Pop Montreal: Wednesday Picks!

Running September 21-25, the 10th year of POP Montreal kicks off less than one week from now, and right from the get-go the schedule is jam packed. Arcade Fire‘s show at Metropolis may already be sold out, but there are plenty of other great events going on that night, and besides they’re playing a huge free outdoor show at the place des Festivals of Quartier des Spectacles at 9pm Thursday. Though Technical Kidman have been getting a lot of press, and Araabmuzik and others at Le Belmont will be keeping the crowd dancing, I prefer to balance philosophico-black metal with some dream-pop. Opening night is all Brooklyn.

Liturgy @ Il Motore | Wednesday 21 September | 8pm

Liturgy’s frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix has generated a lot of controversy (see his academic treatise “Transcendental Black Metal”) for his serious, some would say pretentious, take on black metal, art, and the ecstatic. Regardless of how you may or may not weigh in on this, if you are a fan of extreme music, Liturgy’s Renihilation (2009) and Aesthetica (2011) say more than enough on their own. Though the band may play up their role in the evolution of black metal, their sound owes as much to punk, thrash, American hardcore, and screamo, not to mention further afield 20th century experimental music, conceptually if not sonically. Personally I think artists like Tim Hecker are pushing sound in more interesting directions, creating transcendent potentialities, however there is something about Liturgy, the stripped down rawness somehow combined with technicality and intensity, the communion of the four musicians, that matches even their lofty rhetoric. The “burst beat” pushes and pulls, while the other musicians attentively listen, their songs not so much unfolding as being torn into being by sheer force of collective will.  Also playing are Cave, PC Worship, & Aim Low.

Asobi Seksu @ Club Lambi | Wednesday 21 September | 8pm

On quite a different end of the sonic spectrum are the shoegazing, dreamy melodies of Asobi Seksu. When the band first formed, they had a dirty name, but upon the realization that it might be juveline (and make press trickier) they changed their name to a Japanese translation. (Play Sex, or Sportf**k.) Like the festival itself, Asobi Seksu now have a decade of history under their belt, and the future sounds good. Also performing will be Jesuslesfilles, F**k Montreal, and Amour a Jeun.

Richard Kerr. Nudity is a dead language. film still. copyright Richard Kerr.

Art Pop:
Vernissage/Opening with Richard Kerr
Marshall Mcluhan   {my}  teacher… classroom to studio. 
Wednesday 21 September 21 | 7:30pm
Show:  21 Septmeber – Sunday 25 September
@ Pop Quarters

Art Pop has a lot of exciting things planned this year. Be sure to check out the opening for Richard Kerr‘s Marshall McLuhan {my} teacher … classroom to studio, in which the artist will be present. Kerr initially recorded the great Canadian media theorist giving a talk in 1975. This event turned out to be transformational for the artist, who reworked the monologue in 1993, turning it into an installation which includes a 60 minute video, a 4-screen digital projection from the I.S.S.C. project, and a recent selection of Motion Picture Weavings.

From the Artist’s Statement:

In McLuhan, Kerr recontextualizes a “question and answer period” for design students delivered by media theorist Marshall McLuhan at Sherdian College in 1975. Operating from McLuhan’s own aphorism “the medium is the message,” Kerr combines footage of the address with two scrolling texts in the borders, in one showing an asynchronous transcript that weaves around McLuhan’s dialogue, and in another, reinforcing McLuhan’s talking points like a ticker on cable news. It has the effect of sharply re-conceptualizing the semantic and rhetorical values of the lecture in particular, yet also provides a fascinating perspective on McLuhan’s own ideas and intellectual form of address.

Check the full schedule at here at the POP Montreal site.