Victograms

>> The Mirror's picks for Victoriaville 2001

by BOSS SAMBOSA and RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The event formerly known as the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville has finally cracked and accepted that everyone just calls it Victo. You can, too. Five days of cutting-edge experimentation, pushing the envelope of what constitutes music, is what repeat visitors to the fest, in its 18th year now, have come to expect: the strange, the challenging and the just plain difficult.

The geographically challenged will need to note that Victoriaville, the city, is a couple of hours by car away from Montreal. You take the 20, get off at exit 210 and, uh, call us if you get lost. Maybe you should check the Web site, at www.fimav.qc.ca, first. Here's a few of our preferred slots this year.

Bill Frisell Trio

Hate to call Frisell a "guitarist's guitarist," even though six-stringers across the board, from jazz geeks to metal freaks, bow down in worship before him. He's just got a knack for coaxing the most inviting sounds out of the instrument, and the composition skills to put them in just the right order. See, the fact that he's got chops is, he knows, no reason to parade them in and of themselves (cc: Mr. Vai). Combine a Colorado youth given to soul and C&W with solid jazz training, abetted by a decade-long residency in the heart of NYC's avant scene (where he hooked up with John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, Arto Lindsay, Don Byron and more), multiplied by a fun factor of X (he scored Buster Keaton flicks live at Victo '95) and you've got a recipe for damn near perfect.

At Colisée des Bois-francs on Thursday, May 17, 10pm, $26

Erosonic

Atmospherics for jazzheads here. This Canadian sax/accordion duo creates semi-ambient, musique concrète style psychedelic spaces which somehow resolve the blurry divide between avant-jazz and electroacoustics. See, most jazzers hold the opinion that electroacoustics is music for pretentious, untrained wankers, by pretentious, untrained wankers. Erosonic could serve as an example to the contrary. David Mott is a devoted sax player, and though he plays with restraint, there is no doubt that he is a good old jazz-trained pro. Likewise for accordion player Joseph Petric, who handles most of the ringing, high-timbre stuff. Think minimalist John Zorn.

At CÉGEP de Victoriaville on Friday, May 18, 5pm, $16

4 Walls

It's hard to believe none of these guys are German. Wow. 4 Walls picks up where Can, circa Damo Suzuki, left off--freaked out krautrock with intense yodelling. Mixing half-jazz piano with sick bass (courtesy of Luc Ex from the Ex) and frantic drums, this group "knows how to make the most of the encounter between rock and improvised music." Digressions into long, texture-based movements kind of legitimize their presence at Victo, and the rest is just crazy fun. This will be an amazing show.

At Colisée des Bois-francs on Friday, May 18, 10pm, $24

Shalabi Effect

Seeing as how Hawkwind couldn't make it up to Victo this time around, or ever, the mighty Sam Shalabi and his lost-planet airmen will be responsible for recreating the ecstatic and terrifying experience of flying through space wearing nothing but bellbottoms and a biker vest. Actually, guitarist/oud-player Shalabi (whose name has been attached to a million and one reconfigurations of Montreal's experimental-music crowd) and his posse of Anthony Seck, Will Eizlini and Alexandre St-Onge have managed to pull off massive, deeply psychedelic trance-out jams that are never corny or embarrassing. Now that's far out.

At CÉGEP de Victoriaville on Friday, May 18, 12:15am, $16

Stock, Hausen and Walkman

The medium is the message, right? McLuhan was pretty dead-on when he said that--something this reactionary techno group have taken to heart. Pulling together a peculiar array of somewhat grotesque and irritating fragments of Western culture via sampling, Stock, Hausen and Walkman take our culture's collective amnesia/schizophrenia and transform it into quirky, circus-sounding techno coated with some pretty out-there sounds. For those experiencing the existential grief of modern living, allow this British group to take you to the awkward, funny tail of Ikea living.

At CÉGEP de Victoriaville on Saturday, May 19, 1pm, $16

Eltractor

Hard to believe these guys aren't German either. Doing hardcore electroacoustic techno, this Québec-based art-dance combo takes its cues from Scanner, or maybe Coh. Kind of a playful mix of start-stop drum & bass, cheap synth, aggressive forays into pulsing noise and humorous vocal samples. The beats are "brutally interrupted," but the groove remains. Probably one of Victo's only danceable events. Think Boards of Canada with more German precision-aggressiveness.

At CÉGEP de Victoriaville on Saturday, May 19, 12:15am, $16

Kim Gordon, Ikue Mori, DJ Olive and Jim O'Rourke

There's a lot of star-power driving this band. Kim Gordon is joined by DNA no-wave drummer Ikue Mori, DJ Olive and the great soundmaker Jim O'Rourke. Collectors of the SYR series will know what to expect here: Gordon's sultry vocals over a layer of distant percussive smashes, wavey soundscapes, simple guitar riffs and O'Rourke's crisp computer sounds. It always kind of breaks down when Kim or Ikue get too into it and start screaming. It can really be downright irritating, actually, and we can see Gordon walking the same path that Yoko Ono took all those insane years ago. Just for a rare glimpse at O'Rourke's subtle precision, check out this band.

At Cinéma Laurier on Sunday, May 20, 8pm, $24

Fantômas

Guess who's back to haunt Victo again this year? From Faith No More through Mr. Bungle to this spooky business, vocalist Mike Patton has proven himself to be a wild, unpredictable force of nature--kinda like the coif on Buzz Osborne, once of the Melvins and now a full-fledged Fantôma. So is Dave Lombardo, who used to be in Slayer, which is super fuckin' heavy. Fantômas draw on their roots in heaviosity, but loping stoner grooves are out of the question. This is lefthanded chaos rock for the attention-deficit set--an explosion of high-intensity sonic non-sequiturs. Whoa!

At Colisée des Bois-francs on Sunday, May 20, 10pm, $28

John Zorn

The one and only Z-man, celebrated composer, saxophonist and conceptualizer, is hitting Victo with a one-two punch this year. First of all, he's busting out a set with Bar Kokhba, a cross-pollination of Jewish musical traditions (refer to Zorn's Masada) and Latino rhythms (note the involvement of "artificial Cuban" Marc Ribot). Then he's going to have a little snack and a nap, after which he joins no less than the mighty Bill Laswell, bizarre-guitar guy Fred Frith (once of Henry Cow) and the aforementioned, Slayeriffic Dave Lombardo. Should be a terrifying frenzy of bottom-heavy aural absolution.

Zorn/Bar Kokhba are at Colisée des Bois-francs on Monday, May 21, 3pm, $30, Zorn, Laswell et. al. at 8:30pm, $28