by JACK OATMON

You may sometimes find yourself at home after a big weekend, masturbating, eating corn chips and wondering, “Where does a guy go for brew and some tunes this early in the week?” When you find yourself in these straits, having already checked your e-mail twice and peering forebodingly at that uncracked copy of The DaVinci Code, Montreal’s disturbingly dedicated DJ community still has your best interests in mind. So here’s the latest in early-week beats for the relentless, techno-craving mass and weekend-working class.

On Monday nights at Blue Dog, you can get your fill of breaks, dub, drum & bass and other grass-compatible styles at EZ Bake Mondays. The residents are scenesters-slash-really-friendly-dudes Kiffah, Dialect, db Vaig and Dee Bass. Go get your cheap pitchers and weekly guests without a cover.

Locals Soundshaper and Nathan Burns have recently started a regular Tuesday night at undisputed groovy-interior champion, Salon Daomé. The night’s called Telephunk, it costs $4 a head, and it features danceable beats for that nice hardwood floor. You can also check those cats out with afterhours figures Philgood and Vincent Lemieux, along with Seko, at the next Centre Fractal party, Audio Mecanik (Friday, June 16). Seems like it’s gonna be on the house/electro side of things. Bang! Bang! Dance-dance. You know.

As is the case this week, once a month my Wednesdays are dominated by the smooth beats, rug-cutting, genre-jumping and general madness provided by Women on Wax. As is also commonly the case, the party this Wednesday, June 21, at Academy has a live guest performance, this time by Hip Hop à la Flute. The DJs for the night are Tashish, Ruby Jane, Dirty Dan, Jasmine and Cyan, who, along with Jan Pienkowski, is also one of the folks responsible for the Robo/tek series. The ninth installment of that goes down tonight, Thursday, June 15, at SAT’s Thursday MixSessions. The series explores diverse electronic music styles, high-tech visual-arts whatchamahoozits and suchlike.

I’m pretty excited for this week’s Piknic Électronik, which sees two of my most favourite-est local DJs waxin’ under the open sky. Somehow, Mini always manages to play plenty of great tracks I’ve never heard before, which says a lot seeing as I’ve probably heard her spin about two dozen times. The disco vampire himself, Jordan Dare, comes out to sun with his raging, slickly-blended dose of KABOOM! They’ll be bashing your ears off the side of your head alongside Bliss and Gentle Bakemono (David Kristian). I’ll probably die of overheating from doing too much of the Funky Chicken and the Mashed Potato. “Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”

On the live-act side of things, there are a couple of free gigs well worth checking out this week. On Saturday night, you can see local synth-pop fiends Telefauna popping out growling, snapping tracks at the Academy Club. Think About Life are doing an outdoor appearance on the corner of St-Laurent and Rachel: wild, plinky-plonky grooves, anthem vocals and a good dose of chaotic beats.

FREE STUFF RULES TOO. jack.oatmon@gmail.com

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