The key turns, he always returns

Back with the boy in Toronto. Sunlight patio afternoons and dinner with old friends, a perfect Tuesday. More on Montreal and a recent foot injury once the meds kick in and fix me.

Mutek day III: Females and foreigners

The adults who used to go to raves leave feces in co-ed bathroom stalls. They have Ph.Ds, take ecstasy, listen to noise in theatres; have cruised village sex after. The adults who used to go to raves go to Mutek now.

It’s day three of Mutek and we’re drinking in a hostel. A foreigner at the kitchen table tells me he’s just spent six months on exchange in Toronto, is now traveling around. He’s planning to head down to New York and Boston, would like to go as far south as New Orleans. I advise him to go to Miami over Angeles, tell him its less trashy, but not that I’ve never been.

The Australians come in and pound on the bathroom door though the shower is audibly running. I shake my head and stare into my beer. I watch the girls get ready, wish I’d saved a clean outfit in my suitcase for a second Friday night.

When we realize we’ve missed Brixton-based dub act Actress’ set we scramble for the exit. By the time we make it to Club Soda, where the third installment of Nocturne, titled ‘Shedding the Past, Dubbing the Future,’ is, the sound system lingers with pre-recorded interludes.

We walk next door to the Society for Arts and Technology, a new cultural venue built to look like an old warehouse space. It’s down into a dingy basement for a stamp on the hand and back up a staircase towards the open space. We gather along the long pane of glass separating the south wall from the street and wait for Ikonika, one of the only prominent females currently spinning dub step.

The beats are good and we dance up near the front. Sarah Abdel-Hamid, a.k.a. Ikonika, makes her North American debut affront beating red pixels and blasts of silver flashing lights. We bob our heads and watch the DJ work.

Spin and spin round the record, so many songs to share the beat with. We lean our heads back into Club Soda, but see the night is finished. The sidewalks of Saint Laurent are filled as we make our way back to the hostel for a night-cap.

On the walk home the cops bust a pregnant prostitute, smoking in heels and a thronged onesie. I push my hands into pockets, whisper to myself: Only in Montreal. Only in Montreal.

Mutek day II: listless, mostly

The second day of Mutek brings fresh blood from the west. After a missed call and a last-minute change of plans Alex and I end up drinking tall-boys in a street-side park, trees shielding us from rain.

We finally find our accomplices and head to the show. In the lobby and the bathroom we bump into more familiar faces; many made the Mutek-trek from Toronto. We quickly find the festival is less about locals, more electronic-enthusiasts.

I later learn more than half of last year’s attendees came from outside the city, and most of those from outside the province. Many others make their way to Montreal from all around the globe. As Mutek founder Alain Mongeau later tells me, the festival has become an annual pilgrimage for music techies, obsessed with the niche.

Tonight is Radical Connectors, the second evening in Mutek’s string of Nocturne events. It starts off with Jon Hopkins, followed by Belrin-based electronic veterans Mouse On Mars. Nathan Fake follows, and Mossa closes the night.

We sit upstairs at Metropolis in pew-like rows idling above the stage. Under us the dance floor we last year saw go so wild is mostly stagnant, only shifting as patrons come and go. People shuffle between standing and dancing, listlessly watch the lights and vibrate with the beat.

The beats themselves are bass-less: thick, heavy, and German. We disappear down into the tiny, dark Savoy room adjacent the first stage floor, hunt for somewhere to dance. Frustrated we breathe air outside, begin to yawn and tire.

We catch part of Fake’s set, but head out before its finished. After bus rides and days couch surfing, we accept defeat and promise to try again. On to day three.

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.

Mini museums everywhere

My friends tell me the graf is better in Mount Royal.
(and I think that I believe them.)

Twenty-two reasons

As a teenager my birthdays were always big productions. At fifteen I rented a limo and made my friends wear suits and dresses (pictured above) even though we dined at a restaurant in the parking lot of the mall.

Sweet-sixteen was a trip to the bustling metropolis of Grand Forks for a Dashboard Confessional and Get Up Kids show. For my seventeenth birthday I held a rural bush party, which would have been great were it not for all the mosquitoes.

At my second seventeenth birthday in Winnipeg (at this point I was holding two) I had all my friend attend a show at the Graffiti Gallery. The lineup: Buried In Denmark, Dolphin Striker, The Recovery and Abbott Prison Blues. Totally classic.

Eighteen and legal in Manitoba was the biggest and the best. We rented out a room at the Osborne Freehouse, then took over G-Martini, and ended the evening dancing at Mod Night at the Pyramid Cabaret.

At nineteen I let it die. Today I turn twenty-two. The plan? I've scheduled a job interview.

Forever fifteen

We pretended we could drink

So he sang: Hands down, the best night I can ever remember

Seventeen and green eyes. Krysta and Zach.

TJ gave me a shout out on stage.

Freehouse birthday cake

Eighteen and dancing with Lisa on stage

On the Pyramid patio

Eighteen reasons adulthood is less fun

Beach blues

After days and days of sunshine we wake to sky grey sky. The first fall of overcast comes on the day we set aside for the beach. We shake our heads, slip sweaters inside our bags; refuse to change our plans.

Point the car away from the city and drive until we hit the fields. A tunnel of trees leads to a parking lot, all resilient and full. The locals are out in full force: bad tattoos and bud light lime.

It’s warm enough to read in bathing suits, still too cold to swim. James Joyce and Coco Puffs, we turn pages and explore the shore. Snap pictures of rows of kayaks, airborne kites, and other people’s kids.

After watching a ketchup and mustard fight we decide we feel like fries. It’s off to the pier to a patio biker joint. Follow with a full supper in the suburbs and metro back downtown.