The good, the bad
and the dubby

By JACK OATMON

We’ll start with the bad news. As you may have heard, there was a fire early Sunday, May 16 at the Green Room on St-Laurent, causing the bar to move all booked shows to other venues. At the time of writing this, the official story is that an extension cord was pinched in behind the jukebox, and there was an electrical fire as a result. Nobody was injured, as the bar was closed and empty, but the damage was serious enough that on Sunday staff said they weren’t sure if the place could be reopened, at least any time soon.

Now for good news. In response to innumerable disgruntled Facebook status updates, strongly worded emails and generally widespread panic, Piknic Électronik organizers have happily reneged on their plan to ban BYOB at their events. The compromise is that attendees can bring a few beers or a bottle of wine if they’re eating, but it has to be a real picnic, not just a little dep snack, as is the custom in the city’s parks anyway.

And finally, the dubby is Shed, this week’s MUTEK spotlight. Shed’s a Berliner who manages to meld old school techno sounds with a gradual, groovy dub production style without falling into either of the two current traps for dub producers—on the one hand, German techno producers’ tendency to be so formulaic as to miss out on the whole reason dub exists, which is to create a surprising and psychedelic sonic space, or on the other hand, to make the mistake of so many Brits and just add wobble bass to a pared-down D&B beat or a 2-step shuffle and call it dubstep. He skirts both styles as well as putting out some straight-up classic techno tracks, but mostly he charts his own course with big, bizarre, finely tuned grooves.

TECHNO-TRACK-LENGTH SENTENCES… jack.oatmon@gmail.com