They Just Need Some Space

They Just Need Some Space


Alternative performance venues are fostering tight-knit communities and contributing to the artistic diversity of the city

SCOTT W. GRAY, Freelance

Published in the Montreal Gazette: August 2, 2007

Clinton the cat has just returned from a traumatic visit to the veterinarian, and his human caretakers, Sarah Byrnes and Michelle Williams, make sure I am gentle with him as they welcome me into their home.

They live at St. Laurent Blvd. and Prince Arthur St. in a building full of converted studios, in a long loft that boasts a typical urban domesticity - except that it regularly doubles as the art venue and performance space known as My Hero Gallery.

The two women established My Hero last year to offer emerging visual artists a place to display their work outside the traditional gallery spaces of the city, and to foster community.

"There's so much energy in this city toward independent music," Byrnes says. "I wanted to take that energy and combine it with art. This gallery is about merging art and music together and then getting that energy to be fun."

"We wanted to use the space." Williams continues. "We wanted to do something that interested both of us - being that Sarah could curate art shows and I could do music shows once in a while."

The two women praise the community that develops around the events they host in this unusual performance space. Every month they welcome strangers into their home, charging no admission and operating on a BYOB bar policy to showcase talent they believe in.

"Smaller venues create communities," Byrnes says. "An intimate show is priceless. Going to a show where you are close to the band and you are interacting with them as they are interacting with you - it's something that's memorable. It moves you."

In fact, the idea of providing a space for community to gather, whether physically or virtually, recurs frequently when discussing Montreal's alternative performance spaces with their curators.

Emmanuel Madan and his colleague Thomas McIntosh (known collectively as The User) are the creative force behind the Silophone in Montreal's Old Port. The Silophone uses recording and playback equipment installed in an enormous, empty grain silo built on the Lachine Canal in 1903. The project was designed to allow audiences to explore the natural acoustics of this abandoned space, albeit from a distance.

The public can send files across the Internet, speak across a phone line, or use the "Sonic Observatory" (a permanent installation The User has built on the boardwalk of the Old Port) to hear their voices reverberating inside the giant metal grain silo.

"When we got access, what we wanted to do was bring the public inside because it's such an amazing space," Madan says. "The thing that we were attracted to when we first explored the building was what it sounds like inside. But, unsurprisingly, the Old Port wouldn't allow the general public in. So, what we chose to do instead was bring the acoustics of the space outside to people in other places."

Audio files are uploaded to The Silophone's website, www.silophone.net, from all over the world, and remain there for others to play back through the space. By adding files to the sound bank, audiences can participate in the Silophone's international community.

Madan says that we turn to non-traditional venues for culture because the number of "conventional spaces where people can play and gather" is limited.

"Not to say there aren't concert spaces in Montreal," he says, "but for a certain kind of music and art, I think that you see a lot of marginal spaces being reclaimed because there are a lot of those spaces."

Guy Sprung is a firm believer in community gathering spaces. His theatre company, Infinitheatre, operates out of the converted Bain St. Michel at Maguire and St. Dominique Sts., a space that was initially the community bathhouse when it was built in 1911.

As we speak, Sprung shows me renovation plans for the pool, adjusting various pieces in a cardboard mock-up of the Bain St. Michel that is sitting on his desk. With a movement of his hand, the building's interior is exposed, and a tiny stage is neatly fitted into the pool's deep end.

Relying on three-month contracts from the city to stage performances, and facing the realities of an aging building, the converted Bain St. Michel operates on a fairly provisional lease. However, Sprung is undaunted by the challenges.

"I think it's amazingly flexible and the idea of it redefining itself as a community gathering place is so neat," he says. "This would have an edge - you would walk in and your mindset would be shifted and you would maybe see things from a different perspective.

"It goes back to something, you know," Sprung adds, carefully putting the roof back on the cardboard model of the pool. "It would be the area's little gathering point for the community."

For information on My Hero Gallery, go to http://www.myherogallery.ca/. For the Silophone, go to http://www.silophone.net/. For Infinitheatre, go to http://www.infinitheatre.com/.

photo by dave sidaway - for the gazette

Thinking Globally, Dancing Locally

Dubstep nights have brought the bass-heavy sounds of South London to Montreal, where the music has found an appreciative audience for all its emerging styles

SCOTT W. GRAY
Special to the Gazette

Published: Thursday, June 14, 2007

Everything is dark and clammy, your extremities are vibrating and there is a deep, constricting pressure across your chest. Maybe you're disoriented, sweating or unable to locate the source of the throbbing in your muscles.

These are either the first signs of cardiac arrest, or you are experiencing dubstep - a dark electronic music that has emerged in recent years out of England. Initially thought to be specific to the gritty south London neighbourhoods that spawned it, dubstep has expanded outward and taken root in Montreal, as well as in other international cities, picking up influences and audience momentum along the way.

There is some agreement on what constitutes dubstep. Based loosely on a combination of Jamaican dub, UK 2-step and electronic garage music, dubstep is usually mid-tempo, featuring reverb-heavy, syncopated percussion over an impossibly low sub-bass that is more of a physical force than an actual sound.

At a recent dubstep night during the Mutek electronic music festival, I experienced sub-bass frequencies so powerful they actually vibrated my glasses down my nose, and I watched beer cups shimmy off of speaker cabinets. High frequencies ping-pong and whir around the listener, while deep shots drive the songs forward, echoing out with increasing intensity and heaviness.

Dubstep nights are popping up all over town. With DJ sets at Main Hall, Kop Shop, Academy or L'Escogriffe, the dubstep scene is vibrant and growing. Early in the night, events are populated by sparse crowds of die-hard dubstep fans, nodding along to the fractured tracks the DJ features.

As the night progresses, crowds from different scenes begin filing in - dancers, deep listeners and even just the curious - checking out music that draws influence from diverse record collections. Each dubstep night is subject to the quality of the sound system available, but in my experience, all share audiences with positive energy and enthusiasm for this sparse, unusual music.

Traditionally, electronic music thrives on tight definitions, subdividing various genres into micro-genres based on very specific criteria. Thus far, dubstep has eschewed such rigid parameters and adopted a more inclusive perspective, pulling in influences from a variety of different musical styles. This reaction against a formula to define dubstep has helped generate new producers, promoters and audiences globally, linked together by the internet.

Montreal dubstep promoters Nick and Matthew Burton (aka: Hosta and Komodo, respectively) are drawn to this inclusive aspect of dubstep, evidenced by the sets they play, and by Matthew's compositions that place didgeridoo and Arabian flute over the music.

"It's amazing what we've seen in the last couple of years," Nick says. "We've seen so much growth and diversity, and different flavours - there's the techno aspect, the hip-hop side, the half-step influence, the Middle Eastern influence. As far as I can tell, compared to other scenes, this is unique because in about a year this has all splintered off. To me, that's dubstep. It's just ... everything."

"And yet," his brother Matthew adds, "people are all still willing to call it dubstep. I think what's exciting about the dubstep scene is that we're at the beginning of it now. What's most exciting to me is that idea of anything goes. Ninety per cent of the people that come out to our nights don't know that this is dubstep. They just know they're enjoying it."

As local dubstep DJ nights or the recent dubstep-heavy events at the Mutek festival may evidence, the music has an all-encompassing breadth that attracts new fans across the musical spectrum. Montreal producer and promoter Smile Germeil (aka Intoccabile), has seen audiences enjoying the music even as producers are struggling with its boundaries.

"I think at the moment dubstep producers and listeners don't really know what dubstep is. It's like we're working, trying to define (it) by our output," he says. "I was kind of one of the first guys to talk about and promote dubstep in Montreal, because we felt like if we didn't do anything (it) would just die off. So that's why we took it upon ourselves to do everything - release material, throw jams, inform the public about these new, emerging styles. And it's exploding right now. It's crazy."

Dubstep DJ Philippe Aubin-Dionne (aka Thehovsep) concurs. "I played this track last night and it just blew up. Everyone looked at me - just opened their eyes and went 'What's going on?' I am really thankful that I was able to discover this music, and put on nights. You know we recently had two dubstep nights in Montreal on the same night? It's amazing that something that's so central to this suburb of London would go on to have two nights at once on the other side of the ocean."

"Now, with the Internet," he says, "nothing can remain local."

The dubstep night Komodo Dubs is held the first Thursday of every month at Academy Club, 4445 St. Laurent Blvd. The next event is July 5.

photo by phil carpenter for the gazette

Urban Camouflage