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Sprockets for dummies >> A Philistine's guide to the Elektra festival
by MIREILLE "DIETER" SILCOTT
Still, that doesn't mean they don't have anything good to see, underneath all the zeros and slashes. In fact, the ACREQ's (Association Creation Recherche Electroacoustiques Quebec) Elektra festival, which is sprocketing away as you read this (until November 12) at Usine C and Sona, has some damned fine DJs and other such dudes coming in. Below are some of the highlights us regular fries can get into (for artsier and less-pop-musicky stuff, check out p. 34).
Friday, November 5: Pierre Henry was one of the first people to make entire records of completely electronic music in the 1960s. He's French, and his old stuff sounds a lot like machine-made go-go, which is great. You know the theme song on Futurama? That's one of his. He's going to be performing his 1968 big-time opus "L'apocalypse de Jean" at Usine C at 9 p.m. He's on again at 11:30 p.m. with a piece from 1962, called "Messe pour le temps present," which he will be remixing live. Could get a bit klangy, but take your chances.
Friday, November 12: This night is called Inter-Mission. Local freeky-techno dudes Nuclear Ramjet, of the Ascend label, do the live thing at Usine C at 11 p.m., and Ascend's Neerav (old heads might remember him as trance DJ Mini Mono from back in the day) DJs at 12:30 a.m. Germany's Tobias Lampe, don of the techno-housey label Superstition (very smart stuff, you can be assured), plays afterhours at Sona, starting sometime after 2 a.m. Also on the bill is Lionrock's Justin Robertson, once one of Britain's leading Balearic-circuit DJs (and now just a really expensive U.K. guy) and Nivok, once Montreal's main Goa-trance head (now not so Goa anymore).
Wear your black turtleneck and watch for the "creative" modern dancers on the floor. There're bound to be many.
For prices and info, call 521-4453 or 790-1245 |
It's always quite strange when techno typa things get mixed with contemporary artsy kinda things-- usually the result is pretty scary and pretentious and advertised with flyers with lots of tiny writing accompanied by many zeros and slashes (it's never just, like, "November 4, 1999, 6 p.m.," it must be something more like 00.04//10//2000-1//--00.18.00) on them. Usually, there are Germans involved. And clinging and clanging (or klinging and klanging). Usually, it's all quite Sprockets.