So far Canada is two for two. I love Montreal and I love Vancouver. I would happily rotate them in yearly. What drew me to Montreal was the Mutek electronic music festival and a good opportunity to get away with my girlfriend. Mutek really floored me. After coming off of 4 years of SXSW music I was shocked to find no lines, fantastic sound systems, and seriously good performances. As for the Montreal itself... I have gotten into the habit of exploring new cities through their shops and stores. Its a consumer/materialistic way to go about things, but Ive found (unsurprisingly) that interesting and unique shops are a great gateway to discovering unique culture, community and art anywhere where you don't have roots or contacts. My tactic involves cross-referencing my favorite brand's website's "where to buy" sections with the city I am visiting. I plot the hits out on a google map and start walking around and talking to people. Sometimes it helps to jump start the process with a visit to superfuture.com. Heres the day by day of the trip...
Wed - Day 1
Arrived on a late-ish flight and got dropped at our hotel, Place D'armes. This hotel turned out to be fantastic for its moderate price. After getting used to SoHo rates and rooms for work trips I dropped a solid "SAY WHAAAT!?" when I walked in the room for the first time. Place D'armes is located in old Montreal. Because of our late arrival we hustled to un-pack and headed straight off to the first night of Mutek's "Nocturnes." The venue was a place called SAT and man was it cool. It was a large warehouse space split up between a main stage room and a loungey area peppered with installations. Top that off with nice sound, unique lighting plus huge projections everywhere and you've got a solid venue. Heres a shot of my friend Bryan and I messing around with an installation that looked like it was sponsored by Target. Fun..
First up on the main stage was Zombie Zombie who I had never heard before. They where a live two piece electronic band with one of the dudes on a drum set who also specialized in crazy yelping. Definitely channeling the frontman of suicide. This is easy to ruin, but he pulled it off. The music was something like jammy psychadelic electro with a serious injection of italo vibes and sensibilities. Hard to explain. Next up was the headliner for the night Palooski. He played a fantastic selection of disco-ish crowd pleasing edits and tracks that had us dancing our asses off. Somewhat of a welcome anomaly amongst the minimal and experiment music that would make up the majority of the rest of the festival. Check out the dirty edits compilations that Palooski is involved in if you are curious. I wish we had more DJs like him in SF.
Thurs - Day 2
Woke up and made the classic tourist mistake of letting our stomaches guide us to the nearest Americanized brunch, which of course was a total failure. With fueling up out of the way we started to explore a bit of old town. Beautiful churches and cobbled streets. A bit touristy but still a nice walk. On the boutique front we hit one of the cities gems, Reborn. As my friend Bryan said, its one of those places you walk into and know the chances of buying something are slim, but damn it was cool. The shop is very narrow with the left wall housing glass covered wall cabinates containing some really incredible jewely and art pieces. When I visited the contents where primarily matte black. The most eye catching pieces were by Natalia Brilli. The right hand wall of the shop had menswear by people like Surface to Air, Acne, and Nom De Guerre... aka 100 DOLLAR T-SHIRTS YALL! I didn't have a chance to look at the womens stuff but it looked equally as interesting. After Old Montreal we hoofed it downtown to the main strip, Saint Catherine. The usual H&M, Aldo, Footlocker etc etc, made it hard to find anything interesting. I did have one shop on my list to check out on Saint Catherine called Off The Hook. Could you guess it was a streetwear shop? Not my style usually but I still like to check out the shops. After looking around for a while I was surpised to find two things... One, there were a lot of kids in there well over 10 years younger than me (this contrasted with the SUPER crass dirty south and raunchy graphic Tees made me chuckle). Two, amongst a lot of crap there where some REALLy nice items. I snapped up a some Sixpack shirts and the Cadence X Lifetime collaboration shirt. I've been wanting something from impossible to find cycling clothing label, Cadence, for a while now. After a quick dinner at the hotel bar (quite good)
I rushed everyone off to the Nocturne 2 venue, Metropolis, for a opening performance by
Appleblim. I did NOT want to miss this one. Touted as the bridge between the London dubstep and Berlin techno scenes I was expecting a set with a lot of blending of 4x4 beats and dubstep rhythms. Appleblim actually got the 4x4 techno-y stuff out of the way in the beginning (Fine with me!) and then proceeded to wreck-shop with some SERIOUS bass music. My favorite dj set of the festival, which is probably blasphemy to hardcore minimal techno heads, but I like what I like! Half the time the crowd was cheering for the sound-system too. The rig was absolutely devastating in terms of low end and was about as clean and crisp as I have heard. I sat dead center on the balcony and soaked it all in. Side note: I really need to make a mix of Appleblim style dubstep/bass. Def some of the most interesting electronic music being made right now, imho. On the to-do list. Next up was
Deadbeat who was equally as awesome. Ive been a big Deadbeat fan for a while but have never seen him. He catered his music more towards the floor as expected, switching it up between housey stuff and his dub infused beats. Deadbeat also gets a special mention for dancing like a maniac behind his gear. He's got a mean two step. The night finished up with the headliners
Moderat.The combination of the two guys from Modeselektor and their bud Apparat.
Was not prepared for this show. It was an incredibly polished performance and had a stadium level vibe rare for brooding electronic music. The music reinforced by their incredible 3 screen wide projected visuals. A handful of differently styled pieces ranging from looped film to generative 3D stuff were projected for each song. The performance ended with an encore cementing the stadium vibes. (Side note: One of the Modeselektor boys was sporting an all caps "AMEN" shirt for those who know). Unfortunately had to forgo Mala, the final performer of the night, as we were completely sacked from the day.
Friday - Day 3
Friday was a mellow day. We were tipped off to the Mont Royal neighborhood as an area we would like a lot. With the Metro mastered we strolled along Saint Laurent and Mont-Royal Blvd checking out the various shops and cafes. The highlights were Old Gold (great little clothign shop) and a wicked vintage mens store next door. I wish I could remember the name, something with California in it. It was flannel heaven. We walked back down Mont Royal towards downtown not realizing that some of the best Mont Royal had to offer was farther up. That evening a friend with some Montreal experience took us to a classic french bistro called L'Express. We ended up eating enough food and drinking enough wine to put us out of commission early. A little break from the festival wasn't the end of the world.
Sat - Day 4
The fourth day began with one of the festival highlights...
ATOM. The installation/performce piece by electronic music icon Robert Henke (of Monolake fame) and the interactive artist Christopher Baude. The piece was performed at the Place De Arts. We were lead into a very dark auditorium barely lit by red light. About 100 people where sitting on the floor surrounding a 6x6 grid of large white balloons at floor level. The balloons had light bulbs inside them and where attached to retractible strings. As the music piece was performed the the strings would let out slack and retract creating various patterns and motions. In conjunction with moving vertically the balloons also glowed blinked and flickered in reaction to various elements of music piece. What Henke and Baude were able to accomplish with a 6x6 grid of balloons and the two parameters of brightness and height was incredibly impressive.
After the ATOM performance I hit up a skateshop in the near by chinatown neighborhood called Temple Skate Supply.
I snatched up a complete Temple Zinger they had dropped earlier that month. The rain during the trip put the kabosh on rolling around the city, but the little guy has already gotten some use back in SF. Its been stickered up to boot with MASH and Benny Gold decals. Old Temple signage in Chinatown...
After the skate shop I popped by the first of the Mutek picnics. The weather was shit, but that didnt keep the rave massive from coming out. I got about an hour of The Mole in and then split. Finished up the night with some Tapas at a place called Pullmans. Delicious food, very light and thoughtful dishes. Just don't do what we did and order everything on the menu and end up dehabilitatingly stuffed for the second night in a row and pass out early.
Sun - Day 5
Charged up by a good nights sleep I got out the door before the girlfriend to go check off another few skateshops. The first on the list was Underworld. As I made my way down Saint Catherine, away from all the hurdy-gurdy, I realized that I had done this before... about 10 years ago. Ahh, the paths we beat. The place was huge, like a wallmart of skating. Def worth checking out. Interesting to see all the big skate brands full lineup of gear all in one place. The merchandising is well done to boot. Sleuthing out the next spot, Empire, was a bust as apparently they moved farther away than I was willing to walk. I hustled back to the hotel and hopped on the Metro with my girlfriend heading back to Mont Royal to find some of the spots we missed. This was crucial. We walked through some residential areas that had vibes I could see myself living amongst.
Very reminiscent of parts of portland, Boston, SF and Brooklyn. We hit two shops that are must visits. The first was Unicorn where B got a ridiculously cute pair of high-tops. The gal working their, was incredibly helpful and chatted us up about all the spots we had gone to our should go to. She sent us up the street to another boutique called Les étoffe, where her boyfriend was working. This place was really impressive as well. A nice selection of unique labels and meticulously hand picked vintage pieces. The gentlemen working here sent us across the neighborhood to the local fixie shop aptly named Brakeless. Brakeless was a nice mixture of frames and components as well as clothing and shoes. I grabbed a lot of stuff here including a pair of "port" Vans Caballeros and a Fuct. T-shirt. I hadnt seen a fuct Tshirt in ages, let alone one I liked. I remember going to my local skateshop in Northampton MA around 6th grade to get a snowboard with my mother and having to explain why there was a snowboard with a naked lady on it and a t-shirt with "FUCT." in huge lettering in the window as we walked in. Ah the good old days. My mom rules. Anyways, Sylvester, the proprietor of Brakeless was a really cool/nice guy. Probably my favorite shop in Montreal. Im honestly bummed I will only make it there once a year.
After getting caught in some nasty rain/wind we made our way back to the hotel. While the weather was the absolute worst, I ended up heading the call of some friends txts and headed back to the park for Mutek Picnic part two. Zip and Ricardo Villalobos where playing a 7 hour set that I had to catch at least a tiny bit of. After 20 minutes or so of brocking out with my rain hood up the sun came out out for literally one song.
For those who had been their for hours you could tell it was like the second coming. I endured the next wave of rain for as long as I could and then headed back to the hotel. We grabbed some SOLID burgers and Poutine at a joint called Merchant of Beef (best name ever) in the old town and then headed to the club to catch Akufen's first performance and new material in years. I wasn't really feeling it. But I don't want to be a negative nancy so I am going to chalk it up to being on my feet for 5 days and needing to crash. Ill wait for the album to elaborate on Akufens new bits.
Im definitely smitten with Mutek and would love to visit montreal once a year. The lack of lines and crowds makes it feel like much less work than say SXSW or Coachella. Side note: Air Canada has some game. Decent food (for airlines) and power in every seat. Chalk one up for Canada.
My recommended Montreal shops on Yelp.
