Mutek day I: gravy

A gray haired man in an LCD Soundsystem tour t-shirt cut into a crop top takes out the trash, jangles his keys, unleashes his bike, and walks it away. A cat and I share a yawn. The phone does not ring.

There is a bus parked outside Monument-National: Mutek has arrived. It’s Wednesday June 2 and we’re spending our first night of the digital creativity and electronic music fest at A/Visions, where art collides with music.

Tonight’s event is called Pandora’s Music Box, a nod to the Nicolas Bernier and Martin Messier performance piece that kicks off the show. The offering is inspired by the intonarumori, an analogue music box invented back in 1913 by a futurist named Luigi Russolo who I’m told was the world’s first “noise composer.”

They twist and bang and pull the levers on the almost-ancient electronic instruments, set clocks on top and let them tick. On screen behind them footage of the intonarumori’s interior spins into swirls of shadows. The lights go dark and the audience erupts.

New tables are rolled on stage and filled with techy gear. The stage is set for Matmos, the Baltimore-based boyfriends known outside the electronic community as “those guys who re-mixed Bjork.”

They begin the build up with sounds from an endless string of instruments: keyboards, laptops, turntables, triangles, and green dolphin squeeze-toys. The dots floating on-screen above them vibrate with the beat.

Schmidt leans in, mike in-line with skinny tie. He lets out a breathy groan and pulls out a blue string of silver bells, gives them a whirl. Then he shakes a shiny piece of metal, bouncing the spotlight onto audience faces and giving his boy a beat to back.

They tell us album collaborators So Percussion stayed in New York, all fancy and snobby, and launch into more lyric less beats Schmidt swears are about Montana. But after another track Schmidt concedes with a grin, “That one wasn’t about anything, really.”

We duck out before the last duo, Montreal’s The User, take the stage. It’s a long walk through the Plateau before we arrive at a backyard full of friendly faces. We spill our days, drink our beers; head out to dance.

The first club is empty so we migrate to another spot. We shake our hips till the early morning and cap the night with a cliché, the Montreal poutine post-party spot Banquise.

Upon waking an accomplice asks me how the night was. I tell him it was gravy.