Montreal vs. Toronto meets Asia

A week after his plane took off, I’m finally through all my blogs. Alex spent a few days with me, helping me christen my new home. He booked himself a stop over en route from Tokyo, where he was helping a new music business sink its tentacles into the gaming world.

We flipped the usual Montreal vs. Toronto rhetoric away from Canadian cities, set our sights on discussing Asian nuance. So it became a trip a trip of how does Seoul compare. It started with a Western lunch, followed by a gallery of English-owned works, then an accidental trip to an ancient park, a Buddhist shrine, an aquarium, and lots of shopping.

It was the week of Chuseok, dubbed Korean Thanksgiving, so we partook in round after round of eating, drinking, joy. We ate Korean barbeque in the evenings when all the Japanese and Italian restaurants were shut down, Lotte burgers, and everything off the street. Chased that down with cocktails in plastic bags from Vinyl and cheap Korean beers in graffiti parks.

With all his bags packed up, we hailed a cab towards the mall. Underneath Yawoori we bought a ticket to the airport, and skipped up the steps to the Arario gallery to see the sculptures in its orbit.

Watching over the corner entrance, a blow up by Mr. Hirst. His shining plastic towers over a busy street of people rushing towards the multiplex and Mcdonalds. He calls it “Hymn” and the plaque claims he’s an art world jokester. Perhaps, but staring at the pricey replica of a toy of corporate design, we were not sure who is to laugh.

No time to ponder, we shot back down the steps to wait at the bus’ gate. So it pulled in and he got on with a hug. And off he went back towards the motherland where again some day we shall have another round.

Alex's adventures in fitnesss

Somewhere along the way, we realized we had not seen a single fat person. Maybe a handful that could be labeled Chubby, Big Boned, or Bigger. No one Obese. No XXL sized t-shirts. Not even for the tourists. One size fits all, and if you’re not lucky enough to fit it, you’ll probably need to shop in another country.

Some blame it on the diet, others genetics. But I’ve seen the locals scarf down plate after plate of carb-filled rice, noodles, red meat, and fish at all-you-can-eat diners, and have never listened with two ears to explanations using science.

No, it must be the public work out equipment. All along the creek that runs through my neighbourhood are plastic blue machines that let passers by lift whatever weight they can push down on it. After a gluttonous week in Seoul we walked by and gave it a try.

The reviews were good. But like the many other times I’ve participated in athletics, this was just an excuse to dress in sports wear and grin like an idiot.

Pieces of Paul

We stamped up our subway passes and sent ourselves to Daelim Contemporary, courtesy of Sir Paul Smith. There we found our bodies alongside other objects the curators called art, sent to the designer from anonymous, a party as little known to Paul as us two, he claimed.

We were skeptical. The program said Paul had passed up an opportunity to have a documentary filmed on the objects an admirer has been sending him for years, but the skis, plastic toys, bodices, and shiny silver mailboxes still conveniently turned up to be placed in glass boxes as soon as extra art was needed for a showcase of his personal collection.

Of the art, we approved. There was no era, style, or poignant political message to the show, just a scatter of things he loved. On one wall Brad Lochore’s Shadow No. 11, on another a sketch of a Gaultier dress. In the first room we found Conor Harrington’s Dictator and Dancer, photos of boys by one Bruce Weber.

In the second to last were things to make us laugh, Pakpoom Silaphan’s Queen Sits on Pepsi, and two Banksy pieces (most notably, a giggle in front of Congestion Charge). One Warholian Liz Taylor and a some shots of Bob Dylan’s recording sessions made me wish I could sit with Paul at Christies and point with one finger, I like that.

At the exit we found the interior of a home. Plastered on wallpaper were photos of a workspace covered with piles of pleasure objects, toys, and books, covered in stacks of hats. Next to that an extra pile of his stuff: backpacks and stuffed characters, a globe sitting in front of an old tin box of potato crisps.

After snapping photos leaning over his beloved bicycle we took the staircase down and stepped out, pushing umbrellas up with pieces of Paul dancing in our heads.

Chicken, couture, culture//sans chopsticks

For his first meal in the country we found a cutesy burger joint and ordered two hefty chicken sandwiches. We’d woken up with stomachaches, courtesy of late night after-airport beer and bulgogi hot dogs, scarfed down in a back alley crowded with early a.m. barroom patrons.

Two doctor peppers and one September issue, a phone call to claim safe arrival. Teddy bears and culinary characters painted pastel on the walls welcomed him into a culture warm with cuteness.

Bread thick and fries crisp, avocado over melted cheese tasted tomato homesick. The chefs gave grins thick with approval of our pleasure. They kept nodding and smiling, eyes wide and watching lips smack.

Running through the rain back to the hostel we splashed past local lunch hour, fish swimming on display in blue bins and kimchi for the taking. Water dripping down my full belly, I promised we’d eat Korean, too. Later, on lighter stomachs.

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.