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Fuzzy logic >> MUTEK guest Akumu isn't into bongos |
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by RAF KATIGBAK
"I like it that you can't tell where some of my sounds came from," Hughes explains. "One thing that's always fascinated me is when you look at a wall, for example, and you imagine you see something. Maybe you see a face in a stain that you've never seen before. It's always been there but you've never noticed it. Then, the next day, you're like, ‘I swear there was a beard on the wall, and you can't see it anymore.' I just think that these random occurrences of using your imagination are amazing. My music is like that - half the artist, half the listener." That said, there's a lot of Hughes in his latest album Magmas, most of it from three years ago when he spent six months living, travelling and recording in South America. Eventually, he made his way by land from the northern tip of Honduras all the way to Toronto. But rather than straight-up sample his environment and plunk it down willy-nilly, the results are suitably impressionistic. "I didn't want to go somewhere and pick out something and use it in a song, like musicians who come back from South America and all of a sudden, they've got bongo drums on their record. I didn't want to make a world-sounding record. It's more like, this is what it sounded like in my head when I was there. It's a sort of static." Magmas is rife with broad sonic strokes - ambient drones, tones, sub-frequency pulses and intricate micro-sonics that slowly shift over time. Existing somewhere in the delicate moments between sleep and the waking world, Hughes' music delves into the dark and moody recesses of the mind. "Each of us is totally isolated from everybody else. No matter how much of a community we are, really, we're all by ourselves - we have our own thoughts, our own brain. Sometimes it's good to delve deep in that direction. It's a lonely place, but it's where we get all our great ideas." With Martux_M & Mattia Casalegno and Bas Van Koolwijk at Ex-Centris on Thursday, June 2, 8 p.m., $25
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Deane Hughes' music is pretty blurry, but he doesn't care. In fact, the Toronto producer, better known as Akumu, is happy to leave the audience open to their own fuzzy interpretations of his darkly atmospheric sound.
With an underlying travel theme (note the airport-security X-ray posters), MUTEK's lineup for its five days and nights of conferences, performances and DJ sets is perhaps the most ambitious to date. While there are fewer recognizable names than in previous years, festival head Alain Mongeau is confident this year's invitees will deliver the goods and offer more than a few surprises.  |
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