petronia

PSA #1 --

fabulous_papaya reminded me of this: Simian Mobile Disco's contribution to SSBB's summer special. One of these days I'll post a SFW music video again.

PSA #2 -- I know some of you have Beatport accounts; if you log in and go to http://www.beatport.com/mutek you can download a free promo album of MUTEK weekend's Piknic Electronik artists. Better, it lists all the other Beatport promos in the sidebar, some of which are still free. XD (If you don't have a Beatport account, don't - it can only end in penury.)

So I, uh, got my photo taken with Michael Mayer. At the time I was like "I'm going to make my friends jealous :D" but now I'm retroactively embarrassed. XD;

Was live-streaming the Café Electronika afternoon sets on Thursday and Friday but only made it to Hotel Godin Friday evening (where they told me the tickets were at the gate anyway). I said this last year too but I wish I'd gone earlier as the venue turned out to be gorgeous - a huge rectangular concrete loggia and balcony three floors up with comfy seating and a view down St. Laurent, suitable for chilling with a beer and friends. While I was there a gauzy electronic shoegazer band was playing, of all things. ...A really very good gauzy electronic shoegazer band. Apparently Bjork is a fan, now that I'm looking at their website.

RANDOM DJ-RELATED NOTE: I think I saw Magda there which is less unlikely than it seems as there was a weird off-MUTEK thing happening whereby Hawtin and Magda were playing Parking with Mini on Thursday and Carl Craig was playing Stereo on Friday (and I didn't go to either for all the usual reasons ex. having a job, having friends who have jobs, the not unlikely possibility this past week of total physical collapse, etc. =_=), so she could've still been in town. No photographic evidence one way or the other on Flickr last I checked but there are a couple of nice shots of Robag Wruhme [1] lounging around on the concrete.

Oh and I bought a couple of albums on the ch33p: Jesse Somfay's Between Heartbeats and Wighnomy Bros/Robag Wruhme's Remikks Potpourri II. Was taken off-guard by how amazingly good the Jesse Somfay is - I've been listening to it on repeat since Sunday morning. And timely (more on this).

After the set wrapped I headed back down to Windsor Station for the Beer Festival. I'd scoped it out on Thursday at which point it wasn't all that crowded but Friday evening was a SEA OF HUMANITY, per expectations as it's, well, the Beer Festival. If ever two words were guaranteed to bring people together... Was there with T and her friend Andre C and had to queue for ages to get coupons but otherwise it was a party. Note: schlepping one's own tasting mug is urgent and key.

Over the course of both days I tried:

* apple beer
* raspberry beer
* morella mushroom beer (it was called "Umami" XD)
* a German wheat ale
* a French beer on lees called "Gavroche"
* two different kinds of spiced beer
* espresso stout (there's a future in this one)
* a "new beer" that bubbled like champagne
* rosewater-flavoured hard cider
* the official beer of the festival, a 9% cream ale with a nose like caramel dessert
* Newcastle Brown Ale (yummy!)

Food was Belgian-style fries and bison sausage-onna-stick, because it just wouldn't be Beer Fest otherwise.

Saturday was humid but thankfully not rainy. I'd been trying to pull together a group for Piknic Electronik which used up more cellular phone credits in three days than I normally expend in a month. ^^; It ended up being me, Erin, Golitzinsky and Simon, with T not showing finally because she got stuck in traffic. Piknic was Piknic [2], Claude VonStroke was Claude VonStroke i.e. good ~~clean~~ dirty fun. MyMy was a bit moody for three in the afternoon so we sat most of the set out on the grass. I'll post the pictures just to show how idyllic it is down there, with the waterfalls and the bridge and the darling tots and the Labrador dog paddling in the reeds. XD Then got crepes and danced through Chic Miniature's set, which was really good - bongos-heavy, sort of Luciano-esque on the whole, there was one track that I'm sure was on SFHF2. Finished with a cut-up remix of "You Got The Love" and some... Nina Simone, I think.

The last hour of Audion's set was supposedly ace but we weren't there for it as had to leave halfway through to grab some dinner at Noodle Express and make Talal's karaoke party. XD This was at a joint on Mackay called Pang Pang where we'd never been but always wanted to try out due to the gloriously tacky decor visible from the exterior. It ended up being a huge room with 20-odd people including T, Henk, Alec and other usual suspects, and instead of videos the karaoke programme showed CG anime girls dancing to the beat like in DDR-type games. We did "The Real Folk Blues" and "Endless ~~Lame~~ Rain". XD Singing at the top of one's lungs for two straight hours followed by several hours of screaming appreciation at the DJ does nothing for an incipient cough however; A LESSON OFT-LEARNT BUT OFT-IGNORED.

Then headed to Metropolis, which was OTT with the special lighting - this giant rectangular array of red halogen lamps directly over the floor, like dancing in a convection oven. ^^; And blinking strings of ~~Christmas~~ lights cascading down the walls. What MUTEK does is set up a picnic table for each DJ so when the time comes they unplug the one and plug in the other. These were placed, AFAICT, according to performer extroversion (if indeed the position of the picnic table didn't determine the appearance thereof): so Gui Boratto - who spent his set hunkered behind his Powerbook staring at the screen and smoking a joint [3] - was way at the back, followed by Pantha Du Prince, followed by Jichael Mackson at stage right (I'd say he made par XD), Broke at stage left (Matias Aguayo sang), and Mayer (who appears to believe DJ = star dancer) right up front.

Missed all but the end of Pantha Du Prince's set but holy shiznit dude is a dead ringer for Nekozawa out of Ouran.[4] CHEER UP EMOGOTH DJ. Caught half of Jichael Mackson, checked out the Savoy room for the next half hour which was also pretty ace but the point was more to sit down for a bit before the main action. XD; It being the fourth day of a five-day festival we weren't the only ones with this idea, the dancefloor was doing the shuffle-step.[5] Then the Aguayo/Rossknecht set kept it deep and dubby (in a good way; hadn't heard the material at all though) so the crowd mellowed out completely - lots of talking and swaying in place. Then Gui Boratto came on at like 1:30AM and people finally felt permitted to expend a little energy.

Gui Boratto played a live set which was basically Chromophobia: The Non-Stop Extended Remix (he and Mayer restrained themselves from "Archipelago" although in retrospect I wish someone had played the Supermayer remix of "Like You"). This was pretty much what I wanted complete with everyone going bananas to "Beautiful Life" at the end so I was happy. XD Actually everything danceable off Chromophobia was on heavy rotation at MUTEK - "Mr Decay", "Terminal", "Gate 7", I think I even heard "Scene" at Piknic though I can't remember when. Mayer was the only one who played The Field though.

...You know what, I'm going to post this and write the rest after. orz

[1] Wighnomy Kempt; not his real name. "Nice shots" in that they were taken with a superior camera - I'm lazy about posting MUTEK pics as there is a high-ish correlation between "techno nerd" and "person who documents his/her life in minute detail through online multimedia blogging", so all one has to do is search tags on Flickr for other people's handiwork. XD

[2] Where I take notes on hipster/raver fashion. XD Currently I'm groping at the edges of a master thesis re: acceptable t-shirt designs, f'rinstance one cannot wear a shirt proclaiming one's allegiance to the act whose show one is currently attending, therefore for simplicity's sake no one wears shirts for dance/electronica acts at all, however t-shirts for record labels and/or stores and/or other festivals are okay, as well as t-shirts of non-specific but attractive design involving headphones, cassette decks, etc. Also, since MUTEK is for minimal/experimental electronica, it is de bon ton to wear a shirt proclaiming one's allegiance to 80s metal, Led Zep, or Billy Joel.

[3] Metropolis was cracking down more than usual - signs posted everywhere, bag and pat-down searches with no exceptions - but once people were in it was the usual free-for-all. That and what are you going to do, throw out the DJ? orz There was a youngish security dude leaning against the stage dead centre and glaring disaffectedly at nothing in particular, which was intimidating until everyone eventually realized he couldn't be arsed to uhh actually do anything. He seemed pretty miserable actually, I talked to him for about 5sec and got the impression he really hated the music (i.e. probably had a pounding migraine all night). XD;; At the end of the night he was making out with a random girl though so I suppose it wasn't a dead loss for him.

[4] Wouldn't you be suspicious of anyone who had a bangs-over-one-eye haircut and "Glühen 4" as a DJ alias? I'm just sayin'.

[5] Not the same thing as "schaffel-step". (Another thing I do is make up names for dance moves: "microhouse hip thrust", "boxing mime", etc. "Pure" techno dances - as opposed to breakdancing or jacking - look like autistic stimming to me, which gives one something to ponder re: social context.)