There really is something special about Montreal, Quebec’s metropolis just beyond the New York Adirondacks. Having shared our own conversation with Christopher Bauder and Robert Henke with video from their stunning ATOM, here’s what our friends at XLR8R Magazine were up to in May: they were on a tour of Montreal with local Ghislain Poirier.

Poirer’s Caribbean-infused electronica has made him one of Montreal’s hottest exports, but this Ninja Tune artist isn’t fleeing for Berlin (ahem). Wandering around Montreal, you really get a sense of his love for the city and what you can do to make the scene what you want – a great lesson for those of us living anywhere in the world. Poirer is currently touring the UK and Europe, having done a set at the sprawling Metropolis club during MUTEK, but he’ll get back to Montreal in time to play a Piknic Electronik in the park.

I’d love to see more artists showing us around their cities – including hamlets that don’t get so much coverage, or even big-name cities like my own home New York from a different perspective. We do have a chance to have a different view of things on the Internet. I welcome ideas about how to go about that.

Nathanaël Lécaudé sends along a lovely video that reveals some of the brilliant hacking scene in Montreal, centering on the Foulab collective and hackspace. The mini-documentary doesn’t assume you’ve heard of things like oscilloscopes and circuit bending, so it could be a good one to pass along to friends and family who haven’t seen this stuff before. This is just one slice of what I know is a fantastically creative scene in Montreal and Québec. Featured:

• A custom oscilloscope made from a repurposed CRT, by Andrew MacGillivray
• A 1938 teletype machine, rescued by Redbeard
• An original boom box made from recycled parts by Maxster
• XC3N working with modified 8-bit game systems

The creator asks in the YouTube description:

A look into the hardware hacking community in Montreal, including the Foulab collective. Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of ‘user generated content’?

My answers: the Internet; getting your hands dirty rocks; yes. (Feel free to add your own.)

By the way, I’m trying to figure out just what quote is getting quoted at the end. I believe it may actually be a direct quote of someone slightly changing this Marshall McLuhan quote:

“You shape your tools and they shape you. It’s a loop. You start out a consumer and you wind up consumed.”

Actually, I can tell I’m an electronic musician at heart, because that sounds pretty good to me – and suggests the ways in which the consumer tools and DIY tools are both entangled in our creative process, perhaps in interesting ways. But perhaps someone can untangle the provenance of these words – please feel free; I find the readers of this site often know more than I do.

MUTEK this year looks to be a tremendous few days of audiovisual performance and art. To get in the mood one day early, we’re working with our friends at New York’s eclectic monthly live electronic party to host a special Montreal edition of Warper. It’s a convergence of New York and Montreal artists (full lineup below), running a full twelve hours. It’ll be totally free (donations welcome), with a cash bar available all day and night.

RSVP on Facebook

http://warperparty.com/

A big thanks to Jazz Mutant, makers of the OSC-driven, multi-touch controllers Lemur and Dexter, for their support.

I’ll be covering both the pre-party and MUTEK and its artists all week long, along with Greg Smith for Rhizome, so stay tuned to CDM for stories, video, and sound.

Meet up in the open lab: At 2pm, we’ll have an open music and visual technological laboratory, a la our Handmade Music series. Artists will bring their rigs, and original hardware and software creations to share what they’ve made and how they play. Confirmed for the lab:

• Multitouch and Open Music Tools: Nathanaël Lécaudé and Eric Andrade will show their open source multitouch table PyMT (built in Python), which works with Max/MSP for sound generation, plus the TamTam musical software suite, an educational music suite powered by Csound that runs on the OLPC (and other platforms), created at the University of Montreal by Jean Piché and his team.
• A Chipsound Premiere: David Viens of Plogue will be on-hand to talk about Plogue’s “chipsound” software instruments, as scooped on CDM – and I hope David brings along some Bidule creations, as well.
• Guitar video instruments: Matt Dickey is bringing his guitar-video rig, powered by Jitter, which allows audience members to conduct his playing and control visuals and … you’ll just have to come see it to fully understand. (See also his guitar-controlled generative visual experiments.)

Bring your cool rigs + projects: If you’d like to join in on the lab and you’ll be in the Montreal area, just fill out this form to let us know what to expect. (We have 1-2 projectors, a PA, and tables; bring extra amps and cables if you can.)

Lemur multi-touch demo: At 5pm, Brooklyn musician Nick Shelestak (White Badger) will demonstrate how he integrates the Lemur multi-touch hardware controller in the studio and on stage using Ableton Live, along with a few other special features unique to the Lemur.

Audiovisual lineup: At 6pm, we get into fully live audio and visuals from our friends in Montreal and in town from New York. It’s a packed lineup – see the full details below. (The Cougarettes and I will each be doing simultaneous audio and visuals…)

6:00 PM – 2:00 AM – LIVE AUDIOVISUALS

Musicals:
06:00 Kodomo
06:40 Peter Kirn
07:10 Lokey
07:40 !INCLUDE
08:10 [XC3N]
08:50 FreeBassBK
09:30 Friend’s Mens
10:10 The Cougarettes
10:50 ATTN:
11:30 Rhinostrich
12:10 The Materializer
12:50 Atom
01:20 In The Loop

Visuals:
06:00 Holly Danger
06:40 Peter Kirn
07:10 VJ Pocaille
09:30 The Sperm Whale
10:10 The Cougarettes
10:50 VJ DY3KT
11:50 !INCLUDE
12:30 Okus Focus

View Larger Map

It all happens this Tuesday, 2pm to 2am. Hope to see you there.

For live updates, stay tuned to our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/cdmblogs

We’re inundated with event info, and one of my general rules is to avoid lots of event listings. But the lineup for famed audiovisual fest MUTEK looks simply epic.

Highlights, just for a taste:

• Moderat. Apparat and Modeselektor. Like peanut butter and chocolate.
• A\VISIONS looks, as always, like an essential event in audiovisualism. Wolfgang Voigt will present GAS and Herman Kolgen has a new piece.
• For the first time, Club Transmediale gets its own showcase.
• An unusually eclectic lineup adds dub, acoustic-electronic, and cross-genre collaboration.
• Robert Henke (Monolake) and Christopher Bauder finally bring their 64 illuminated helium balloon installation (ATOM) to North America.
• Akufen returns to live performance.
• For techno lovers, Resident Advisor brings in the likes of Mathew Jonson, Dandy Jack, and Carl Craig to keep you up all night Saturday.
• Not just Berlin: People from all around the world are making sounds, and even events like the Decibel Festival get highlighted, so you get a great cross-section of a lot of scenes. (I have to bring this up, because I’ve already seen stories claiming Mutek is basically Berlin in Montreal, and from the lineup I see below, that’s a misrepresentation. We love Berlin, but glad as always to see representation from scenes elsewhere.)

MUTEK Lineup at MUTEK site (which has also been posting podcasts with the artists)

And, actually, almost everything looks like a highlight. Not only is it Mutek’s one-decade anniversary, it feels like it’s a special moment for electronica and audiovisuals in general, like the forces of goodness are again converging planetwide.

I think even Mutek aside, some good times are ahead – and Montreal could be a great place to celebrate. Speaking of which…

CDM Coming to Montreal – Get In Touch

I was unable to attend MUTEK last year, but this year should happily be different. I know the Warper crew from New York City are planning their own live music party separately, and CDM may be able to put on an event. If you have a venue or are interested in collaboration, let us know. I’m also available to do the workshop thing while in town. Mostly, it’d be helpful to connect with folks in Montreal as I’m in town, since it isn’t my city. If we can get a daytime space, we may be able to do some additional interviews of Mutek artists and Montreal videomusicological citizens.

You can reach me and the CDM gang at our contact page, or email me directly at peter (at) [thenameofthissite.com]

What’s Going On

Heck, let’s break the rules and run the whole press release, as it will have fans of this event salivating:

MAY 27TH TO MAY 31ST: THE DESIGN OF MUTEK’S FIVE DAYS

DAY 1 // WEDNESDAY, MAY 27

A\VISIONS 1: Monument-National Theatre // $25 CDN // 8pm
MUTEK_10 officially gets underway with a showcase that presents two venerated artists whose work seeks to technologically alter the shape and sound of our relationship with nature. Cologne’s Wolfgang Voigt, roundly regarded as one of the greatest sonic experimenters of the 90s, delivers the Canadian premiere of his GAS project, a 90-minute audio-visual dreamscape that invites listeners into the Black Forest of Southern Germany, accompanied only by the haunting manipulations of Mahler and Wagner compositions. Afterward, HERMAN KOLGEN (one half of the multimedia duo Skoltz_Kolgen) will present the world premiere of his new piece "IN/JECT", which takes as its inspiration the prolonged submersion of the human body into a cistern of water and waits for nature’s pressing hands to alter the balance of the brain and, in turn, produce an internal music.

NOCTURNE 1: Society for Arts and Technology // $25 CDN // 10pm
MUTEK’s first-ever CLUB TRANSMEDIALE showcase focuses on the hazy lights of the retro-futuristic French psychotronic scene. The night begins with Montreal’s ORGAN MOOD, before giving way to the ultra-mysterious ZOMBIE ZOMBIE, who arrive for in Montreal for a North American debut. The French duo rev up their otherworldly fusion of psychedelic rock and electronics that raises the ghosts of bands like Suicide and The Residents. Equally mysterious but no less formidable is TURZI ELECTRONIC EXPERIENCE, the solo project of the eccentric Romain Turzi, who fuses krautrock and commune psychedelics while surrounded by a cavalry of vintage synthesizers that brings to mind the heyday of Jean-Michel Jarre. The night wraps up with the D.I.R.T.Y. space disco of Paris’PILOOSKI, who will take Turzi’s synthetic propulsions and embed them with the irresistibly carnal handclaps that drive the duo’s sought-after disco re-edits.

DAY 2 // THURSDAY, MAY 28

A\VISIONS 2: Monument-National Theatre // $25 CDN // 8pm
A showcase dedicated to the control and composition of human collaboration, in which generations of musical masters meet on stage to experiment through an eclectic mix of jazz, metal, krautrock, turntablisms, and of course electronics. Starting off the evening, an American group still unknown to these parts, THE FUN YEARS, one of the discoveries MUTEK has the pleasure of introducing to Montreal. Former CAN drummer JAKI LIEBEZEIT returns to MUTEK with frequent collaborator BURNT FRIEDMAN to perform an exclusive North American show that warps together over five decade’s of experience into one singular presentation. Afterward, the corrosive pairing of two of Quebec’s most uncompromised figures takes the stage. With his mutant turntable in tow, MARTIN TÉTREAULT plays the mad composer who fiercely controls the spastic and irrepressible drumming of his monstrous subject, Voivod’sMICHEL LANGEVIN.
NOCTURNE 2: Metropolis // $30 CDN // 10pm // presented by 33mag
The many factions of dub converge onto one large stage to showcase just how far Jamaica’s roots reggae templates have evolved toward new genres in the hands of some of today’s hottest names. None other than Skull Disco co-founder APPLEBLIM comes to Montreal for his Canadian debut and a DJ set that showcases the many points of fusion between UK dubstep and Berlin techno. A seamless blend of echoes, bass, and delays leads us to the heavily anticipated collaboration between Canadian dub-don DEADBEATand Berlin’s master vocalist of all things dub, PAUL ST. HILAIRE. Next up, MODESELEKTOR and APPARAT join forces for the Canadian premiere of MODERAT, a stunning live audio-visual production accompanied by the striking video work of PFADFINDEREI. And finally, the night winds to a tailspin with the breakneck dubstep assault of the Digital Mystiks’ MALA, in town for a Canadian debut DJ set.
Meanwhile, the SAVOY ROOM fills with the ambient soundscapes of EZEKIEL HONIG, CLINKER, I8U, NOVI_SAD, and AUN.

DAY 3 // FRIDAY, MAY 29

ATOM 1: Théâtre Maisonneuve // $15 CDN // 7pm
MUTEK is especially proud to be bringing ROBERT HENKE & CHRISTOPHER BAUDER’s monumental ATOM installation to Montreal for three showings, a North American exclusive. This project is among the most ambitious undertakings of Henke’s long and distinguished career, in which he has already seen many high points as MONOLAKE and as one of the inventors of Ableton Live. ATOM features a series of compositions played on a matrix of 64 illuminated helium balloons that will be presented at the prestigious Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des Arts. ATOM will be staged three times throughout the festival, once Friday evening, and then two more times on Saturday.
A\VISIONS 3: Monument-National Theatre // $25 CDN // 8pm
Building on the first two A\VISIONS showcases, this Friday evening set delivers a line-up of artists whose main impulse is to capture currents of electricity and compose them into rhythm. The detached, austere electric neuro-funk of Sheffield’s highly regarded SND gets the ball rolling, following up on their last MUTEK performance in 2002. Following suit is the first of two appearances by Berlin’s Tobias Freund, who here appears alongside Max Loderbauer as the magnificent, enigmatic NSI, a duo whose adventurous spirit and vast musical knowledge allows them to experiment with electricity from perspectives that incorporate a broad swathe of influences, from industrial to European jazz and everything in between. Finally, Montreal electricity-tamers ARTIFICIEL take the stage for the world premiere of their new piece entitled "Power", which creates its own lightning and pulls from those bright, fiery lights the brittle, halcyon sounds of power at its purest.
NOCTURNE 3: Metropolis // $30 CDN // 10pm // presented by MusiquePlus
Friday night begins with a showcase that emphasizes the sheer internationalism of rhythmic attraction and all its regional manifestations. Chile’s ORIGINAL HAMSTER meets Brazil’s NEGO MOÇAMBIQUE on stage to inaugurate this soirée of global funkiness, with the former’s Latinized techno brushing up against the latter’s infectious baile funk. Montreal’s favourite son, GHISLAIN POIRIER, who is ever-interested in evolving the hip-hop template, introduces his new soca soundsystem, while Berlin-basedJAHCOOZI, a group that pulls M.I.A. into Modeselektor, pump up the bass even further. Finally, Mexico’s BOSTICH+ FUSSIBLE, members of NORTEC COLLECTIVE, lead a five-piece norteño band that threatens to be one of the most festive live spectacles at this year’s festival.
Meanwhile in the Savoy Room, Canadian techno veteran MIKE SHANNON heads up a 10th anniversary bash for his Cynosure label, a label that has taken part in many MUTEK events over the years. To celebrate the two anniversaries together, Shannon brings alongERNESTO FERREYRA, MATT THIBIDEAU, and ADAM MARSHALL.

DAY 4 // SATURDAY, MAY 30

MUTEK//PIKNIC 1: Parc Jean- Drapeau // $10 CDN // 2pm
Saturday afternoon promises to be a showcase for those softer, subtler textures of electronic music: dub-techno, deep house, funk, and disco. The day starts off at a relaxed pace, ideal for lying back in the sun, with the Canadian premiere of Berlin’s THOMAS FEHLMANN, who presents his hypnotic brand of dub-techno to early-afternoon revelers. New York’s BRENDON MOELLER is up next, delivering a premiere of his upcoming Third Ear album called "Jazz Junk Safari". Manchester’s TRUS’ME follows suit with a set of rarefied Northern soul feeding the foundation of deep house that has made him an international favourite. The day in the park wraps up with THE MOLE on the decks, spinning a set of disco-fuelled techno.
ATOM 2 & 3: Théâtre Maisonneuve // $15 CDN // 5pm & 7pm
ROBERT HENKE & CHRISTOPHER BAUDER’s monumental ATOM installation continues its residency at the prestigious Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des Arts with two showings on Saturday, once in the early afternoon and again in the early evening.

A\VISIONS 4: SAT // $25 CDN // 8pm
A very special Raster-Noton showcase, featuring the label’s most durable attractions in their most bristling and conceptual post-industrial guises. The evening begins with the North American premiere of RYOJI IKEDA and CARSTEN NICOLAI’s reunion asCYCLO., the pairing that wowed audiences last in the early 2000’s and has been silent ever since. Uwe Schmidt, the German expatriate currently living in Chile, reprises his role as ATOM^TM. Next, Carsten Nicolai returns to the stage solo to present his much-heralded ALVA NOTO compositions. Finally, Olaf Bender brings the mighty BYETONE to life with the rock-driven Teutonic beats that have made his recent records so collectible.
NOCTURNE 4: Metropolis // $35 CDN // 10pm // Resident Advisor Night
The festival’s marquee all-night event, and for this 10th anniversary we’re pulling out all the stops! MUTEK and RESIDENT ADVISOR join forces to present a line-up featuring some of the most revered names inn electronic music today. Local jazz and funk sample-mavenMOONSTARR gets things underway in the main room, followed by the inimitable antics of French cabaret-house trio dOP. Next up sees the tantalizing pairing of two of techno’s most sought-after names — MATHEW JONSON and DANDY JACK — coming together for a heart-pounding live performance. Berlin’s Tobias Freund return for his second MUTEK_10 appearance, this time in his tobias. moniker and ready to keep the late-night crowds moving. Finally, Detroit techno pioneer CARL CRAIG takes the stage for a 3-hour DJ set that will take audiences well into the morning.
Meanwhile in the Savoy Room, MUTEK pays tribute to Seattle’s Decibel Festival with a showcase of that city’s finest electronic offerings. The breezy ambience of THE SIGHT BELOW gets the evening underway, followed by the dark tones of LUSINE’s contemplative techno. PEZZNER and JEREMY ELLIS pick up the pace and follow through till dawn.

DAY 5 // SUNDAY, MAY 31ST

MUTEK//PIKNIC 2: Parc Jean-Drapeau // $10 CDN // 2pm
The final day starts off in the park with a very special reunion between MUTEK and two of its most beloved contributors over the years. This afternoon picnic features a rare North American appearance by RICARDO VILLALOBOS, who will be tagteaming on the decks for a marathon DJ set with none other than Perlon founder and manager ZIP.

NOCTURNE 5: SAT // $20 CDN // 10pm // presented by Bande à part
The return of the festival finale! For this tenth edition, MUTEK could think of no better way to cap off its decade of growth and innovation than to salute the Canadian artists who have provided the backbone of this festival all this time. Two longtime Montreal collaborators,MATEO & PHEEK, get the finale underway, followed by fellow Montrealer STEPHEN BEAUPRÉ. Next up, the highly anticipated return of AKUFEN, in his first live showcase of completely new material since 2004. The festival draws to a close with the impossibly talented live improvisation of MODERN DEEP LEFT QUARTET. Given the sheer number of other Canadians already in town and the free-for-all celebratory nature of the event, we can only imagine that a few surprise appearances may pop up through the night and join in this final jamboree.

INDIVIDUAL TICKETS & PASSPORTS NOW ON SALE

MUTEK PASSPORTS, WEEKEND PASSPORTS, DAY PASSES, INDIVIDUAL TICKETS and other packages are now on sale throughwww.mutek.org. This year’s passes grant attendees the flexibility to catch more showcases and live acts than ever before, in a number of different packages:
MUTEK PASSPORT – $215 CDN + taxes & service charges
WEEKEND PASSPORT – $135 CDN + taxes & service charges
WEEKEND "LIGHT" PASSPORT – $100 CDN + taxes & service charges
A\VISIONS PASS – $75 CDN + taxes & service charges
METROPOLIS TRIO – $70 CDN + taxes & service charges
DAY PASSES & INDIVIDUAL TICKETS also available at www.mutek.org

Workshops and panels remain TBD. We’ll keep you posted here on CDM.

Liz and Peter Dines continue to send dispatches from the epic MUTEK festival in Montreal. Stay tuned to our events.noisepages.com page for the latest. Among the new reports: various Reaktor spottings among artists, insane turntable abuse, and even a discussion of how arts events can reduce their impact on the planet. (Oddly enough, that last panel evidently included Dan Seligman, with whom I worked at the Sierra Club on international trade and human rights issues in another life of mine.)

Check out the ongoing MUTEK coverage while we wait for Liz and Peter to finish off their stack of interviews — more soon!
MUTEK @ events.noisepages.com

CDM’s Peter Dines and Liz McLean Knight (Liz literally on her honeymoon) are keeping us posted with the latest events from Detroit’s Movement and Montreal’s MUTEK festivals. You can keep track of their travels and live impressions on our new CDM events blog, and I look forward to some artist interviews planned with some of our favorite people, coming soon.

So far, Peter is getting his synesthesia on with live audio and visuals at A/Visions, while Liz notes the spooky near-ubiquity of UC-33e controllers running Ableton Live at Movement. (Guess they need to invite us with some odder controllers, huh?)

Lots more coming soon — if you’re at either of these events, too, send in your reports and we’ll publish or link them:

events.noisepages.com

The events site will soon feature more information on CDM-hosted events, as well.

Thanks again for the mention of Tone Generation. I just thought I’d draw your attention to another related piece I produced with Ian Helliwell last year. It was called ‘Expo 67 – A Radiophonic collage’ and was a snapshot in sound of the Montreal worlds fair in 1967. Tristram Cary composed music for the Great Britain pavilion and much of this is used in the programme. If you listen closely you’ll also hear Tristam’s voice popping up.

Also featured are compositions by Hugh le Caine, Donald Erb, Eldon Rathburn, Erkki Salmenhaara & Erkki Kurrniemi, Giles Tremblay and Iannis Xenakis.

As always keep up the inspiring work with CDM. It is in my top 3 sites that I visit daily alongside Music Thing and Matrix Synth.

Give the music a listen:

Expo 67 Radiophonic Collage

And to help give yourself some visual inspiration, check out this retro-fantastic archive of Montreal Expo pictures, found (bizarrely) in a scrapbook found on the street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Montreal Expo 1967

Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any images of Xenakis’ polytope. But, perhaps on a more realistic budget (ahem), this is how I want festivals of technology and culture to be. Oh, and it’s never a bad idea to invite Poland.

Peter Dines, known for his work with Reaktor (don’t miss his fantastic Reaktor Tutorial Project blog) got a first-hand look at the Yamaha Tenori-On’s first North American stop on its launch tour. He brings us some impressions of the launch, and introduces the phrase "switchboard acrobatics" to the lexicon, which I think will have to find a home in these discussions from now on.

I’ll be at the Brooklyn event tonight, so if you’re there, do say hi! We’ll have coverage of the artists and event soon. (Yeah, I cheated — these are London launch event photos.)

Here’s Peter — and yes, it’s interesting to know that those buttons aren’t necessarily immediately intuitive when you’re under the gun!

Since I am an extremely lazy person I had only a cursory knowledge of the Yamaha Tenori-On when I arrived at SAT for its gala Montreal launch. A number of the little blinking beauties were set up at kiosks separated from the loud music of Pheek by the flimsiest of curtains. I waited in line for my turn to have a poke at it, and when I got it I was baffled.

Yes, there were instructions. Step four required the user to hold down a function key while pressing an LED in row nine. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t immediately recognize groups of nine out of an array of sixteen by sixteen identical, evenly spaced das blinkenlights, especially when there’s a queue of impatient people behind me. There was also no obvious way to turn up the volume to a level that would be audible in the venue. Disheartened, I passed the headphones to the guy breathing down my neck, got a beer and settled in to watch musicians who evidently knew the ins and outs of the thing as they worked it on stage.

Pheek was just finishing his set and I Am Robot And Proud followed with fun music that reminded me of a funkier take on Sign by Nobuzaku Takemura. The man clearly knows his way around a traditional keyboard as well as the tetris-like interface of the Tenori. He alternated between them and at times played one with each hand, a feat something like typing with one hand while writing cursively with the other.

Nathan Michel played a set that, I first thought, demonstrated exactly how not to perform with the Tenori-On, standing motionless like a kid with a Nintendo DS. Then I slowly became aware of how well he knew the interface and what he was doing with it – switching effortlessly between patterns and modifying them on the fly. It was geekily hypnotic; an impressive demonstration of switchboard acrobatics.

By this time the crowds around the Tenori-On kiosks had thinned out so I took another stab at it, read the instructions at my leisure, figured out how to turn up the volume and got a few sounds working in bounce mode. Though the interface was not as intuitive as I expected, it was a relief to find that the instrument was also deeper – not at all the cookie cutter sequencer with a tic-tac-toe interface I had feared it might be. It’s a good piece of finger, ear and mind candy. Each musician who performed, including the Tenori-On’s creator Toshio Iwai, had his own way of using the device expressively, which is exciting. It is by no means a one trick pony or toy that corrals creativity into strict bounds. I can imagine a lot of potential for its abilities to import samples and to control external gear.

Toshio himself took the stage and gave us a history lesson on the Tenori-On’s roots. One of its early inspirations was the Scots-Canadian animator Norman McLaren, who painted shapes directly on the sound and image tracks of film, creating images that were sound and sounds that were images. Toshio, if you want to butter up a Canadian audience, complimenting McLaren and our National Film Board is the way to do it. We were putty in his hands from that point. Highlights of his spiel included playing a punch-roll of the song Happy Birthday backwards through a hand cranked music box – it turned the music pleasantly melancholic – and a video of Ryuichi Sakamoto playing a piano linked to a Toshio-designed audiovisual device that bounced the sounds as colorful images on a screen to a second piano that translated them back into sound.

Robert Lippok played the Tenori-On accompanied by percussionist Debashi Sinha in a performance that started out rhythmically off-the-grid before settling into a giant swirling groove accompanied by similar motion on the Tenori and VJ projections on the screens behind. Lippok had the Tenori clamped upright to show the sound and light patterns as he created them. I enjoyed seeing a performance that demonstrated the Tenori in a free-flowing, improvisational and partly non-quantized context.

Sutekh made dark music in a dark room. Like Lippok and Sinha, he used the Tenori-On in a non-obvious way, creating drones and cascades of threatening sound over a throbbing bass. As with Lippok, I can’t say precisely what he was doing even though I watched him do it. Chinstroker nirvana!

The evening’s final performer was Stefan Betke, a big, avuncular seeming guy who, as Pole, creates some of the most brutally ass shaking grooves you will hear. Like the last time I’d seen him, he rattled my organs loose. There are technologies and there are musicians who transcend those technologies. I think Stefan could create bone shattering sub bass with a kazoo and sheer force of will if the situation called for it. He engages the music with his full body, cobra-swaying nonstop behind his equipment in a way that makes him difficult to photograph in low light. The groove was infectious and everyone near the stage including myself broke into dance. Stefan’s music that night was utterly, idiosyncratically his own, another indicator of the Tenori-On’s versatility.

If the event was meant to stoke desire for the Tenori – and surely it was – then it succeeded. I certainly want one, though I understand they aren’t cheap. When they hit the shelves I’ll be annoying the employees at my favorite music store by playing with the thing for as long as I can before they boot me out.