As spring begins on a particularly warm and summery note, Montreal’s Quartier des spectacles, the centre of downtown’s arts and cultural district, becomes the hub of Montreal’s many festivals and free outdoor shows, and a welcome gathering space for Montrealers and visitors alike…

The fun starts on May 17 with a free, all-day outdoor party La Fête de Montréal, celebrating the city’s 371st anniversary with even more entertainment – and food! – in its third official year. Beginning at 11:30 a.m., enjoy performances from internationally acclaimed circus troupe Les 7 Doigts de la Main, rousing folk-rock band Irreverend James and the Critical Mass Choir, choreographer-dancers Jocelyne Montpetit and Manon Oligny, artist Armand Vaillancourt and more. Never go hungry with gourmet food trucks on hand throughout the day – everything from lobster rolls to pulled pork, duck confit poutine to tacos – and happily imbibe at a happy hour cocktail party at 4:30 p.m., followed by a DJ set by Vincent Lemieux at 7:30 p.m., and a multimedia musical event at 9:30 p.m., with state-of-the-art visuals by five Montreal studios teamed up with musicians Ariane Moffatt, Yann Perreau and Jérôme Minière, Louis-Jean Cormier, Plaster, and Poirier with Boogat.

From there on out, the Quartier des Spectacles is action-packed with music, comedy, dance, theatre, circus arts, culinary delights, family and social activities and more. Sainte-Catherine Street will be a pedestrian-only zone from Bleury Street to Saint-Laurent Boulevard until September 1, and until June 2 along de Maisonneuve Avenue, make collaborative music simply by hopping on a swing at the 21 Swings installation.

Public art festival Escales Improbables presents 160 classical musicians in two free outdoor concerts on the Esplanade of Place des Arts, May 11-12 at 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., while on the weekend of May 18-19, check out the pop-punk Pouzza Fest stage at the corner of Clark and Ste-Catherine from noon until evening, and on the eastern edge of the Quartier des Spectacles, the Place Émilie-Gamelin summer program begins May 30, featuring giant chessboards, street furniture, flower stalls, and every Thursday at noon, choose lunch from among six different food trucks while watching an original performance.

Of course, this being Montreal, it’s the festivals that truly reign the Quartier all summer long, beginning on May 22 with Festival TransAmériques, an amazing, cutting-edge international festival of performing arts – this year featuring an outdoor show staring 47 dachshund dogs! – and continuing into electronic music and art festival Mutek, May 29 to June 2, at the SAT  and other venues – and next door to the SAT at Parc de la Paix, go to free evening concerts and films every Wednesday and Thursday evening, July 3 to August 29.

French music fans flock to Francofolies, June 13-22, right before the city’s famed Montreal International Jazz Festival  begins on June 28 with a free outdoor show by Feist and much, much more until July 7. Hot on its heels comes not only comedy fests Just for Laughs and Zoofest, but street performances by top circus acts from the Montréal Complètement Cirque festival. Also in July, sit on the grass and listen to the sounds of the Festival Nuits d’Afrique and partake in the diversity of culture at the Montreal First Peoples Festival. In August, see Montreal photographer Gabor Szilasi’s photography exhibition of portraits of Sainte-Catherine Street in the 1970s. And, as summer winds down in early September, watch and interact with Mégaphone, a community-minded installation by the National Film Board of Canada and multimedia company Moment Factory, projected on the side of UQAM’s Pavillon Président-Kennedy.

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THE DETAILS

La Fête de Montréal , May 17, 2013

Quartier des Spectacles (Quartier des Spectacles is bounded by Saint-Hubert on the east, City Councillors on the west, Sherbrooke on the north and René-Lévesque on the south)

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One of the world’s best and most anticipated electronic music festivals, Mutek challenges and surprises festival goers while consistently entertaining with musicians, producers and multimedia artists from around the world, specializing in both big and upcoming names in edgier electronic music.

At Mutek this year, the A/Visions evening shows and Nocturnes late-night events herald close to a hundred artists. Multifaceted producer Matthew Herbert comes back to Montreal after an eight year absence to perform three projects – One Pig, a musical improv set centred on a war photojournalist’s audio, and a DJ set as Wishmountain – throughout the festival, the UK’s undefinable and deeply cool Jamie Lidell returns, as does Catalan house beatmaker John Talabot, Detroit techno minimalist Robert Hood, Germany pianist Nils Frahm, Japanese audiovisual artist Ryoichi Kurokawa, and Montrealer Ghislain Poirier unveils his new synthy, cinematic, minimalist project, Boundary. There’s even a special performance by Pantha du Prince and The Bell Laboratory at the Maison Symphonique de Montréal, the city’s recently built and acoustically impressive symphony hall in the heart of downtown at Place des Arts.

Those in the know never underestimate the greatness of Mutek’s opening event: this year, that night  celebrates the 20th anniversary of German label Kompakt, with performances from American producer Michael Mayer, Saschienne and Swedish producer Alex Willner, a.k.a. The Field. The festival program rambles on in the best way possible with the return of British producer John Hopkins, German trio Brandt Brauer Frick, Raster-Noton duo Emptyset’s minimal noise and beats, and after years away, the jazz-infused sound of Frivolous. Also hear Mutek first-timers like young American techno experimenter Laurel Halo, prolific American producer John Tejada, and deep house makers Berlin-based Efdemin and John Roberts.

The Redbull Music Academy puts on a series of shows at high-tech, long-time Mutek venue the Society for Art and Technology, with the likes of Andy Stott, Martyn and Onra, Montreal fave Deadbeat, Space Dimension Controller, L.A.’s Nosaj Thing, and new Ninja Tune players Emika and Letherette. And on the last night of the festival, get right into Borderland, a new dub-meets-loops project from Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald, and a long, analogue-rich set by Juju & Jordash. Unbelievably, there are even more artists on the roster, and more still to be announced, meaning that, as always, Mutek’s a guaranteed good time.

THE DETAILS

Mutek, May 29-June 2, 2013

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At the heart of Mutek’s music scene, featuring big names in electronic music, are the A/Visions and Nocturne shows. Nights begin at 8 p.m. with the forward-thinking, often experimental A/Visions, this year melding sound and sight at Monument-National with artists such as Biosphere, Pierre Bastien and Espen Sommer Eide (inventive orchestra conductors who perform with hybrid analogue-digital robots), Australia’s Robin Fox, SUUNS frontman Ben Shemie, Andrew Pekler and Jane Jelinek performing works by electronic pioneer Ursula Bogner, Roly Porter and Kode 9 and more, as well as a Saturday-night show at St-James Church with the deep, dark drones of Montreal’s Tim Hecker and Stephen O’Malley.

The dance-tastic Nocturne nights draw a massive crowd at Metropolis and SAT, beginning at 10 p.m. each night and going suitably late. Up this year are legendary Detroit techno producer Jeff Mills, melodic-beat maker Nicolas Jaar, Skull Disco founder Shackleton, Denmark’s bass-driven Monolake, Swedish techno duo Minilogue, Acid-techno producer A Guy Called Gerald, indie-synthheads Blondes, the innovative, jazzy Dave Aju and many, many more.

This year’s Mutek has a full line-up of free (yes, free!) shows too. Outdoors at Place de la Paix (the park right next to the SAT on St-Laurent), local and international artists – including Montreal’s DJ Champion, Danuel Tate and Tonepushers – play from 5-8 p.m. on weekdays and from 2-8 p.m. on Saturday. On Sunday, Piknic Electronik is all Mutek all afternoon, with Valentin Stip, Mathew Jonson, The Mole, Benoit & Sergio and Wolf+Lamb. From Wednesday to Friday, take a break from Nocturne dancing and check out the ambient, experimental sounds of Mutek’s Play series at Monument-National. There are even live shows underground at Berri-UQAM metro station, from 5-7 p.m. Wednesday to Friday.

Yes, the engrossing entertainment is pretty much non-stop at Mutek. Add to all that a new dimension in immersive audio-visual installation Cinechamber, making its North American festival debut. The live and playback Cinechamber shows get going a little earlier than Mutek officially beings, taking over a theatre-sized space at Excentris (Mutek’s original home) on May 22. Step into the massive panoramic, surround-sound room for an experience that’s just the festival as a whole: completely unique and just as mind-bending.

PS- here’s what went down last year…

THE DETAILS

Mutek, May 30-June 3, 2012

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The 12th edition of Mutek has just finished and, before we catch up on some much-needed sleep, we’ve got a pretty cool video to show you…

In the leadup to Mutek, Montreal’s amazing digital music, sound and audio-visual art festival, we poured over the program and chatted with Richie Hawtin. We here at the Montreal Buzz LOVE MUTEK. What’s amazing about Mutek is that, every year, it manages to further push the notion of what this area of the arts is capable of. Mutek is small, experimental and intellectual shows, but it’s also massive, dance-all-night parties, as the video above shows. Oh, and one final thing: THE AMON TOBIN SHOW WAS ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING THINGS THIS CITY HAS EVER SEEN.

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From June 1^st to June 5^th, Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles becomes a veritable playground for all things Mutek. A festival that explores digital creativity and electronic music.

An aspect that makes Mutek unique as a digital festival is that 95% of the artists will be playing live, which is a rarity in the digital age. Not only that, but the festival boasts 8 world premieres, 10 North American premieres and 9 Canadian premieres and features artists like Amon Tobin presenting the ISAM world premiere (video below), Four Tet, Richie Hawtin (Plastikman) and Gold Panda, among others. Hot dog!

The festival’s first day, June 1^st, sets the tone with a renegade performance by one of the leading artists of the genre. In cahoots with the STM, UK’s Bowly will perform at the Berri UQAM metro station for free. He will be freaking out the squares and other geometrical shapes during the 4:30pm rush hour. Art, meet life. Now, finish your supper. Here’s a tip: Go to the Berri metro every weekday at rush hour during the festival to catch more performances like this one.

Later that night you can check out The Industrial Evolution at 8pm at Salle Pierre-Mercure, tickets are $25. This event is designed to examine the “intersection between granular synthesis, fabrications of light and image, and the beauty of inherent rhythm and repetition.”  Bristol’s Emptyset provides an atmospheric dose of dubstep bass that melds with digital white noise. Look out for Finland’s legendary Mika Vainio, formerly a member of the industrial minimalists Pan Sonic, making his Mutek debut with brand new audio and visual content. Then Purform, the Elektra Festival founder Alain Thibault and visual artist Yan Breuleux make their Mutek debut. They’ll be performing an original digital composition called Whitebox that includes a large three-screen multi-sensory display.

On June 2, head to Metropolis for Modeselektion at 10pm where $30 dollars will get you into a real party. The event is for lovers of bass in all its incarnations.  Modeselektor hail from Germany and will be DJing in tandem with guests like dubsteppers Anstam, garage revivalist FALTYDL and Jacques Greene, a renowned Montreal bass producer. And for you viewing pleasure, Pfadfinderei and Diagraf create the visual art.

On June 4^th Resident Advisor presents Beyond the Autobahn at Metropolis. The party starts at 11pm and tickets are $35. This is central to the Mutek experience and features visuals by Boris Edelstein, Baillat Cardell & Fils, and Ne1co. The theme, you ask? Live electronics and genre fusion featuring the music of Stephen Beaupre and funky micro house group the Banjo Consorsium. Stay tuned for UK’s Rocketnumbernine who are joined on stage by Fourtet for some improvising. It’s going to be a wild night with Elektroguzzi and minimal techno champion James Holden closing the night.

On June 5^th the biggest party is planned. It’s the Mutek 2011 finale and they mean business. The Curator’s Choice, a co presentation with Piknic Electronik, at Parc Jean Drapeau is an event not to be missed, especially when tickets are only $10. This year the curators invite guests from the Mutek 2011 festival to DJ for a surprise outdoor show.

The festival closes with Nocturne 5 featuring Perpetual E_Motion, co-presented and hosted by Society for Arts and Technology Tickets are $25 and there’s a lot to do. This edition will showcase the more original aspects of house music with the world premiere of Horror Inc’s new live show. Japanese house specialist, RADIQ, graces Mutek for his North American debut while Cobblestone Jazz’s Danuel Tate goes solo to promote his debut album, Mexican Hotbox.  There are tons of events to check out at the SAT, including visuals by MA and Cameron Bros.

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Guest blogger: Sophie Naima Caird

Details:

MUTEK (June 1st – 5th, 2011)

Society for Arts and Technology

1201, Boulevard Saint-Laurent

514-844-2033

Salle Pierre-Mercure

300, boulevard de Maisonneuve E

Montreal, QC H2X 3X6

(514) 987-4691

Metropolis

59, rue Sainte-Catherine East

514 844-3500

Parc Jean Drapeau

1 Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

514 872-6120

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What always impresses me about the musicians and fans that attend Mutek is the incredible commitment with which they approach their corner of the musical world. Their audience travels the world to see the favorite musicians and the musicians themselves put everything they have into their wide range of takes on electronic music. Senor Coconut, otherwise known as Uwe Schmidt, is just this type of person. Just hours before the Saturday night show, I sat down with him to ask a couple questions…

Brendan Murphy: How did this Senor Coconut persona come about?

Senor Coconut: “In short, I was tired of playing alone on the stage in a techno club environment. To me, Senor Coconut was an opportunity to do something different. When we started, the musicians didn’t really know much about what I did. They’d never played to a machine before, but they’re professional musicians so they could figure it out. But the music itself convinced them and at some point for them, and for the audience, what’s coming from a machine and what’s coming from an instrument stops mattering.”

BM: You’ve done covers of songs by everyone from Kraftwerk to Michael Jackson- how do you decide?

SC: “Some of the songs just stick with me- I call it musical Darwinism because some of the songs don’t want to die and they fight it out in my head to stick around. But they all have to be a bit of a challenge, something to figure out.”

BM: Having played Mutek and Montreal several times over the years- any general impressions of the fest and the city that hosts it?

SC: “The first time I came here, 10 years ago, I was really surprised by the warmth of the people. Often with festivals it can be a very cold machinery- they check out your music and then invite you and you don’t even talk to anyone. You check in, get your pamphlet, you play, and good-bye, that’s it. With Mutek it was different, people were excited to see you, I met all kinds of people I knew from around the world. And the show we played back then, there were lots of improvised moments- I did a show with Ricardo Villalobos and we played from 12 to 5:30 in the morning and it was a very magical moment and those don’t often happen at festivals. People were very musically educated. And of course, Montreal is a special city worldwide. It’s very nice to be here right now.”

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Here are some fun things to do and see this weekend in Montréal!

[electro music] MUTEK – Bringing some of the world’s biggest and most innovative names to Montréal, a city with a well-documented appreciation for electronic music culture. Great music. Great setting. Party on.

[restaurant] DOMINION – If you are doing some downtown shopping and are craving a classy yet casual dining establishment for lunch or supper, look no further than Dominion. Fresh dining, with about 80% of all products coming from Quebec.

[indie theater] FRINGE FEST – After 20 years of fun and debauchery, the locally raised, theatre festival still maintains its beloved place in the hearts of Montréalers. Many shows to discover.  Boisterous-ism encouraged.

[gay party] MEC PLUS ULTRA – The boys are back at the Belmont for another edition of Montréal’s hottest out-of-village gay party.  The theme this time throw is ‘Electric Night,’ so maybe wear some florescent wristbands and Gaga-esque sunglasses.

[mixer] HAWT SUMMER SLOWDANCE – In Montréal, slow is beautiful and love is not ironic. Nowhere is this more evident then at the monthly slowdance party, staple event in our ever-blossoming ‘quirk’ scene.

[concert] GEORGE THOROGOOD – If you are feeling ‘Bad to the Bone,’ you are in luck. One of the world’s great blues rockers will be rockin’ at one of our fave venues, Metropolis.

[arts & crafts fair] PUCES POP – Montreal’s largest do-it-yourself fair, receiving over 100 of Quebec’s most talented artists every year. Authentic Montréal treasures guaranteed.

The post THIS WEEKEND IN MONTREAL [JUNE 4 TO 6] appeared first on Tourisme Montréal Blog.

Brendan Murphy: Your 2008 Mutek show was a huge hit. Happy to be coming back to Montreal?

Ben Frost: “I adore Montreal and am extremely excited to return. It’s definitely on a very small list of places in the world I know I could live in…The day of that show at Mutek actually marked the first time I saw a chipmunk and the first time I saw a Tim Hecker. I can’t work out which was more exciting- strangely similar experiences actually.”

BM: Do you try to create a live show that will draw an audience in or does organizing all that gear take precedence?

BF: “The gear, well, the gear is easy and fun… nothing better than playing with big amplifiers. But the real work is in setting out a space for myself to play sonically and metaphorically… it sounds terribly self-involved, and to a large extent is, but the simple fact is that if I don’t feel it, nobody else will. My shows sit on a knife’s edge of being fine, or a complete and utter prolapse.”

BM: You moved from Australia to Iceland- how has that affected you and your music?

BF: “I try not to think about music like that. I try to allow my decisions to be instinctual ones… and that is a struggle. I find myself drawn to things and I go with them, chasing rabbits down holes and seeing where I end up. Often it’s somewhere I never expected…I’ve spent the last week in Italy eating nothing but pasta and fish. If I end up making a techno record later this month, is it because I absorbed all of that? Was it the fish? Or will it be because I saw Richie Hawtin play the other night and thought it was appalling? Or is perhaps none of it particularly relevant at all and that everything has as much or as little relevance as the next- that the point is what do I do with that information, how I process it, what I focus on and how I feel about it.”

BM: How would does your new album, By The Throat, differ from Theory of Machines?

BF: They are inherently different records because they came from different times and different experiences. They are both very romantic works- I mean romance in the true sense- romanticism, that both of those records are not reflections of the world as it is but worlds as I imagine them to be. If Theory of Machines was the emergency room, all blown out in fluorescent light and sterilization, then By The Throat is the burning inferno the body came from.”
BM: Do you ever think to yourself- forget this, let’s move to Ibiza and make some David Guetta (http://www.davidguetta.com/en) party tracks?

BF: Oh hell yes. I just spent my day off in Italy diving in the Mediterranean- you only get to actually play in places like this by creating vapid trash whose sole purpose is to fuel a dance floor. I often wonder what it would be like to be able to create music without it meaning something. Must be nice.

THE DETAILS

Show: SATURDAY JUNE 05 07:00 PM at S.A.T

Panel FRIDAY JUNE 4, 3:00PM Monument-National ( free)

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Montreal’s Mutek festival just announced their first ever free outdoor concert. It’s taking place on June 5th at the Place des Festivals in the Quartier Des Spectacles. Even if you don’t know much about electronic music, how could dancing in downtown Montreal during a concert headlined by someone named Señor Coconut be anything but an awesome idea?

Señor Coconut is in fact Uwe Schmidt, an influential and well-respected German producer who has recorded under a range of stage names, most notably Atom Heart. When he puts on his Coconut mask, he delves into a brand of “electrolatino” which fuses already incredibly danceable Latin music like the meringue and cha-cha with an upbeat blend of electro, techno and more. Basically, it’s a dance-splosion! Often “covering” other artists’ music, his last album, Around the World, applied his cheeky Latin twist to the music of Daft Punk, Prince and Eurythmics. When you combine all of this with an orchestra of a dozen musicians and the multi-talented Venezuelan singer Argenis Brito well, basically you’ve got plans for June 5^th.

But there’s more: opening up the proceeding will be a new group called Le Golden (formerly Jedi Electro), which is comprised of members of the internationally renowned Beast and Plaster, a live group that has blown my mind and the soles of my dancing shoes more than once.

Mutek 2010 runs from June 2^nd-6^th and is packed with some the best names in electronic music, but on this Saturday night, all of downtown Montreal is going to go nuts. Señor Coconuts.

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First off, a music fest only works if the music is consistently great. This year’s installment, running from June 2nd to June 6th, continues Mutek’s  mandate of bringing some of the world’s biggest and most innovative names to a city with a well-documented appreciation for electronic music and culture. Among the exciting names in the initial round of announcements are Matmos, Matias Aguayo, Mouse on Mars as well as tons of other artists whose names don’t start with the letter “M”. Once again this year, they’ve managed to balance local talent with international superstars, relaxed nights that you can just wander into with massive world premieres that you could plan an entire weekend around.

But Mutek thrives as much because of all the other things they do well, like the fest’s 4 sub-sections (for lack of a better word). A/Visions are the immersive performances which marry music and images and things that mad professor types dream up ( see the video above for a taste from last year). This year’s new addition is Ectoplasmes³, curated and produced by Eric Mattson, a late night improv-oriented electro-accoustic chaser to some of the A/Visions events. The other two are just plain fun- Nocturne , the beat-driven late night party series, and Piknic , now in its 7th year, the daytime outdoor events series on Parc Jean-Drapeau that has become one of Montreal’s most beloved and defining good time activities.

Their website is fantastic, though I suppose it would be pretty ridiculous, given what Mutek is about, if it wasn’t. There’s tons of info, bios, mp3s, videos and, since so many of you will be coming in from out of town, plenty of travel, hotel and ticket packages for you to peruse. Come back to this blog in the coming weeks, as I start getting a bit more specific with my excitement…

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