Mistakes are encouraged at Mutek, Canada's finest electronic music festival. The booking policy is almost exclusively composed of live acts—and aims for world, North American and Canadian premieres when possible. This is almost entirely a good thing—even when you see something that doesn't quite work, it's clear that the artists are nonetheless trying things out. For a scene built around forward-facing ideals, this is a rarity. Especially at a moment in North America when choreographed spectacle has become just as important as the music, if not more so.
Photo credit: Inna Spivakova
Which wasn't to say that there wasn't spectacle at Mutek. The only show held in SAT's Satosphere had most people looking upward more than dancing throughout. (Perfect, then, for Keith Fullerton Whitman's modular synth set.) Mutek has placed visuals alongside music, pairing cutting-edge artists with one another since the festival's beginnings, but these dizzying and immersive projections were among the best I've ever seen.
Photo credit: Inna Spivakova
Downstairs on SAT's ground floor, things rarely convinced in the same way visually—even if many of the performances worked just fine on their own. KiNK's live set was an engaging blend of old school house and acid in which the Bulgarian producer played what looked like a light-sensitive synth of some sort and encouraged audience participation throughout. He understands that the stumbling block that so many people have with live electronic music—the "what are they doing up there?" question—and tailors his set so that every push of a button seems to translate into a new sound.
There were disappointments: Most of the newer artists that we checked out seemed to have a long way to go. Shlohmo's surprisingly in-your-face sounds seemed out-of-place considering how few people had come to see them. Perhaps they should have switched places with Deniz Kurtel, whose fine set of tech house seemed too warm and intimate for the larger confines of Metropolis.
Photo credit: Inna Spivakova
You might have guessed the same thing about Nicolas Jaar's band, but the cavernous venue was hardly big enough to hold the amount of people that seemed to be there to see the young producer. He certainly didn't play to them, though: Eschewing big moments and constant gratification, the long spells of build often became so long that you could hardly call them build anymore. Even so, when a kick drum hit the rapturous crowd reacted as if to urge Jaar's band to continue as it meant to go on. They rarely did, for reasons that Jaar explained the next day in an RA Exchange, but it also left some in the crowd wanting.
Photo credit: Inna Spivakova
Mutek is traditionally broken up into early evening experimental and late night dancing. Among the former's highlights was Robin Fox, whose single laser stage set-up was almost hilariously simple and deadly effective. Jeff Mills' set-up was also strikingly minimal, a single enormous moon behind him and his many CD-Js for a large portion of the show. His 909 solo near the end was a reminder that it doesn't take much more than seeing someone working hard—and with no safety net—to blow people away.
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