by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“By some fluke, I managed to do the worst break they’d seen in 20 years at the General,” says Nate Munn, in reference to his femur-shattering, hip-dislocating fall from the stage at Foufounes a year ago. “I’ve got a titanium and gold bar in there forever—that’s it, the bionic man.”

The accident happened only two songs into the Ghettonuns set that capped the inaugural edition of Unpop, a music festival he organized in response to Pop Montreal and North by Northeast.

Unpop, by contrast, promised free shows and exclusively local bands, selected on a first-come, first-serve basis, with no application fee or screening process, with all the money coming out of Munn’s pocket. He couldn’t have foreseen the accident, the four-month Dilaudid-assisted recovery in his native Ottawa and the subsequent poverty that nearly forced him to scale this year’s Unpop down to one show (his own). But guess who came to the rescue.

“When I heard that Pop was trying to get a hold of us, I took it as a joke. I figured they were making fun of me,” says Munn. “But then I thought about it and realized it’s all about the shows, not about how I look. The bands were into it too, as long as it doesn’t alter any of the rules of Unpop.”

And so Pop Montreal presents Unpop 2006 this Saturday, 10 bands in the midst of Main Madness on St-Laurent. Among them will be Ghettonuns, now a duo pairing MC Versus (aka Munn) with the “insane skills” of Philip Karneef, an electroacoustics student at Concordia. Together, with influences ranging from punk to prog, metal to funk, classic rock to aggro techno, they’re crafting a concept album called Omnipath City Distort.

“It’s all about Montreal,” says Munn, forecasting a narrative stacked with local colour, along with plenty of references to physical trauma—one of country-boy Karneef’s lungs has collapsed twice in the past year.

“Montreal fucked you and Montreal fucked me,” says Karneef, addressing Munn. “I totally think it was the shock of the pollution here that did me in.”

“We both went through a ridiculous year,” adds Munn. “But once I got back [from Ottawa], I was just possessed by the city. I swear, every day, all I could do is write eight hours a day—I didn’t have a job, nothing. And as soon as we started rocking out, the influences started converging and the songwriting came so naturally, and that’s really coming out in the music. Every session keeps getting better and more insane.”

On stage, Karneef will be busy generating live and canned sounds on a laptop and synth, while Munn will surely tone down his spaz-tastic moves for his rematch with Foufounes’ stage on Sunday night…

“Fuck no,” says Karneef, shaking his head. “The man can still move.”

“But I’ll definitely have my eyes on the foot of the stage,” says Munn. “[The accident] changed a lot, for sure, but in terms of the stray voodoo that Ghettonuns causes in my brain, nothing can restrain it, apparently.”

The Real Deal, Infinite Moksha, Launie Anderssohn, Ghettonuns, So Cyanide, Amanda Mabro, Ideal Lovers, John School Dropouts, Fold Me Up, Delmonico and Metis Yeti at Parc des Amériques on Saturday, Aug. 26, noon, free Ghettonuns with Raw Madonna and Dead Messenger at Foufounes on Sunday, Aug. 27, 9 p.m., free

>> Music Listings