MUTEK 2011 Ends Up Being Totally For Squares

So maybe MUTEK is for squares. Everywhere you looked around the Montreal festival this past weekend, there were cubes: on stage as props or backdrops, hung from ceilings, projected onto buildings, etc.

But the "international festival of digital creativity and electronic music" is also for anyone who likes electronic music, pretty flashing lights, and having their minds blown by the best of both.

While other music fests trumpet reunions of seminal groups or Q&As with hall of fame rockers as their big ticket events, MUTEK looks to the future. Now in its 12th year, it's even taking to branding the musical performances — often rare one-offs in North America —  "premieres." And for the dozens of electronic music superstars from Canada (Platiskman, Deadbeat) and around the world (Modeselektor, Four Tet) performing live on killer sound systems to sweaty cheering crowds, it was the visuals that really made MUTEK 2011 cutting edge: and hopefully put to rest age-old notions that guys on laptop make for boring live acts.

While Amon Tobin threw down the 3D multi-media gauntlet on opening night, and Germany's Modeselektor brought their goofy monkey mascot to life on the big screen on Thursday, these bass-heavy crowd pleasers were countered with more cerebral pleasures at the sit-down A/V programme.

Canadian project Whitebox (composer Alain Thibault and visual artist Yan Breuleux) faced off in front of three giant screens, pairing their haunting industrial noises with an equally unnerving triptych of black, white and red geometric patterns generated in real time.

Mexico's Murcof offered the Canadian premiere of his ongoing collaboration with French "video label" AntiVJ: another giant projection of mathematical mutations that evolved from tiny points of cosmic light to full size monstrous creations, a perfect tandem for the dark ambient techno soundtrack.

Not everything was quite so magical: Seth Horvitz's "Eight Studies For Automatic Piano" consisted of a grand piano to playing unassisted in front of a projection of the keyboard as a simple row of lines and dots: it was a rather fascinating way to watch/listen to piano music that could never be played by one human, but also better suited as a gallery installation than a full 45-minute set that had many fidgeting or leaving.

Much more fun was the final A/V programme at the Society For Arts And Technology. British duo Sculpture performed old school analogue alchemy with tape loops and sampling paired with psychedelic visuals made by filming custom-painted zeotropic vinyl discs played at different speeds which were then projected onto the walls and a giant cube. It was quite literally bananas.

The festival's biggest name was one of ours: Windsor, Ont.'s minimal techno leader Richie Hawtin brought his full live Plastikman experience to Metropolis on Friday night, seven years after first attempting it at Mutek 2004. This time, the tools have caught up with his imagination and his show went off without a hitch.

Hawtin performed a selection of Plastikman hits and remixes behind a giant screen, which displayed the kind of over-the-top digital art normally reserved for U2 tours and Olympics ceremonies. The intense, techno-technology choreography, culminating with Hawtin stepping out from the shadows for a version of his early '90s classic "Spastik," kept everyone in its grip 'til the wee hours.

Now, while we wait for MUTEK 2012, can we start a petition to get the Plastikman logo on a Canadian stamp?