Mutek 11 - 3rd Nocturne

Since 2005, Michael Pettit and Jamie Drouin have been casting an atmospheric haze of deep, minimal techno over their hometown of Victoria, British Columbia. As Overcast Sound, fragments of field recordings mingle with cinematic sweeps and a dub undertow. Pettit combines his background in techno with Drouin’s sound-art practice, creating a signature that recalls the dub-techno excursions found on the Echochord label. Drouin is no stranger to MUTEK, having contributed to a project by audio-visual duo Skoltz_Kolgen, as well as the Placard headphone extravaganza from 2007. Like his other sound works, there’s an emphasis on the way audio can shift senses of place, space and time. The duo’s improvised performances and re-imaginings of their compositions are accentuated with an evocative visual presentation.

Emerging from the offices of Manchester’s Modern Love in 2009, Demdike Stare’s Miles Whittaker (aka Pendle Coven) and Sean Canty wowed electronic music fans right off the bat with their unique ability to blend disparate ethnic music into one masterful dub-driven journey. Boasting extensive, globetrotting record collections that wander deep into the annals of Turkish, Persian, African and Arabic music, in the studio Whittaker and Canty also aren’t afraid to push northward to Nordic drone and Scandinavian glitch music, often all within the confines of the same track. Their self-titled debut EP and the album “Symbiosis” showcase a duo with an obvious appreciation for vinyl obscurities such as library music and rare pressings, and this year’s “Osmosis” mix furthers that obsession with as a seamless 59-minute excursion through the dustiest of world-weary record crate.

Consistently ahead of the curve and one of modern music’s great originals, King Midas Sound’s Kevin Martin has been at the core of more than his fair share of visionary acts in the past two decades. Whether as the driving force behind The Bug, Razor X Productions, Techno Animal or simply as a collaborator to such genre-bending bands as Justin Broadrick’s Godflesh or Sonic Boom’s Experimental Audio Research, Martin has carved out a discography for himself as one of bass music’s true pioneers. With King Midas Sound, Martin delivers his most accessible and hypnotic work to date, drifting into the haunted territory of early Tricky and Massive Attack with the help of vocalist Hitomi and dub poet Roger Robinson. This is truly captivating work that marks a stark departure from the depths of darkness that have been Martin’s calling card for years. King Midas Sound is airy, weightless, sleepwalker’s dub, and last year’s “Waiting For You” debut was one of the most critically acclaimed albums on Kode9’s Hyperdub imprint since Burial’s “Untrue”.

One of the first ladies of dubstep, Ikonika (aka Sarah Abdel-Hamid) emerged on Kode9’s famed Hyperdub label in 2008, just as the imprint known for putting Burial on the map was taking a drastic left turn away from dubstep proper and into funkier, synthier offshoots. Alongside producers like Zomby, Joker, Darkstar and others, Ikonika is part of the second generation of dubsteppers, acts not as concerned with the alienated, atmospheric embalm of the genre’s dark pedigree. Instead, Ikonika’s bass wonkiness and Casio tones flirt with the lightness of UK garage and with elements of electro. This year, the West London producer arrives at MUTEK as a DJ, in support of her debut album, “Contact, Love, Want, Have”, an instrumental affair that Pitchfork’s Martin Clark has called “utterly coherent and single-minded”.

Post industrialists, appropriately from Ontario steel town, Hamilton, Richard Oddie and Christina Sealey have produced a body of work that mines the gray area between techno, industrial and electroacoustic music. Their multitude of releases, on mostly German labels like Hands and Hymen, have, since the early 90s, revealed a critical sound and visual practice concerned as much with the pulse of techno, power electronics and soundscapes, as with the social, cultural and conceptual frameworks behind them. Oddie holds a PHD in environmental studies, specializing in the emergent field of urban political ecology, which connects social justice, urbanization and environment. Several Orphx releases have touched explicitly on such themes. Recent works include the “Division” and “Black Light” 12”s, which feature remixes by Substance and Surgeon. Having performed already at MUTEK’s placard in 2007, the festival is thrilled to have Orphx set the stage for Friday night with their dark technoid sounds.

Actress’s dubstep aesthetics mingle with rave breaks and micro-house attitude to conjure up a gleefully indefinable journey through one of the more tangential side roads veering off from today’s electronic music. The artist is certainly no stranger to challenging conventions. As label manager for London-based label Werk Discs, he’s played a pivotal part in bringing to light critically acclaimed albums by Zomby and Lukid. Actress’ own debut album, the tragically under-rated “Hazyville”, is equally bold and engaging, but apart from three more singles across a seven-year stretch, including this year’s “Paint, Straw, and Bubbles” on the mighty Honest Jon’s label, Actress has most flown under the radar. This year, MUTEK is betting his Montreal performance will change all that, and bring Actress’s abundant talents to the wider audiences his music so obviously deserves.

Raw, humid, dubby, mysterious – when Cheap and Deep’s Jay Patrick Ahern goes to work on tracks, those are usually the characteristics that are going to define the end results. Born in 2009, Cheap and Deep is only the latest in a long line of aliases for Ahern, who has spent nearly two decades floating under the surface as a quintessential producer’s producer and known by crate diggers to be one of those artists who is tragically ahead of his time. With a catalogue dating back to 1992, Ahern has recorded previously as Astralwerks artist Aquarhythms, as well as Add Noise, Hydronaut, Hydroelectric and others. These days, apart from his current endeavours as Cheap and Deep, Ahern has been working alongside Stefan Schneider (Schneider TM, To Rococo Rot) as Hauntologists. But it is his Cheap and Deep alias that sees the veteran producer working on the cutting edges of techno once again, making tracks that draw comparison to the likes of Redshape and Adam X’s Traversable Wormhole.

Arriving at MUTEK 2010 in partnership with Poland’s Unsound Festival, Jacek Sienkiewicz has been active on the East European techno scene since the turn of the century. Born in 1976, his interest in electronic music was spawned in the post-Communist thaw that brought warehouse parties to Eastern Europe in the nineties. Beginning as a DJ in 1995, it took five years before Sienkiewicz released his first twelve-inch, “Directions”, thereby introducing his dark, minimal techno defined by complex chords. The founder of Recognition Recordings, the Polish producer began to break through to the rest of the Europe with releases on veteran Berlin labels such as Trapez, Cocoon, and Klang Electronik. Currently one of Poland’s top electronic exports, Sienkiewicz has been bridging the Atlantic divide this year with notable appearances at Unsound New York in February and now MUTEK 2010.

One of the leading lights of the contemporary German techno circuit, Shed (aka René Pawlowitz) made extremely strong impressions on the international front with his much-lauded 2008 debut album “Shedding the Past”. The album presented one of those rare instances of long-form synchronicity in the techno world. Its eleven tracks perfectly married the producer’s visionary outlook, capturing the zeitgeist of the genre’s futuristic spirit while giving an ever-respectful nod to strains of its half-forgotten past. Active since 2004 with a series of singles on Styrax, Delsin, and his own Soloaction imprint, in 2008 he switched gears and joined the Ostgut Ton label run by founders of the famed Berlin nightclub Berghain. The club’s purist attitude fit succinctly with Pawlowitz’s sonic palette, which had been formed through years of working at the world-renowned Hard Wax record store, heralded by many as the ground zero of electronic music’s vinyl culture. Pawlowitz is also active under a series of other aliases, including EQD, The Panamax Project, STP, and Wax.

For more info, visit www.mutek.org or the event’s page