CDM’s Liz Revision captured some thoughts by Modeselektor on visual collaboration at the Mutek press conference:
An interesting bit of trivia comes from the divulgence that Modeselektor was the result of a veritable German alt-tronica DIY endurance match, where the last men standing in a collective of audio and visual producers teamed up to form the current lineup.
After my initial talk with Christian Fennesz I hung around in the green room talking to him and video artist Lillevan about software, the music industry, and alternative revenue streams. Here’s what they had to say.
Peter Dines: Could you tell us about Modul8 for a second?
Lillevan: I don’t want to force anything on you, it’s just that before you think I’m just doing Jitter things…
Fennesz and Lillevan at Mutek 2008 from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.
Resident sonic maestro Peter Dines spent some quality time with Christian Fennesz and his video artist Lillevan at Mutek, and got so much geeky information on Christian’s techniques that we split it into two stories.
Fennesz shared some of his favorite patches from the modular patching environment Reaktor for our kore.noisepages.com site:
Mutek Interview: Exploring the Reaktor User Library with Fennesz
… and talks more about live performance, composition and sound, and collaboration for CDMusic:
Interview: Geeking Out with Fennesz on Sound and Performance
I had a super, super time talking to Christian Fennesz on Friday, and as a bonus Lillevan from Rechenzentrum was there and talked about his upcoming performance with Fennesz, video software etc.
Though he uses Max-based “lloopp” onstage, Fennesz is a user of Reaktor (and anything / everything else) in the studio and says he browses the user library for new stuff once a month. We namechecked a couple of the great Reaktor builders who make stuff he uses – Martin Brinkmann and Dieter Zobel, among others.
Later I had a great interview with Tim Hecker about software, sampling, source material, composition – he also uses Reaktor – I’m going to email him some followup questions to get more specifics. Tim had a run in with a door earlier that day that left an egg sized bruise swelling up on his cheekbone. As a result I don’t think we were connecting as well as we could have. The poor guy was trying to eat a late lunch and recuperate while a lineup of media people waited to interview him. I think he’s okay – his performance later that night was terrific. Tim performed in near-blackout conditions with nothing to distract from the massive blimps of sound he inflates and releases – that’s his analogy for what he does. More on that when I get the interview transcribed.
Ben Frost kicked off the A/Visions 3 show with processed guitar, stacks of amps, feedback and a command of the stage – the guy knows how to present his music in a visually arresting way. Two old-school cassette recorders sat miked at each end of his performance rig, matched by two stacks of amps and speakers off in back and two the sides. Ben attacks his material physically, working the rig with his whole body. Expect to hear a whole lot more from Ben.
Thursday’s second panel discussion at Mutek involved a group of international curators and festival programmers invited to discuss the festival’s main function as a source of cultural recommendation vs. the pressure to book the most popular acts, as well as what it takes to navigate the private and public sectors of funding, as well as what it means to be part of an international touring community where artists increasingly travel between festivals.
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One of the strange highlights of Mutek for me was Artificiel.process at Nocturne 2. Audio and video of bizarre turntable abuse was captured live and sequenced into… music? We’re talking multiple tonearms, records made of artificial wood, sproingy plastic bars instead of turntable needles, hammering and bashing, sampling the sound of the electric motors, all performed with a nonchalant attitude and a high volume. The crowd loved it and so did I. I have video, no time to edit right now, but here’s a picture of the aftermath:
Up next, Cristian Vogel and his Capybara!
Sorry, Cristian, we’re geeks here and the gear gets top billing!
Cristian’s set was fantastic. He’s a master at creating grooves that turn themselves inside out and upside down by dropping the beat and reintroducing it, those sorts of tricks.
Sleeparchive blew minds and shook bodies using a minimal setup. From his releases I had expected racks of analog hardware… there’s a richness to the white noise and static in some of his music that sounds vintage. I’m not 100% sure but I think one of his techniques might be running audio from an empty channel on his mixer back into the laptop and amplifying it until the hiss is audible, then gating and processing.
The second A/Visions featured, among others, headliners Rechenzentrum and Thrill Jockey artist Németh.
You may know Stefan Németh from his work with Radian. At Mutek, he was joined by drummer Steven Hess of Pan American for a live performance of music from Németh’s first solo release, Film. Ironically, there was no visual presentation other than the musicians themselves. Németh performed with a modular synth that was maddeningly turned away from me so I can’t say what it was… he also looked to be triggering things with an MPC. I love seeing electronic musicians performing live with drummers or acoustic instrumentalists – when it’s well coordinated, it’s magic. This was no “here’s a click track, stick to it” sort of deal. One got the feeling that the performers were keeping a keen eye on each other and balancing the tempo on a knife edge. Great stuff.
Rechenzentrum presented the North American debut of their work, Silence. It was visually and sonically lush. The next day I got a chance to talk to video manipulator Lillevan who was also presenting his work in conjunction with the music of Fennesz at A/Visions 3 on Friday. Lillevan is a user of Cycling 74’s Jitter, and his constantly mutating visuals were a brilliant counterpoint to Marc Weiser’s audio half of Rechenzentrum. The audio spanned everything from the sound of steam engines to what I can only describe as dub by way of Esquivel.
Too much music, too little time! I’ll have something to say about performers Freida Abtan and Nokami + Sans Soleil later.
This is turning out to be an awesome edition of Mutek.
The ninth edition of the Montreal Mutek festival kicked off with a cocktail party for us media weasels at SAT. I think I missed a free handout of wine, but I managed to score some hors d’oeuvres. Win!
But of course the real kick-off was A/Visions 1 at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. A/Visions is a series of events pairing musicians with video artists. First up, Morgan Packard and Joshue Ott, who fused delicate sound textures and thumping bass with visuals created in Ott’s own Superdraw software. Superdraw is super jaw dropping. Check it out.
Montrealer Nicholas Bernier debuted his piece Les Arbres, which combined a live mini string section (violin and cello) with sequenced material and live-sampled percussion instruments. That’s the first time I’ve seen someone bowing a xylophone, I tell you what. Visuals by urban9 were a montage of manipulated old photographs that told a ghostly tale. I noticed that the string players had sheet music, and Nicholas was working from – if not sheet music – then at least a list of cues. Sheet music?! Not something you expect to see at an electronic music fest.
Headliner Murcof took the stage with visual artists XX and XY. Murcof’s latest album is titled Cosmos and consists of sampled and manipulated classical instruments. It sounded at times like prepared instruments handled non-traditionally, like direct contact with the harp of a piano and some acoustic guitar thumps. The visuals worked beautifully with the music, and added to the sense of terrible beauty and majesty that Murcof evokes with his cosmic sounds. I wondered if the audience was meant to see faces and figures in the drifting textures – they were there and also not there, it seemed. I’m still trying to process and describe exactly how this performance made me feel – it was entrancing and alarming. The crescendos stabbed through me like a knife. Here’s some youtubery of an earlier performance:
Later the same evening, I had my bones shaken by the hammering bass of Detroit’s Interstellar Fugitives. Detrooooooit!
