Here’s my belated review of my evening at the Kinetik Festival in Montreal. In all honesty, I can only account for the Saturday Night events as I did not attend the other days. I attended Phase 3: Noise.

The Kinetik Festival picks up where the C.O.M.A. festivals left off. These events are unique in North America, and can only be compared to european festivals such as Machinenfest or Wave Gothic Treffen: a large gathering of electronic artists and DJs from the darker side: industrial, ebm, noise, hardcore, ambient ect. As you will see from my linked pictures, the people who attend these are usually guys around the late 20’s to late 30’s dressed in black with much younger girls in hot goth gear ;). But seriously, these are friendly artsy events that have nothing to do rock festivals and the like. Like the 4 COMA festivals, Kinetik featured an impressive lineup of artists from North America and Europe over a period of 4 days and nights.

I arrived around 6pm with Erika on Saturday, so I missed the afternoon shows, but I was there in time to catch my friends Marc and Guillaume, doing a live Lommeloir performance in the Usine C café. Unfortunately, Empusae was on at the same time in another room, so I missed that show (Empusae was one of the artists who contributed to my Zombie Commandos soundtrack btw). I then got to see another awesome performance by my hometown buddy Yann as Iszoloscope was on! A great crowd pleasure along with his Memmaker partner. Between the shows I chatted up Yolk from Artiffact records, with whom I worked a few years ago (who had the genius idea of offering paypal payments via his wireless connection at his merch table), Dj Leslie from Ottawa, who has always been a great supporter of my own work along with her boyfriend, my Quebec City buddies, Kathleen selling her hair extension creations, Marc’ (Lommeloir) girlfriend and of course Bud, who’s always around at these events. It was nice to meet his girlfriend as well. I also met some very cool folks from L.A., including a Das Bunker dj and his lovely girlfriend who happened enjoy the Zombie Commandos soundtrack quite a bit :)

I have to mention that Erika isn’t into this music much anymore but she had a good time nonetheless (these shows are also a great excuse to get her to wear her hot gear).

Next up was Mono No Aware, whom I was looking forward to see and hear. Man did he deliver! Despite all this being computer music, good artists manage to deliver lively shows by juping around and getting the crowd to join into the beat. Terrorfakt was probably the most impressive with their fireworks and sledgehammers banging up scrap metal and such. The lighting was perfect but the sound was uneven I found (the bass was better if you stood further away from the stage). They even had a mosh pit going! I missed a part of Feindflug’s performance but caught the ending, which was high-energy. This Morn Omina was probably my favorite, with their dark tribal eletronic incantations. They really got the crowd going and I was breaking a sweat myself :) The evening ended for me with Sonar, another favorite act of mine, which unfortunately isnt quite as impressive live, but then I didnt expect them to be. They had a few sound problems but persisted with a smile and gave it their best. I didn’t go to the afterhours show as I had had enough for one evening. Satisfied, tired and happy.

Being among all these creative people made me miss when I was mor einvolved in this scene, doing covers, flyers and promoting my comics and soundtracks. I was talking to a few artists there who are still interested in contributing if I put out another soundtrack. But first, I need to finish the comic! I’ll then need to find a new label to release the compilation.

So that’s my report. I prefer shows like these, where you can stand right up next to the stage and be part of the action, versus stadium shows where you might as well watch the performance on TV. It’s also nice to chat up the artists afterwards. I was going to post my pics of the event, but more profesional photographers like my Biometrik friend Bernard Bastien have done a much better job of it. Enjoy :)