mutek 2024

Ten years after my run at Mutek in 2014, some highlights, in no real order:

Colin Stetson on solo saxophone is pretty incredible — circular breathing for minutes at a time, singing via a throat mike, percussion via taps on the saxophone and the keys, etc. I don’t know if I 100% loved the music, but there was nothing with as much chops in the entire festival.

One day, I will work (work it!) as hard as Marie Davidson, but not today. A great live set to a really wonderful local crowd.

There was, secret, a fashion festival going on at the same time, on the other side of Place Des Arts, which I didn’t even notice until Thursday night. It had two stages, one with a catwalk, and this one — with frankly terrible sound, maybe a dozen people maximum — but with every one of them losing their heads to Jersey club, dancehall, trap, a zouk record, etc. I deadpanned “well, that kind of put Mutek in the dumpster”, and, you know, I was not wrong. Except for …

ZORA JONES + SINJIN HAWKE, and the giant projectors of the SAT-O-SPHERE, which saved the day multiple times. It turns out that a kinect plus some spikes looks amazing on a very big dome – to say nothing of a gopro video from the head of golden eagle.

and, totally different, Cobblestone Jazz were great — pictured here in an extended closing solo from Tyger Dhula.

At A/Visions, we had a flawless victory from Martin Messier’s “water drops plus strobe lights” piece. It turns out you can strobe it just right and make it look like the drops of water are moving up. (Honors out also to Myriam Bleau’s Second Self, with very strong LED lines and masks, but I did not sneak any pix from that)

Kode9 closing down the outdoor stage on Saturday with excellent, heavy footwerk and post-bass etc etc.

I was not expecting to dig Factory Floor, but I ended up really enjoying the pulse of two drummers, even when they slid a bit due to monitoring issues.

Lamine Fofana was much more dub and crackle and space than I was expecting, but I really enjoyed it — it felt like he had a real handle on the soundsystem.

Kara-Lis Coverdale was a dash uneven, and started with maybe a bit more noodling than I had in mind — but the last two-thirds came together really well.

But, let’s close with Mateo Murphey, Montréal techno veteran, and his dub/tech/trance live show in the Sphere, with visuals that started like this:

… and rapidly turned into this:

This was not … technically hard, and the Sphere gave a huge advantage — but I think this show had the most gasps of delight of anything at Mutek, which is not so bad.