This weekend, let’s go to the OK LÀ event to celebrate the error, the unexpected, the accident, and those who commit them, starting with Montrealer Kee Avil, who has just launched a glorious album indefinable songs titled Crease. “We may talk about improvised music, ironically, there is a certain tradition in that, a language that has been developed,” she explains. For me, what is interesting with this music is the freedom to be able to make mistakes. There are no expectations, you can do whatever you want and, above all, we encourage you to experiment, to think differently. »
The “variable geometry” event dedicated “to the dissemination of experimental music and performative cinema” OK LÀ was born very slowly five years ago, in the shadow of similar institutional festivals that have become the International Festival of Current Music de Victoriaville, MUTEK or Suoni per il Popolo. First organized in the Ethel parking lot in Verdun, it gave carte blanche to actors from experimental musical scenes here. However, after two last editions marked by the seal of the pandemic, the event is reborn with panache at Quai 5160 – Maison de la culture de Verdun by inviting world-renowned musicians such as Lee Ranaldo, KMRU and Stephen O’Malley.
Her own thing
Author, composer and improviser Vicky Mettler will have the honor of closing this prestigious edition of OK LÀ on Sunday evening, at the Phi Center, with American veteran Stephen O’Malley, first recognized as co-founder of the influential group experimental metal drone Sunn O))). She will present the intriguing songs from her debut album, Creasereleased by Constellation Records (Fly Pan Am, Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and bearing his stage name, Kee Avil.
We may talk about improvised music, ironically, there is a certain tradition in that, a language that has been developed. For me, what is interesting with this music is the freedom to be able to make mistakes. There are no expectations, you can do whatever you want and, above all, we encourage you to experiment, to think differently.
“I am not a traditional guitarist, assures Vicky Mettler. What inspires me is what is new to me. She lost interest in her music lessons precisely to find her own thing, starting to compose in 2016 after a few years of collaborations and improvisations. A first EP of his songs was released in 2018, then this first real and precious record crossed by a complex and nervous electric guitar playing, but above all by a tone, a troubled emotion.
Such a big gesture
“I know a lot of people have said my songs sound scary, but not to me,” Vicky says. It was not my intention to make an agonizing album, and therefore, it makes me realize that I have no control over how it will be received. I could tell you that I made a happy record, but if everyone thinks otherwise, I don’t feel the need to say what my songs make me feel anymore, because the truth is in the way people welcome this music . And myself, I try to understand and analyze my own compositions… Well, at the end of the day, I understand why people say it’s a scary record, but that wasn’t my intention! »
“Writing a song is such a great gesture… My way of doing this is to leave all the room for my ideas, as they appear to me. So often my songs come from improvisation. I play something, and if I like it, I don’t edit it. I don’t try to control everything I do; I leave a lot of room for instinct, and then I retain the ideas that I have improvised”, musical and lyrical ideas, his texts coming to him just as spontaneously.
What meaning can we find in these songs, in this album? A song like Okra Ooze… what does she mean? At the end of the line, Vicky lets out a laugh. “What I try to do, in my lyrics, is first of all to rely on rhythm. Then, imagine how to translate situations, or emotions, but in an abstract way. I don’t explain anything, I don’t have a specific theme in mind, that’s not my intention either. What interests me in this approach is the idea that the listener will have of the meaning of a song, because for me, all that remains abstract, and I want it to remain so for people as well. »