Mutek

MUTEKLIVE074 - Basic Soul Unit Live in Montreal 2012

KARA-LIS COVERDALE (CA) https://soundcloud.com/klissay
PLAY 1 :: DADA SALON 
Friday, May 29 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

Montréal-based musician and composer Kara-Lis Coverdale gives concerts made for full body immersion, multi layered through multi timbral synths, her computer a virtual organ engine. Couched in symphonic, post sacred tonalities and harmonies, the music on Coverdale’s releases Aftertouches (on Sacred Phrases) and A 480 (on Constellation Tatsu) uses virtual sounds from vocal and instrumental sources to confront traditional genres and consolidate them in the artist’s own precise ways. Currently an organist and music director at St. John’s church in Montréal, Coverdale contributed piano and keyboards on friend and mentor Tim Hecker’s Virgins album in 2013 and most recently has collaborated with LXV (musician David Sutton) on their 2015 album, released by Umor Rex. Her live set for MUTEK 2015 draws on that album and recent compositions of pipe organ, sensorial electronics and glittering drones while leaving room for inspired improvisation.

Mastered by LANDR (www.landr.com)

You can also watch THE WIRE SESSIONS with KARA-LIS COVERDALE here: https://vimeo.com/132852323 - Q&A streamed on May 30, 2015 at Phi Centre.

MUTEKLIVE086 - Kara-Lis Coverdale @ MUTEK 2015

PERFUME ADVERT (UK)
NOCTURNE 5 :: ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND SYNTHS
Sunday, May 31 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

Pairing brittle, deep house basslines with crackly dub techno textures, Aaron Turner and Tom Brown come together as Middlesborough, UK duo Perfume Advert. Indebted to the stark, low slung sonics of the Opal Tapes aesthetic, Perfume Advert’s unassumingly potent, analog grooves rapidly found a home on Vancouver imprint 1080p. Upon releasing their lo-fi Tulpa tape (2013), the British duo found that their warped, sci fi dreamscapes – teeming with shuffling synth lines, faint field recordings and abstracted rhythmic manipulations – had struck a real critical chord. Using shortwave radio, Ableton and treasured samplers, Perfume Advert’s fondness for live recordings and unconcern for overdubs rapidly appealed to aficionados of warm, unprocessed ambiance. The pair has continued to experiments with thick layers of moody tech-house and forays into fragile dub. Kappa Downs, their latest three-track EP for British label Where To Now?, finds them embracing slightly glossier, though still dementedly unorthodox tonal bliss.

Mastered by LANDR (www.landr.com)

MUTEKLIVE088 - Perfume Advert @ MUTEK 2015

PATRICIA (US) soundcloud.com/patriciaaa
NOCTURNE 4 :: HIT THE (UNDER)GROUND RUNNING
Saturday, May 30 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

While his cryptic moniker dodges detection by sophisticated search engines, this Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based hardware techno helmer first caught the ears of New York’s underground with his hiss loaded, dazzlingly dissonant, plodding yet pulsating rhythms. A self avowed gear nerd (which explains his day job at Brooklyn modular synth shrine Control), Max Ravitz’s texture tinkering Body Issues cassette (later reissued on Opal Tapes) became one of the most critically lauded debuts of 2013, receiving justified hurrahs for its malleable layers of house haze. This purveyor of groovy ambience followed that up with last year’s melodically skittering Side Piece EP on Ghostly sublabel Spectral Sound. Besides Patricia, Ravitz also collaborates with a number of like minded analog techno producers: with Jahiliyya Fields on the L.I.E.S. affiliated, darkly psychedelic duo Inhalants; with NGLY on the acid tinged Taxes project; and with fellow Opal Tapes labelmate ARP as Masks, dispensing an unremitting stream of shuffling basslines. For his debut festival appearance, Patricia has plotted an outbreak of woozy patterns care of an all hardware live set.

Check his bio page: bit.ly/1EPz77j

Mastered by LANDR (www.landr.com)

MUTEKLIVE094 - Patricia @ MUTEK Montréal 2015

KAREN GWYER (UK) https://soundcloud.com/karengwyer
NOCTURNE 3 :: ORCHESTRATE TO ELEVATE
Friday, May 29 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

Although raised by cellists and weaned on a diet of violins and violas, the disquieting digital psychedelia of Ann Arbor native Karen Gwyer first took root upon watching Detroit house music program The New Dance Show in the early 90s. From there, the now London-based electronic producer began devising off kilter game plans to reshape house and techno traditions as slow burning, intricately layered synth strokes. After a string of ominous and impressively heterogeneous EPs on No Pain In Pop and Kaleidoscope, 2013 saw the release of her equally immersive debut, Needs Continuum. She followed that up with EPs for labels such as Opal Tapes, further honing her idiosyncratic experimentations: kinetic tempos, meandering and moody melodies, undulating synth stabs, and kosmische-like repetition. With long form compositions that frequently surpass the 15 minute threshold, Gwyer gives herself the luxury to see her stuttering musical motifs to completion before snuffing them out. She brought her highly improvisatory, brooding techno template to the festival for her live debut.

Check her bio page: bit.ly/1HKfwXO

Mastered by LANDR (www.landr.com)

MUTEKLIVE097 - Karen Gwyer @ MUTEK Montréal 2015

JAMES HOLDEN(UK) https://soundcloud.com/jamesholden
NOCTURNE 1 :: ARPEGGIATED ANTHEMS
Wednesday, May 27 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

British producer James Holden creates big sounds for big ears, without skimping on the musical details that have brought fame to his distinctive, psychedelic, progressive electronic style. These days his live set unfolds almost like a rock show, with Holden a fierce presence on his custom-built modular synth, accompanied by musicians on drums and sometimes saxophone. Since 2003, his own genre-bending Border Community label, featuring artists such as Nathan Fake and Luke Abbott, has solidified Holden’s signature sound – deep yet expansive, fast with room to breathe and often hallucinatory and psychoacoustic in its effects. In the several years before his 2006 instant mainstay official debut album, The Idiots Are Winning, and in the years that have followed, Holden has produced dozens of his own tracks and hundreds of remixes of famed pop songs and electro ragers, crafting deep listening headphone tracks alongside quick paced, club ready tunes. Having co-headlined with Four Tet at MUTEK in 2011 and mesmerized audiences during MUTEK Mexico in 2013 with one of his transportive multidimensional DJ sets – he returned to MUTEK Montreal with his intensely entertaining live show.

In collaboration with Convergence festival with the support of the Québec government and the British Council.

Mastered by LANDR (www.landr.com)

MUTEKLIVE098 - James Holden live @ MUTEK Montréal 2015

Project Pablo (CA) @projectpablo
EXPÉRIENCE 2 :: GLITTERING NEU-STALGIA
Friday, May 29 2015 - Outdoor stage: Parterre du Quartier des spectacles

Rooted in the real deal warmth and shuffling sheen of house, Patrick Holland’s bright electronic template makes room for a generous array of hug dispensing melodies. A co pilot on the visually minded ASL Singles Club label, and a key architect in Vancouver’s recent rise as legit laboratory of forward looking house, Holland took his first stab at shimmering garage grooves as 8prn. Since relocating to Montréal last year, this cool-as-a-cucumber electronic conductor changed his operating alias to Project Pablo and shifted ever-so-sincerely to chromatic house hybridizations. He rapidly certified this back to basics, digital meets analog transition with balmy, genre swapping EPs for Vancouver label Hybridity and a much touted debut on 1080p – that nascent, chiefly cassette inclined Vancouver label that Pitchfork recently deemed “ridiculously prolific.” Holland cut his figurative wolf loose at this MUTEK debut, preying on his preferred diet for immoderately cascading percussion and howl inducing synth lines.

Check his bio page: bit.ly/1cWHRxf
He will be playing @ MUTEK 2016: bit.ly/mutek-ProjectPablo

Mastered by LANDR (www.landr.com)

MUTEKLIVE099 - Project Pablo Live @ MUTEK Montréal 2015

White Visitation (MX)
Saturday June 4, 2016 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)
Mastered by @Pheek

WHO: Mexico City-based producer and DJ Nicolas Guerrero
STYLE: Dark, mesmerizing club ready techno, textured post rave soundscapes
LATEST WORK: Blank Slate 010 ‎12" (2015), LIES-XMAS-03 (2014), WV 12”(2014)
LABELS: Blank Slate @blank-slate-sounds, L.I.E.S. @l-i-e-s, Dog In The Night, Styles Upon Styles, Opal Tapes @opal-tapes

A figure in Mexico City’s vast electronic underground, White Visitation crafts a dissonant and subdued techno, full of deftly repeated rhythms and riffs set to mesmerize. His focused style hooks skewed acoustic samples and high hats into a devouring pulse of heavy bass.

A bass guitarist in rock and punk bands as a teenager, Guerrero buried himself in electronic music, Ableton and samples after high school, finding his focus in techno as a producer and DJ. In the last few years his sound has morphed from deep abstract soundtracks into melodic tracks for darkened clubs. 

As a DJ, White Visitation is known in Mexico City as a no-nonsense late-night techno selector, recently playing a set for Boiler Room Mexico City, contributing mixes to i-D magazine @i-d-online-1 and The Room Sessions, and starting his own party called No Sleep. 

Presented in collaboration with MUTEK.MX.
With the support of the Québec government, the Secretary of Foreign Affars of Mexico, the AMEXCID and the Consulate General of Mexico in Montréal.

Full bio: mutek.org/en/montreal/2016/artists/9088-white-visitation

MUTEKLIVE107 - White Visitation

Sarah Davachi (CA) @sarahdavachi
Thursday June 2, 2016 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)
Mastered by @Pheek

WHO: Vancouver, now Montréal-based musician, composer and musicologist Sarah Davachi
STYLE: Minimal electronic and electroacoustic compositions, synthesized ambient sonics of a bygone era, extended drones and harmonic textures
LATEST WORK: Barons Court (2015), Qualities Of Bodies Permanent (2015), neustadt/altstadt EP (2015), Σ = 4 (2015)
LABELS: Students of Decay @studentsofdecay, Constellation Tatsu @constellationtatsu, Cassauna
MORE: Holds an MFA in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California and works for the National Music Centre in Calgary as an interpreter, researcher and archivist of their collection of acoustic and electronic keyboard instruments

Making her MUTEK debut last festival, Vancouver now Montréal-based composer and synthesist Sarah Davachi, turned in a gorgeous sweep of richly emotional electronic harmonics and textures. This is the live recording of her delicate and elegiac set.

Full bio: http://www.mutek.org/fr/fm/podcasts/muteklive/735-muteklive112-sarah-davachi


MUTEKLIVE112 - Sarah Davachi

Peder Mannerfelt (SE) @the-subliminal-kid
Thursday June 2, 2016 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)
Mastered by @Pheek

WHO: Swedish electronic producer Peder Mannerfelt, also known as The Subliminal Kid and is one half of analog electronics duo Roll the Dice
STYLE: Groove-conscious minimal techno, precise cinematic compositions, exploratory sound
LATEST: Controlling Body (2016), III EP (2015), Variation EP (2015), The Swedish Congo Record (2015)
LABELS: Ultimate Hits, Archives Intérieures, Digitalis Recordings, Stockholm Ltd, Peder Mannerfelt Produktion
MORE: Has collaborated with Fever Ray, Blonde Redhead and Glasser and remixed Massive Attack, Lykke Li and Bat for Lashes
MUTEKS: Montréal 2012, as Roll the Dice

Peder Mannerfelt’s music is an evolving investigation into sound and technology, from minimal, technical opuses to polyrhythmic grooves and sound shaping on modular synths. A guitarist in punk bands in his wayward youth, Mannerfelt went electronic with house-techno project The Subliminal Kid, following that with something different yet again: analog electronics, experimental ambient duo Roll the Dice alongside fellow sound engineer Malcolm Pardon.

Taking a solo direction under his own name in 2012, Mannerfelt drove his sparse techno further into soundscape territory, releasing EPs of dark drone journeys on the We Can Elude Control label. He created his own Peder Mannerfelt Produktion label in 2014, releasing his own I and II EPs and releasing an EP by Klara Lewis. Inspired by 1930s recording of sounds from Central Congo, Mannerfelt took a heavier, organic turn in his 2015 full length, The Swedish Congo Record, building its numerous tracks not out of samples but from his own instrumentation, crafting off-kilter lo-fi rhythms and vocal-like synth tones. He weaves a similar strangeness into his latest work, adding an upbeat intensity to strobing synth loops and clangs on delay.

Full bio: www.mutek.org/en/montreal/2016/artists/9080-peder-mannerfelt

MUTEKLIVE117 - Peder Mannerfelt

Magnanime (CA) @magnanime
Wednesday June 1, 2016 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)
Mastered by @Pheek

WHO: Montréal musician and producer Sara Magnan
STYLE: Experimental tech house, IDM meets musique concrète, psychedelic dancefloor grooves
LATEST WORK: Don’t Wait For Me EP (2015), The Fable compilation (2015), Horror Inc Remixed compilation (2015)
LABELS: Siteholder, CCCLTD, Klangscheiben, Perlon 106
MORE: Developed her electroacoustic techniques in part at Recording Arts Canada and in technical direction in the contemporary dance world.
MUTEKs: Montréal: 2012, 2014, 2015; Hivernal Montréal: 2015, Micro MUTEK Bogota, Colombia: 2015.

An auteur in her own right, Sara Magnan, aka Magnanime, creates a techno-house hybrid rife with experimental nuances, embracing mistakes of technology and recycling odd noises into her perpetually evolving, beat driven repertoire. Her music takes inspiration from her cosmopolitan experience, in constant reinvention and metamorphosis and not without a sociopolitical side and authenticities – during her 2012 MUTEK performance, she let loose an unhinged techno pow-wow in honour of First Nations people and an outdoor show supporting Montréal’s Occupy movement.

Full bio: www.mutek.org/en/hub/artists/8144-magnanime

MUTEKLIVE126 - Magnanime

Dasha Rush(RU) @dasha-rush
Friday June 3, 2016 - Métropolis 
Presented by @redbullmusicacademy

WHO: Russian-born, Berlin-based Dasha Rush
STYLES: A techno of sophisticated, minimalist melodies nestled in thick atmospheres and driving rhythm; downtempo dreamscapes and ambient/noise too
LATEST: Illusive Reality EP (2015), Sleepstep - Sonar Poems for My Sleepless Friends (2015)
LABELS: Raster-Noton, Full Panda, Hunger to Create, Sonic Groove
MORE: Also performing this year during A/VISIONS with Stanislav Glasov
MUTEKs: Montréal: 2015; Mexico: 2015

A child of Perestroika, the electronic music apprenticeship of Dasha Rush began at Moscow raves when she was a teenager. She started DJing at 14, dabbled in piano, and left for France when she was 16. An ambitious experimentalist, and fiercely independent, she continued to teach herself machine music, worked in fashion and sought out multidisciplinary collisions with theatre, dance and installation.

Full bio: www.mutek.org/en/archives/artists/9049-dasha-rush

MUTEKLIVE144 - Dasha Rush

Anthony Linell @AnthonyLinell
Friday August 24, 2018 MTELUS (Main Room)
Mastered by Anthony Linell

Who: Stockholm-based producer Anthony Linell, also known as Lundin Oil and one half of Ulwhednar with Jonas Rönnberg (aka Varg)
Style: Percussive deep techno on the fringes, shadowy experimental electronics, twisted acid and textured noise and drone
Labels: @NorthernElectronics, @Semantica-Records, Abdulla Rashim Records, Prologue
Latest: Alienation from Self (2018), A Sens Of Order (2018), Layers Of Reality (2017), Emerald Fluorescent (2017), Consolidate (2017) 
More: Initially disinterested in using his real name—he invented Abdulla Rashim, a moniker informed by his profound interests in the Arab world, in particular Levantine culture and politics—and his Arabic studies at university.

Abdulla Rashim's contemplative techno surges through every last manipulated hardware layer to unveil a fervid and unpredictably beating heart, a core that at once reflects Sweden's pastoral melancholic beauty and the incessant, vibrating rhythms of urban ritual.

Full bio: bit.ly/mutek2018-anthonylinell

Presented as part of North-West Passage, a project by Insomnia, Intonal and MUTEK, with the support of the Nordic Council and the Quebec government.

MUTEKLIVE167 - Anthony Linell

LADA(DE/RU) @dasha-rush @user-943357333
Saturday August 25, 2018 - MTELUS
Mastered by @pheek

Who: Russian-born, Berlin-based Dasha Rush and German producer Lars Hemmerling (half of L & G Hemmerling, Asyncron and 4 Creators with brother Gunnar).
Style: Dark melodic techno, industrial bass and noise, thick ambient atmospheres
Labels: Raster-Noton, Full panda, Hunger to Create, Sonic Groove
Latest: LADA (2017), Rush: Acid Sketch EP (2018); Hemmerling: Space Bolero EP (2016)
More: Dasha Rush has proved her audiovisual acumen, and a poetic bent for environmental science and physics in the abstract atmospheres of screen projects like Antarctic Takt and Dark Hearts of Space.

Full bio: bit.ly/MUTEKLIVE175

MUTEKLIVE175 - LADA (Dasha Rush & Lars Hemmerling)

Aleksi Perälä(FI/UK) @aleksiperala
Friday August 24, 2018 - MTELUS
Mastered by @pheek

Who: England-based Finnish artist Aleksi Perälä, formerly known as Ovuca and Astrobotnia
Style: Esoteric galactic techno, transportive cascading harmonic structures, invented melodic spiritualisms
Labels: Rephlex, AP Musik, Clone Basement Series, Trip
Latest: Simulation (2017), Paradox EP (2017), la compilation Colundi Sequence Volume 2 (2017)
More: Perälä and Grant Wilson-Claridge from Rephlex developed an alternate tuning system called Colundi–Perälä has based his music on it since 2014.

More than 20 years ago, Rephlex records signed Perälä after he bombarded them with IDM-styled demo tapes under the moniker Ovuca. His palette evolved and expanded into a lush tapestry as Astrobotnia, leading to more minimalist releases under his own name while he studied music technology and experimented away from his classical piano training. With Rephlex co-founder Grant Wilson-Claridge they set off on experiments that tied music theory, philosophy, science and mysticism together, and invented a microtonal tuning system named Colundi.

Full bio: bit.ly/mutek2018-aleksiperala

MUTEKLIVE181 - Aleksi Perälä

Amazondotcom & Siete Catorce (US + MX) 

WHO:  Producers @AMAZONDOTCOM Stella Ahn (Los Angeles) and @sietecatorce Marco Polo Gutiérrez (Mexicali)
STYLE: tribal, dubstep, global bass, glitch, IDM  
RECENT WORK: Teardopz EP (Nostro Hood System, 2018) 
LABELS: SUBREAL

International Tribe / Siete Catorce Starting at the age of 22, Siete Catorce is the alternative project of producer and experimentalist Marco Polo Gutierrez. Through initially taking inspiration from new cumbia, the artists sound began to form a unique and signature style, with a mesh of tropical rhythms and intricate drum works. Taking influences from the techniques of dubstep, drum n bass, and footwork (to name a few), Siete Catorce has quickly scaled the ranks of Mexico’s electronic music elite.

With releases on labels such as Cocobass, Naafi, Enchufada, and Hypermedium, the Mexico native also produces under the alias Den5hion, an airy and lugubrious portrayal of dubstep, with influences from the likes of Burial and Sin Amigos. For his International Tribe mix, the Mexican artist explores the realms of tropical rhythms with experimental, glitchy and killer cuts.

Mastered by Eviltapes

MUTEKLIVE173 - Amazondotcom & Siete Catorce

Marcel Dettmann (DE) - @marceldettmann
Saturday November 24, 2018 - NOCTURNE 2 (Fábrica)
WHO: German DJ and Techno producer, Berghain resident and staff from the record store Hard Wax
STYLE: Hard Techno, Dub Techno y EBM Techno
LATEST: Test-File EP
LABELS: Ostgut Ton, Marcel Dettmann Records, 50Weapons

Dettmann is one of the definitive figures of contemporary German Techno. One of the most iconic performers to grapple with the current standing of Techno music, one needs to review all of the experiences that have placed Dettmann in this position as the spokesperson for the German dance scene. From his first experiences as a record seller in the former East Germany of the late 1990s, to being the go-to representative of Berlin's legendary Hard Wax record shop, he was also resident DJ at the famed club, Berghain. Dettmann has been there at every key moment in the history of German Techno.
Crude, hard, and with no sense of the taboo, Dettmann's mystique is still always shrouded. A living force of the vertical, direct, brutal aesthetic that's proved transcendent around the world, he's been chosen to remix Moderat, Junior Boys, Fever Ray, Ellen Allien, Clark and even the emblematic Laibach in the era after industrial music. His mixes for labels like Fabric, Music Man, and Berghain, are proof of the versatility that always arrives and crushes, upward, with an authentic aesthetic that's timeless and guided by a practical intuition flowing ever forward.

MUTEKLIVE176 - Marcel Dettmann

@JohannaKnutsson (SE)
Expérience 4 - August 24, 2019. 
Mastered by @pheek (audioservices.studio)

Presented as part of North-West Passage, a project by Insomnia, Intonal and MUTEK, with the support of the Nordic Council and the Quebec government.

Who: Malmö-born, Berlin-based DJ, and member of the Circle of Live improvised electronic collective

Style: Melodic techno transmissions from the far reaches of the solar system paired with blossoming, nostalgic ambient arrangements

Labels: Klasse Recordings, Bror Records, Konra-Musik, Circle Of Live, Idle Hands

Latest: Tollarp Transmissions ‎(2019)

More: Knutsson’s first LP, Tollarp Transmissions, serves as an ambient homage to the 4800 resident city in South Sweden that she grew up in

MUTEKLIVE207 - Johanna Knutsson

Nkisi (BE/UK) @nkisi
Motion 2 presented by @redbull
August 24, 2019 
Mastered by @pheek (audioservices.studio)

Who
Congolese-born, Belgian-raised, London-based techno producer, DJ and sonic activist Melika Ngombe Kolongo

Style
Cosmic pirouettes in and around pan-African polyrhythms; serene sonic particles spiralling into full-throttle techno turmoil

Labels
UIQ, Arcola, @doomcore-records

Latest
7 Directions (2019)

More
She recently completed a dissertation and MA degree in psychosocial studies, which has informed her haunted acoustic investigations

MUTEKLIVE210 - Nkisi

Uji @ujitimebeing
Expérience 1
August 21, 2019
Mastered by @pheek (audioservices.studio)

Who
Buenos-Aires born producer and DJ Luis Maurette, formerly half of Lulacruza

Style
Alchemic incantations merging Indigenous traditions with modern music aesthetics; folkloric syncopations that help people get in tune with themselves and each other

Labels
@MultiCulti, @jumpsuit-records, @chaco-world-music, @zzkrecords

MUTEKLIVE231 - Uji

A known homosaipien, and efficient producer of carbon dioxide, who has been known to twist knobs, and slide faders.

Mutek

Frigid Heir