It was a rainy day here in Montreal yesterday. So the traditional summer Sunday outdoor music event, Piknic Électronik, got cancelled. Or did it?
Yesterday’s Piknic was a co-production with Bande à Part, a French CBC webcast/podcast/radio & TV show dedicated to alternative music in its various guises. They were planning to take footage for broadcast, so a much shortened version of the event was put together for an intimate afternoon crowd of 40 or so at CBC’s studios.
It was somewhat surreal to wait in the CBC cafeteria, then wind our way through the labyrinth of passageways, down into the belly of the broadcast beast. Like a highschool field trip of sorts. Waiting for us there, in a cozy little studio, were Frivolous, who played a funky, glitchy goodbye set before flying off to Berlin for good this a.m. (he had this great red phone for adding voice-generated effects–it all seemed so KGB to me); Tractile, whose hard-hitting sound was delish but more suited to 4 am than 4 pm (or, as I put to one of the Piknic guys, sometimes sunglasses are a requisite accessory for fun…); and Midnight Operator, aka brothers Mathew Jonson and Nathan Jonson, who layed down a very playful, humourous set full of synthy grunts and saucy bloops that had pretty much everybody dancing.
All in all, a nice way to spend a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon.
Oh, and I’m told that Mathew Jonson will may be making an appearance this week at Dizzy Tuesdays, Academy Dancehall, 4445 St Laurent.
