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Mechanical panic >> The rat-tat-tat robots of Automates Ki
by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
"Our studio used to be a kindergarten," says Maxime Rioux, "which is somehow appropriate." Rioux says this because the Automates Ki project that he and his partner Gerard Leckey have been working on for about four years is a bit like a gang of noisy, unruly mechanical brats. Moreover, the whole thing has a definite handmade lo-fi vibe going on, reminiscent of the arts-and-crafts sessions that may well have gone on in the space before it became their studio space. The same way a DJ uses found sounds to create a sonic collage, former sculpture student Rioux uses everyday junk to fashion the components of Automates Ki. "A lot of the materials come from alleyways in the neighbourhood--the plywood, anyway. I'll go to Chinatown, too, to get chopsticks and bamboo--bamboo is great, it's very strong wood. The bottles are Blanche de Chambly. They've got a great sound." The wires lead to the outer circle, a ring of waist-high shelving strewn with odd plywood sculptures, looking like leftovers from a school science fair. Attached to the plywood are small woofer speakers, glued to lengths of string tied to little wirecoil bonhommes clutching chopsticks and wooden mallets. Each has an instrument of some sort attached: tambourines, tablas and tin cans, bottles and bells, cymbals and rattles and old lampshade frames. A stuffed monkey lollygags from a pegboard wall. People smoke, cough, chug beer, mumble among themselves. "We use pulses of low frequency sound to control the speakers," says Rioux, "and the speakers' movements manipulate the percussion. We can preprogram the performance, on 8-track for instance. But we prefer to do more of a live improvisation, using the synthesizer. The low frequencies don't come through as strong if they've been recorded digitally." More to the point, unpredictability is the essence of Automates Ki, giving the automates, the noisy little drum droids, something close to individual personality. A police siren wails through the window, a radio hisses rabid rabbit rants. The puppet masters push a few keys and buttons, scattered thumps and rattles pop up here and there. Lights shoot off at crazy angles. More little machine buddies wake up, take the cue, start banging out their own cadence. Soon they're all going at it, banging out a high holy cacophony, a polyrhythmic thrift shop clusterfuck. A trumpet honks, a keyboard groans, the room fills with a sonic soup of clanking, tapping, whining, crashing, chiming and chattering. If there's a resemblance to the percussion jams of Moroccan mystics and Brazilian batucada, it's unintentional--which is precisely the intention. "If an African musician hears these automates," says Rioux, "he thinks, 'What the hell is that? How can anyone create polyrhythms like that? It must be some strange tribe somewhere, because that's really weird music.'" As cute as Rioux and Leckey's tribe of trashcan troubadours may seem, there's a solid philosophical subtext to their command performances. "We've been using low frequencies, which maybe cats and dogs can hear, but not people. So it's a kind of invisible energy, like the concept of chi in martial arts. You can't see it, hear it or feel it, but you can hear the results, what it causes. So you know it's all around us."
At the International Festival of Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville (CEGEP de Victoriaville) on Thursday, May 20, 10pm, $24. Info: (819) 752-7912
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Handwritten signs direct you through an alleyway behind a Mile-End elementary school, up a dark flight of stairs, into an out-of-service classroom. The space is laid out in concentric circles. The center is a bank of mixing boards, analog synths and assorted knobby devices. A vast spiderweb of wires arcs over the middle circle, a mess of pillows and old chairs seating an assortment of chinstroking Plateau intellos, their cool demeanor soon to dissolve into the wide-eyed wonder of kids in a toy store.