Another MUTEK season wrapped up last weekend featuring the best in alternative electronic music and digital arts across various venues of Montreal. Each venue featured a set of themed curated performances from across the globe. Here are some of our highlights.

INTER CONNECT México brought together Omaar and Mexican Jihad on the ground level of SAT. The room atmosphere took the crowd back to  Mexico City’s underground after hours, filled with people dancing to the grimy and heavy bass.

Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) took over NOCTURNE 3 for a much deeper and darker performances by Deathprod, Norwegian musician and producer. Lit by a single spotlight at first, Deathprod had the entire Metropolis in pitch dark playing what sounded like an organ, creating a horror movie atmosphere.

Barcelona also brought together a set of artists for the INTER CONNECT on the second night. Filastine and Nova from Barcelona presented Drapetomania, a mix of contemporary Indonesian sound (Nova) intertwined  with electronic music. Their visuals were quite interesting as well, engaging most senses in an organic multimedia experience.

Aurora Halal performed for RBMA Montreal showcase at the Metropolis [cover]. The venue was packed with people mesmerized by psychedelic techno and hard-to-look-away from visuals. The weekend wrapped up with DJ Nomad at the open stage near Place des Arts where he played a combination of tropical sounds highly influenced by African, Caribbean and Latin influences, occasionally stirred by techno, creating an exotic ambience. As his name suggests it, this DJ seems to have been everywhere and took the audience on tropical journey along with him.

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Events like Electronic Africa gather DJs from the continent to show off what genre-blending work they’re doing, and provide an extravagant party to sweat and dance. Nozinja and DJ Spoko from South Africa, Titica, Chief Boima, and Dubbel Dutch brought it to North Brooklyn on May 1st at Villain.

There’s a bit of catch-up being played here. DJ Spoko plays his version of the popular Kwaito, a house-inspired blend of African sounds with electronic beats. It’s an incident of “does this sound like early 90s hip hop or is the mind just caught up in the fresh interpretation?” What it does well is capture the chanting style of traditional African music, which, in person, leaves little to be desired. The dancing is there, the beats are constantly pushing toward some throbbing build, the body must always be moving, but it misses the complement of having the entire crowd sing along.

What should be the focus too, of an event capturing Electronic Africa, is how this music isn’t merely world music, both complicated and complicating because Africa is the only continent that often gets treated as if it were a singular country, but carrying the adjective of electronic, elevating it to a progressive “other”. Google event participant, Chief Boima, and you’ll find, on the first page a website with his profile, a statement that Africa is a country which the artist founded. World music is often dismissive and generalising, suggesting that Western consumers only listen to it on occasion or when sampled by their favorite hip hop artist.

But Chief Boima does a little more complicating, adding what has been considered Latin roots to his traditional music. From the inspiration of Rio, to the Latin American Palenque dripping over each track, Boima delicately plays with what Afro-Latino means.

The event, subconsciously political, consciously drawing attention to underexposed artists and continents, was ravenous. There was much dancing, much excitement over each of the attendees, and a promise that RBMA NYC offers more old school learning.

All images are courtesy of Red Bull Music Academy

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