A few days after presenting his first live performance of his career, at the MUTEK festival, Montreal singer-songwriter Victor Bongiovanni will take part in the 23e edition of the MEG, this time as a DJ.
The musician will share the festival poster with big names — Fatboy Slim, Skream, Dillon Francis, Misstress Barbara, RAUMM — and several local rap and electronic music talents like Mike Shabb, Lou Fre$h, Ellxandra and Afternoon Bike Ride .
He worked all summer preparing this livedownstream of his first microalbum, Ungroup, released last fall on the Collection Disques durs label. The first microalbum bearing his real name, let us specify, since the musician already has a small discography of his own under the name Rosewater CTZ, then influenced by bass music and English drum and bass, influences that we expect to find in his musical selection of the weekend.
“When I DJ, I play a wide variety of styles, the goal being to find a way to tell a story using music from all possible genres, but which have common points, in terms of textures and tones” , says Bongiovanni. We will hear “as much emo as IDM, techno or pop — in fact, a lot of the music that inspires me in my solo productions”.
Ungroup marked a turning point for the musician, who moved away from the dance floors to offer a song, with his voice and his guitar, soaked in electronic sounds and textures – the cover of the microalbum recalls the style of those of GAS, the legendary ambient project by German composer Wolfgang Voigt.
“Oh! I love Gas! says Bongiovanni. “This music and these textures greatly influence the way I create music, even in Paradis Artificiel”, the experimental trio he forms with friends Odile Myrtill and Ourielle Auvé, alias Ouri, with whom he will share the stage on Sunday evening at the Society for Arts and Technology.
With his solo project, “it’s like mixing music from my teenage years with modern production techniques. This alloy of experimental electronic music and pop, I find it fascinating”.
Victor Bongiovanni is currently simmering a next mini-album, expected by the end of the year, through which he will deepen this fusion between emo song and experimental electronic music launched last fall. “I’m just beginning to accept using my voice as an instrument,” he admits, revealing that the upcoming mini-album will more strongly affirm his new passion for songwriting.
“Words convey something extremely precise in a musical composition. We can say things so much more complex, or complete, and more difficult, too. It’s a bit of an attempt at self-therapy, to understand things that you can’t understand otherwise than after having made a song of them. When composing, I often start with the melodies, and then it’s as if the words attach themselves to the melodies; I then have an image that forms in front of me, thanks to the words. »
The MEG festival will take place from September 2 to 5, at Parc Jean-Drapeau and the Society for Arts and Technology.