Sounds From A Virtual Planet

The Nocturne series at MUTEK are club nights that focus more on dance music and concert sets, and are held at Metropolis, a large Montreal concert club. Headlining acts were scheduled Wednesday through Saturday nights, and a smaller lounge, the Savoy Room, hosted mostly Canadian up-and-coming artists. Metropolis was used for shows at last year’s MUTEK, but one clear difference was a serious upgrade in the hardware used for this year’s visual presentations. While last year’s sets all used concert lighting, this year’s addition of multi-projector HD video enhanced the overall experience. Not all the acts took full advantage of this, but the ones that did ended up being the most memorable performances.

The biggest event of the MUTEK came the first night with Amon Tobin’s North American debut of ISAM. While the CD itself is a sound design tour-de-force, the visuals for the show were nothing short of spectacular. The stage set was a structure made of 3D shapes that served as display surfaces for multiple streams of video and lighting effects. The entire show was tightly scripted and the visual portion of the show was integrated with the music. The imagery ranged from abstract video, to live footage, and pure color. Throughout the show these elements were intertwined with the music. Amon Tobin himself was in a control room in the middle of the structure. Translucent material revealed only his shadow. While what he was doing was never really clear, the effect was of some sort of alien DJ directing the entire show from mission control. From an audience perspective, the show was about the music and visuals, and Tobin’s presence was merely a validation of “liveness.” It didn’t really matter what he was doing, he was there.

Amon Tobin ISAM

One of the most visible electronic artists performing these days is Ritchie Hawtin, also know as Plastikman. Originally from Canada, and a seminal part of the early Detroit electronic music scene, MUTEK was excited to host Hawtin’s Plastikman Live show for the first time in Canada. Hawtin is known as a prolific producer and DJ. With Plastikman Live he’s focused on providing the audience with an immersive sonic, visual and cyber experience. Onstage, Hawtin is surrounded by a metallic mesh scrim that serves as a surface for projected images. Unlike Tobin’s ISAM that incorporates video clips, Hawtin’s show uses mainly computer generated images and lighting effects. The audience sees Hawtin inside the scrim, surrounded by gear, and clearly in control of the musical material. There’s an element of showmanship here with clear references to Rock/Pop stage theatrics.

Plastikman at MUTEK 2011

Hawtin has taken the idea of performance further by using social media as a way to engage his audience. There are two Plastikman iPhone apps available, Remixx and SYNK. SYNK was developed specifically to be used with a WiFi system set up at Plastikman performances, and allows the audience to interact with each other, as well as Hawtin, during a performance. Although SYNK is touted on his website, there was no evidence of its use at MUTEK this year.

Audiences need to respond to artists in a live setting, and one of the main differences between electronic artists and DJs is that an audience expects a certain level of performance from an electronic artist that they don’t from a DJ. Both Tobin and Hawtin are clearly sensitive to this, and although they have both performed as DJs, their current touring shows are designed to provide the element of “liveness” that an audience demands in a concert setting.

While ISAM and Plastikman Live were standout performances at MUTEK this year, and made full use of the A/V technology available, other artists performing on the Metropolis main stage were world-class. Modeselektor curated a club night at MUTEK, as they did for the 2011 CTM festival in Berlin, as part of their Modeselektion tour. The artists chosen for the evening either reflected Modeselektor’s musical tastes, or were upcoming artists they are producing. The duo hails from Berlin and their music reflects the kind of electro dance music that arose in post-reunification Germany. Their studio productions are solidly crafted, and their performance was mainly a DJ set. On-stage they are more party provocateurs than performing musicians. They hosted a strong bill of similar artists, with the exception of Anstam, who performed a solo laptop set that was much darker, with a heavy IDM/glitch influence. His set began with an ambient feel and progressed to a pulsing groove that served as an underpinning for some fresh sound design. His performance style was in stark contrast to the groove-happy Modeselektor, as he came across as more of a serious artist, more engrossed in manipulating sound than an entertainer.

The styles presented as part of the Nocturne series ranged from old-school House to Dub-Step to Minimalist Techno. Standout artists for me were Badawi, Four-Tet, and Gold Panda. Badawi mixes elements of world music with rhythms that strayed from the typical four-on-the-floor dance cannon. Four-Tet, a.k.a Keiran Hebden often performs with a live drummer, but for MUTEK this year, he went with solo laptop. He’s perhaps best known as a remix artist working with artists like Radiohead and Aphex Twin. His set reflected a kind of free-association of audio clips, undoubtedly in Ableton Live. He works with a wide range of source samples, from Folk to Jazz to Techno, however his set was surprisingly cohesive and offered unexpected twists and turns. Gold Panda is another artist who uses unexpected sound design elements in his set, more from a Hip Hop/LoFi perspective. All of these artists have established profiles but have yet to reach the level where they are able to incorporate high-end visuals. Nonetheless, the festival stage lighting was able to create distinct moods for each, making their performances more interesting visually.