- MUTEK's sixth Barcelona edition felt like a coming of age. The venues used by the festival—two clubs, a theatre, a disused beer factory, a cultural centre and a convent—captured the cultural and stylistic essence of the music more than previous years. There were several small but significant changes that made everything flow more easily and feel more like a city-wide event. The free shows, for example, attracted huge crowds and felt communal even if you couldn't get in.
The A/V shows in the theatre and elsewhere were some of the best performances of the week, and lent the festival a striking visual potency. Robert Henke's Lumière II added coloured lasers to the previously black and white show with impressive results, while Murcof and Simon Geilfus's more classically ambient soundscapes and cosmic imagery had a natural poetry. French-Japanese duo Nonotak delivered with a bewildering and frenetic IDM and projection mapping set, though Canada's Maotik and Metametric show, as beautiful as it was, lacked urgency and dynamic range. But it was the tireless Herman Kolgen who deserves the most praise for his three shows on three days, all of them disturbingly vivid and varied in theme, music and design.
Club-wise, Thursday was techno night. A thuggish crowd gathered at Club 4, witnessing a dubby, cerebral warm-up from Argentine Dokser, followed by Eduardo de la Calle's tense and nuanced set and a short but fizzing performance from Zenker Brothers, who bustled through tracks from their recent album, "Immersion.". Only Franco Cinelli let the side down, playing a hyperactive minimal set that relied too much on heavy-handed mixer manipulation.
On Friday night, Max Graef was also a little uninspiring. While some of his selections were top-notch, he rarely strayed out of his comfort zone. The opposite can be said of Magic Mountain High, whose set was one of the most exciting and vivid electronic performances I have ever seen, characterised by a striking spontaneity and a hefty dose of hypnotic, danceable grooves. On after them, John Talabot and Axel Boman's Talaboman collaboration was another pleasant surprise. Plugging away until the early hours, their interaction and obvious bond brought the performance to life.
Saturday's closing party at Nitsa got off to a frustrating start with Der Panther's curious, beatless psychedelia, which never really got off the ground. The screen which they played behind obscured Shelby Grey and his warm-up set, and took too long to bring down before Pantha Du Prince came onstage. The latter played a satisfying but slightly frilly set that, like Graef's, felt too safe. Kangding Ray, on the other hand, was in fine form in the second room, pouring out fierce liquid electro. And then, to close out the festival, there was Minimal Wave's Veronica Vasicka, who wrapped things up with a fresh and direct take on club music that was at once familiar and exploratory. It made for a fitting conclusion to another fine MUTEK.ES.
Photo credit: Alba Rupérez