic books.
The treed enclave
of the MEG stage was packed with hipsters and scenesters who melted
under the pools of chocolate elctro swagger wrenched out of the
Wolves' greased palms through monkey wrenches – all the while
building the world's most diagonal jungle gym. The hypothetical
dancefloor pulsed and shattered under the sharp rolls of the
vocalist's tongue as he sent strobing chunks out through the air.
Keyboards shuffled along Gumbi's wintergreen swimmingpool while
robots munched on electromagnetic pretzels and afropicking bandits
robbed banks of all the telepathic abilities stored in their
safety-deposit boxes. As they slowed the pace, they trolled through
slow jams for cybernetic shapeshifters of glowing lupine bloodlines
and caked far more electrosludge than three people ought to dish out.
I decided to forgo
one of the festival's larger names, K-OS, for a peek at Wintersleep
and maximum opportunity to absorb James Chance and the Contortions,
as close as possible, a decision I felt rewarded itself manyfold.
Wintersleep, at les Arbres, slipped footsteps in mukluks through
muddy snow like short a film snuck onto the tail end of your favorite
porn rental, as they whinnied through a collection of chunky,
tumbling riffs.
When I ran toward
the MEG stage, I began to get giddy, anticipation tickling my elbows,
shoulders, and several other-such bits, reared on by the animalistic
cheers James Chance and the Contortions drew from the pile of faces.
His prickly keys wailed about crabs atop the sauntering basslines and
shuffling drums amidst the churning, twinkling guitar hums; saxophone
whispers gave way to shrieks and fried chicken croonings. Chance
wailed hypothermic howls as ghosts climbed out of his guitarists'
amps to swagger and ride pogosticks along the greasefunk showtune
basslines. The ghosts crack eggshells, die the yolks paisley and
scamper to build cottages under the trampling of James Chance's
supernatural argonaut brass-keyed sax-fingers. Mythic characters are
born merely to lend their tongues to these scumjazz showtunes. As his
hair sticks up in what appears to be devil horns, Chance coughs up
the nomenclature of the bogeyman's pajamas under the hard eye of
horn-rim-monocaled specters who build jigsaw puzzles on telescopic
mountaintops with the sine waves of this performance's aural
astro-shock.
During my miniature
trek back to the river stage, to camp out for Sonic Youth, I tuned in
to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on the Mountain stage. CYHSY were warm
and tinkly, and buzzed with the ebullience of melty crayons, jiggled
and wriggled, but couldn't for all their might keep me from zoning
into an about-to-see-Sonic Youth trance. They did their best, played
with a furious grace, but faced too great an anticipation.
The crowd was in
jitters, enormous and ecstatic, and all winding their mental gears
around preparatory practices for the expected peak of the festival.
Thurston, Kim, Steve and Lee kicked their spurs onto the stage to an
enormous ovation and cut immediately into “Teenage Riot,”
scribbling notes of agresso-nostalgia across the sea of foreheads.
Guitarlines stabbed and prodded at and tumbled over one another, as
galaxies tumbled in spastic limbo lines, kicking their heels and
clicking their tongues with a violent enthusiasm. Space stations
called in for backup as the solarscape exploded into warlords
weilding warring axes – Lee and Thurston actually engaged in a
swordfight with their guitars amidst an astonishing layering of
feedback. Radio corpses sprung to life muttering delerious house
beats channeled from distant civilizations – Thurston picked up
radio signals with his amp and tuned in to a Montreal radio station,
raping its house-tune offerings with rattlesnake feedback mortars.
From the other amps, a vortex was birthed, which drew forth and
enveloped the River stage, the audience, and spread quickly over all
of Parc Jean Drapeau. Really, it could have been Dimension X, for all
anyone seemed to care – from the ecstatic hollering, one might've
easily deduced an earth-shattering mania
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OSHEAGA MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL
day1 – in the beginning
Perhaps I wasn't thinking all too much
when I decided that there mustn't be a metro stop at Parc Jean
Drapeau to carry me easily to the site of the Osheaga Music and Arts
Festival. Regardless, I pedalled my bike along the sixties-era
space-age scape, letting my mind meld the day's events into a
kalaedoscopic melee of images worthy of sci-fi lore constructed in
the prose of the Jacques Cartier bridge's era. I spun into a dizzying
frenzy, excitement pitter-pattering up my spine for the inaugural
weekend of Osheaga, a weekend-long festival geared to send Montreal
-- a city drowning in astonishing and magnificent music – onto the
summer festival map. Well, summer music festival map. Well... okay,
Montreal is a city of festivals, and summer is no exception for its
music, but Osheaga aimed to strike its niche as the only major rock
festival in Montreal's summer. PopMontreal is, after all, technically
amidst autumn.
The festival's homeground is a fabulous
park bejeweled with precious greenspace, countless sporting spots and
permanent art exhibits, and even its own amusement park, La Ronde. As
I searched for the entrance gate, I heard Think About Life sing their
ode to the film Snakes On A Plane from behind a fence, their
spastic thrashing inimitable, and matched only by their carefree
energy.
I sauntered into the gates and
zig-zagged across dirt paths and around treed inlets, past miniature
lakes, and found my way to the MEG stage where Grrl Rioteers, Bush
Tetras were slapping sticks of bass into funk concrete and mixing
with layers of shale guitar which poked out at obtuse angles from the
mixing barrel. Tiny gears ground the singer's rusty voice, tucked
between swirling strokes and strums as she beat away at cowbells.
These anti-soccer-moms went on revenge a bowling vacation rampage,
chugging and whirring, chugging and whirring as though they just
found out who invented shoes.
As this stage wound down, I sauntered
over to the Mountain stage to lock horns with Dinosaur Jr., who
churned out baskets full of familiarlike jams rife with wailing halos
of guitar which undulated, danced tapestries on checkerboard diner
floors after ordering a 2am pumpernickel sandwich. I would have had
no idea that these chaps'd had their guitars pilfered, given the
furiosity with which they punched their strings – as though the
string coils were sex offenders. J Mascis' anthemic hair spun
down to around his hands like a cape directing traffic to the
netherworld as his hands guided traffic on high-octane jamdiggery
scarred with teethmarks and kicking up mounds of grass between his
long, raspy wails. Elastic bags of crunchtastica swung around by the
tips of the guitar/bass prongs, atop mountainous Dikembe Mutombo-like
shoulders, riding off on golf carts through cacti patches and
twirling a blond wig in his basketballed fingertips to reminisce with
his favourite childhood barber. The ol' dino bones pounded like a
tortoise thrashing for a delicious lillypad, and twisted my earlobes
into anticipation of more musical majesty.
This is a tiny note of vanity, however,
I was pulled over during high-speed enthusiasm by a photographer of
le Journal de Montreal for a
quick fashion photo-op during the Dinosaur Jr. set.
Having seen them destroy small bars, I
hopped past the lake and through the woods again to the MEG stage, to
check out the piercing shrieks of Duchess Says, a Montreal outfit
with aspirations tailored to more galactic parameters. The thick,
ferocious crowd, many familiar with Duchess' misanthropic disaster
anthems, soaked up the keyboard's
sparkly-vomit-across-brown-toeless-pumps hooting and the pounding of
drums in search of spaceships to shoot down over dilapidated European
art museums; the audience's legs waved into tidal waves of motion by
the singer's magic arm-strokes from aperch on a security guard's
shoulders. Nearby, fire hydrants exploded, firing hair-gel eruptions
into giant do-wop wigs of superhero wax mannequins, circa 1963.
Stepping through a
time and space portal, I found myself at the River stage, an enormous
space which stretched for spectators in an untold flat and sanded
length, up to a hill patterned with picnickers. Here, Malajube, also
Montrealers, wound into delicate cartoony candyscapes and strummed
stabby jousts with jellybean icicles. Their carefree pop pictured
itself as helium-filled elephants romping over stretches of traffic,
interspersed with niblets of Francophone stage banter, which carried
into their verses, laden with Quebec-folk anecdotal acrobatics. This,
contrasting their gummibear, acid-wash fist pounding
technicolour-mop-rock amidst a skyscape of fluorescent thunderclouds.
After a few more jams, polygonal wading pools spilled from the keys
as two guitars chugged along to an oaken beat, raced around by
slappity happity childish stage antics.
A sea of faces had
gathered, and adjacently, the Mountain stage sat, Metric cueing up
into a quiet tittering and then crashing and tangling themselves in
long, spindley wires of guitar tones. Metric's performance is tied
quite tightly to the stage presence of their singer and keyboardist,
Emily Haines, who twirled about in an electric-black jumpsuit and
waved the shrill youngsters in the crowd into hysteria. However, the
webs her guitarists spun rested placidly on bass mushrooms and quick
newspaper headline drumchunks as she jeered cave-anthem couplets in
freefall, warbled and climed invisible stepladders onto checkered
taxicabs rented from fading b-movie actors who carry around extremely
long plasticine-carved guitars.
Although Metric
left no permanent markings on my mindscape, Osheaga – after just
one afternoon's chunk, had solidly cemented itself a high-traffic
resting-post on the highways of my memorybank.
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Have you ever seen bite-marks etched out of reddish stone walls? I haven't, and I scoured those very same walls at L'Escogriffe on Montreal's hippity-hopping St. Denis street. Here, of course, I was carried by hopes of catching Ghost Limbs, the spectral chain-rattlers whose veins are awash with neon cherry cola and whose hypothetical eyebrows are bushy beyond belief.
When I was last entreated to their performance at le Divan Orange, their set of spectral eyebrows graced the stage with noise-rock royals, Cousins of Reggae, whose wax decorates my bedroom wall. On the Orange Couch (which must be the stage of le Divan Orange), Ghost Limbs wound up waving many wild wands of weirdness, ranging from panty masks to pot-and-pan percussion, which spun my mind in pleasing spirals.
Now, curled up in the corner, balancing on a barstool, I can't help but wonder what tricks could top Ghost Limbs' last performance -- aside from the promise I was granted of three completely new songs (plenty of convincing-currency to draw salivation from my eardrums). As I set myself a-visualizing, the band snuck up and begain, again, their chain-rattling.
Screeching synth lines lined the stone walls and carpeted the floor for all the members of the drumkit's cymbal-family to perform acrobatics. Meanwhile, the bass and guitar hooted and hollered walls of feedback. Somewhere there-nearafter, this ditty wound down and the guitar began to wail nightmare nightengale cries through bursts of drums cracking open porcelain antiques which danced across a field of churning bass drones and ghostly synth wails. Before I could stretch out and feel where my ears had carried me, the drums spun into cycles of freejazz razzamatazz, and the guitar and bass ran for cover, replaced by a tiny bookshelf of drums and a range of percussive cookware, which swelled to a melting-pot of ESP-induced flashbacks of equatorial reincarnation ceremonies, when married to the vine-swinging synth drones. Soon, however, life spilled back into the stringed-things, and the percussion dissolved to a checkerboard of bass and guitar tangosteps riding waves of roars, whirrs and screeches from the synth reminscent of Freddy (Friday the 13th films) eating Robocop's soul.
Incantations echoed into the mix from the black-tutued singer while the drums swelled to a swamp of bludgeoning earthquakes; these were countered by black-tutued synth shots firing lightning-bolt darts -- soon the swamp of percussion raged to a furiosity wihch could eaisly have shattered Zeus' bedposts. My head was being massaged into some new maniacal order, to be clarified by injections of krautrock which erupted from amps as soon as the previous jam ran its course. I felt as though I was seated in some sort of goa garage and being serenaded by werewolves with delicate tuxedo trousers and rusty cumberbunds, which is to say that these were some tight-riffing chops lined with more squaks and squeaks than most bands and their vans can come up with in an entire tour. I thought about this, about Ghost Limbs turning tricks, melding metropolises into Ghost Towns across the continent in a van that sort of just hovers above the ground by an inch and a half, as the band's churning, screeching, and rumbling climaxed and self-destructed in a bone-rattling train-wreck of a finish -- very much the sort of sight which inspires awe.
Anyone with eyes which enjoy being treated spectacular swirls and superhuman doses of tantalizing colours ought grow an imaginary summer mane and enjoy the explosion that is the recent AIDSWolf video for their anti-hit, "Spit tastes like metal" (directed by E*Rock)
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http://www.jyrk.com/animation/aidswolf_spit.html |
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So today is Saturday. I've conferred with my calendar, and we're in agreement. That means that I took a day to intake the madness that is UNGH (which is pronounced with an emphatic grunt, for all you amateur phonologists out there). Now, the thing is, Montreal has this peculiar ability to manipulate one's intentions in the form of a rediculous set of festivities standing in the way of intended adventure. I was rolling around on my bike, and wound up downtown, smack-dab on the coordinates of the recently-deceased JazzFest. Here, and this has very little to do with music, so feel free to let your eyes drizzle down a tad, I stumbled into Just for Laughs, perhaps the world's largest comedy festival. I really only bring this up, since it stupified me to see the giddy surrealism of people dressed up as clowns dressed up as billiard balls dancing in an intentionally uncoordinated movement piece -- or dinosaurs made of elaborate slivery costuming, stilts, and pulleys, nipping at the heads of dozens of stumbling, drunken folks. Of course, that's just one corner of what my attention and intention of seeing UNGH had to compete with. Still, I managed to pull myself away on the heavy inclinations that this concert would be dazzling. Have you ever felt at home, and in complete comfort in a dungeon? Well, here, the closest thing I can think of to dwelling in a dungeon is to sit around Zoobizarre, whose storied stone walls allow soundwaves to bounce around just enough to somehow conjure an intimate feeling. That is, if the bars couldn't already capture quite that sensation. Still, with the scuffed dancefloor and discoball twirling overhead, the zoo definately earns a reputation as a disco dungeon. Sadly, I missed Banditas, who I hear are from Ottawa, and who I also hear played quite an engaging set. Still, shortly after setting onto a seat, Devil Eyes mounted the stage, and churned out an erratic brand of guitar/drum power-duoism, riddled with husky blues licks. The team wore matching aviators, and contrasted a vest/tie/dress shirt with wings made of drumstick bags, which seemed to match, as much as the psychotic babble spilling through a homemade microphone (whose ingredients included only AirCanada headphones) seemed to make sense. Though, really, Devil Eyes never really asked the audience for any form of comprehension, nor did they need anything of the sort; their swagger suggested that the mirror was broken and that time was at a standstill, and as they shouted what could have been voodoo-laden incantations, or the components to a satisfying lunch, their gravelly chugging helped scuff up the dancefloor just a little more. After a few more minutes, a blacklight squirted out of the corner of the stage, before the quintet UNGH skittered across and picked up their instruments. In the strange glow, their costumes, which were a mishmash of tapestried capes, caveman scarves, glittering bone-structures, and toxic-glowing drawings which could have been either plutonium or highlighter. Within moments, however, they established with the audience that, with a little forgiveness for the strange, mind-expansion would be certain. Of course, with any similar tweaking with the fabric of the mind, there's always a cloud of delerium and this is without exception -- for the life of me, I can't remember where the concert began, or where it led, though it did conjure an immense array of images and a continual emotional spin. Guitars chugged, winced and whinnied, howled and twanged; the bass swirled and scooted about, and the keyboard clanged and bounced, its teeth being pounded as though it were a xylophone. Rattling through this sculpture of sound, the drums pounded and tip-toed, jogged, and scrambled, and here and there words flowed, never beggin any sort of narrative, or even a structural formula -- merely syllables for topping, just as ice cream always seems better with a rainbow of sprinkles atop. The only words that seemed to make a dent in the spiralling sound were the calls out to the audience, which always included the band's name; obediently, at every call, an enormous UUUUNNNGGGGHHHHHHHHH screamed around the room and charged the stage. There were jagged edges which pierced and then began to pound and grind, but always, the layers bled back into a cohesive rumbling, which wound its way into an entchanting and entrancing lullaby, which sent me into a heavy meditation, practically crouching into the lotus. Someone told me that she couldn't tell how much time had passed, and I felt the same, not that it really mattered. Without a genuine break, the sounds streamed as though the whole performance was one song, and it felt pretty reasonable that way; UNGH were tight enough, to unscrew the bolts from a flaming tractor, and dense enough to sink clouds. Tonight I'm heading back to the Zoo to get my head mashed in by AidsWolf, and then my mind turned to mush by Et Sans. I expect that nobody will survive the show unchanged. If I can pick the pieces out of my brain, perhaps I'll paste them together up here. Who knows, maybe they'll even drag out bits from Suoni.
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my calendar and i just had a tiny skirmish, it wanting to stay pegged in june. i just returned home to see the old month peeking at me, and really, if i were a calendar, i'd've wanted to stick fast in june too. no, i'm not temporally challenged, it's just that for the whole month, i got to mosey about, night after night, almost the whole month long, in a festival whose highlights swamped montreal's glowing hairline. not that this city is hairy or anything. it's important that i said i'm not temporally challenged, since this festival technically ended on the twenty-fifth of june, and for those of you without claculators handy, that was twelve days ago. far too long ago for me to hope to carefully cover the myriad events; just enough that, if i think real hard, maybe at least someone will notice that this ought to be an internationally recognized festival, with tents filling the nearby park for the full twenty-five days. now, if you asked me what my favourite venues in montreal were, it'd be no small coincidence that casa del popolo and la sala rossa would pop their heads up right around the top of the list. those behind the scenes put together something special. the first night i got my act together, i spilled into casa, a very modestly-sized club which doubles as an exciting cafe, and would be home to more than a few people if they agreed to the requests to install cots in the back. now, i walked in late, but i did catch all of the fourth band, the unireverse, and their brand of psychedelic jam drone lit off firecrackers all around my eyebrows, and got my feet pumping. i've been talking about their cover of the black sabbath classic, "the wizard" for weeks, and it is quite possibly the most memorable sabbath cover i've ever heard. i was left with little time to rest, the next night stumbling into sala, a building built to host montreal's lefty jews a couple of decades into the last century. now the stunning red ballroom is run by a wonderful spanish armada whose hands are filled with gleaming stages. overtop an excellent tapas restaurant, perhaps a hundred and fifty pairs of shoes littered the floor, and all those eyes set upon the stage to see toronto's creeping nobodies, philadelphia's man man, and the mysterious wharton tiers ensemble (the latter's namesake having achieved fame from, among other things, noodling with knobs in sonic youth's producer's booth). sadly, i missed the nobodies, but when man man took the stage, i felt all the hype surrounding their performance dissolve into some sort of spectacular serum which intoxicated the entire audience. the entire ballroom was ecstatic. the tennis-whited troupe littered the stage with countless bizarrities, and the whole lot shimmied between slapping bins and pails to dancing on xylophones, stroking bass strings into tangoes, drumline bandits, guitar hooks which caught my eyebrows, and synth lines which pumped my blood faster than my heart was capable (my heart still felt healthy, though; don't worry). the only downside to man man's sound was that there wasn't enough of it to satisfy anyone in the sala. i'm never a fan of comparing bands to other bands, as it reduces both groups to labels, but at times it screamed out to me that this could have been the residents, being visited by mike patton, as their pulsing, throbbing, and clicking rolled on. actually, despite top billing, it was just plain unfair for the wharton tiers ensemble to have to follow such an act. really, if i haven't emphasized it enough, go buy a ticket to see man man immediately. if necessary, spend the fare for a bus ticket to the nearest town on their schedule. of course, this isn't to decry the wharton tiers ensemble; they blasted some thunderous splatterjams which crunched like exploding boxes of cereal wrapped up with thin ribbons of sax which curled on the ends. pounding, pounding, a solid knuckle-cracking for my eardrums. just, really, my left ear and my right ear had both been tickled tickled to the point where, even tiers' own determination wasn't quite enough to hold down the upstaging by his juniors. the whole glamorous endeavour was set to jingle by two of montreal's finest show-makers, blue skies turn black and mandatory moustache; two duos who each deserve some prize equal in prestige to the nobel prize for their efforts. maybe a gold calf, even; after my short walk home, i would have definately carved one for them to share if i'd have had a few bricks of gold bullion.
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