For fans of cutting-edge electronic music, the MUTEK festival has been a gift to unwrap every year for the past 25 years in Montreal. What a blessing! The crème de la crème of new musical and visual ideas, to make you think as much as you dance! For musicians and visual/multimedia creators, however, the festival represents much more than an annual rendezvous; MUTEK is for them a community. A tribe. This 25e birthday will be celebrated with family, relatives say.
Originally, “MUTEK offered a voice to electronic music that fell somewhere between party and research music, and that’s what attracted me since I had studied electroacoustic music,” says composer Guillaume Coutu-Dumont, one of the original members of the MUTEK family. With the project Flabbergasthe will offer a performance on August 25 with his “brother” Vincent Lemieux, DJ and member of the festival’s programming team, and their first album, Consolation in Constellation, expected in the fall, will be previewed at the Phi Center from August 17 to 31, in the Habitat sonore series.
“But MUTEK came before the era of social media,” the musician continues. “To meet people who were making music like I was, I either had to travel to see them or they had to come see us in Montreal. The festival gave me the opportunity to see these fellow musicians here, at home. I met a lot of people over the years, and I built a network that served me well when I decided to move to Europe” to pursue a career, as did other members of the first generation of the MUTEK family, including Mike Shannon, Steven Beaupré, Colin de la Plante (The Mole) and Scott Monteith (Deadbeat).
A safe reunion
The poster of the 25e edition of MUTEK makes a few nods to the family tree of his musical family. Reunions with the composer Mathew Jonson — solo and in trio format (Cobblestone Jazz) — and with the Mexican composer Murcof, who returns to present a new work, Twin Colorwith Belgian videographer Simon Geilfus. Joy to find Mateo Murphy, pioneer of Quebec techno, who will present ARIMAa duo performance with multimedia artist Lydia Yakonowsky, on August 24, at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT).
Hey! Mike Shannon will also be there on August 25 for the Nocturne 6 evening at the SAT, along with veteran Stefan Betke. Regularly invited by the festival team, the album mastering expert and composer was, under the stage name Pole, one of the pillars of the minimalist techno and house movement that emerged in Germany in the 1990s, whose influence was considerable on the development of the Montreal electronic scene promoted by MUTEK.
Many other artists from here and elsewhere would have liked to be part of the 25e edition, confides Alain Mongeau, founder and CEO of MUTEK, who affirms in the same breath that nostalgia does not have a great value within his team. Twenty-five years of existence, all the same, that has symbolic value, doesn’t it? “Pfff,” says Mongeau. “Only if it can make people realize the importance of the festival and give us the substantial support that allows us to continue our work.”
The most important thing, after this first quarter century, is to have remained relevant, says the director. “We have remained faithful to our primary mandate, which is to be a research head.” Guillaume Coutu-Dumont confirms: “I’ve been immersed in this for 25 years. Every year, when I read the program, 80% of the names on the poster are names I’ve never heard of before. I’m amazed every time by the work MUTEK does to unearth new names and new trends.”
“I think we evolve with the times,” confirms Alain Mongeau. “It’s our mandate to dig deeper to draw up an overview each year of what’s driving the scene forward. From this angle, the festival has been forced to evolve and open up, musically — some artists or festival-goers still attached to the purism of the festival’s early years may find themselves a little less relatable today, but we take that almost as a compliment, since it means that we’ve evolved and that we’re still serving our primary mission.”
Digging, clearing
From around thirty artists on the bill during its first edition, which took place in particular at Café Campus and Ex-Centris, MUTEK now invites over a hundred creators from here and elsewhere. The musical event, whose banner has since been erected in Mexico City, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Tokyo and more recently Dubai, has been joined by a market and conferences aimed at professionals in the field.
“We worked hard to make the festival a kind of vehicle” in which ideas circulate as much as the talent of the artists, says Mongeau. “MUTEK has now become a kind of institution, but one that remains quite flexible and evolving. That’s our mandate, to dig, to clear the way. We are a radar that detects new trends and new artists.”
All this to expand the family. Four years after his first participation in MUTEK, GLOWZI now feels that he is part of it — his performance live GLOWZICOMBO (in trio format) will have its world premiere on August 23 at the SAT. “You know the expression ‘It takes a village to raise a child’? I feel like MUTEK is my village,” says GLOWZI, who combines the electronic rhythms of house and techno with his Caribbean roots, zouk, kompa, rara, raboday, with a touch of Jamaican dancehall.
“I am able to make the music that I make thanks to the community, the village, that welcomed me, and that still follows me in my career,” continues GLOWZ I. “It was MUTEK who told me that the time was right to present a first performance live. Not only do I have the chance to present a first audiovisual performance, but I have also had the chance to benefit from training at the SAT to develop my project. To come back to your question: yes, I feel that I am part of the family.
MUTEK Festival: in Montreal, from August 20 to 25, 2024