FrançaisCanada’s Sweetest Music Blog – le vendredi 7 mars 2008
par Joshua Ostroff
CMW Day 2 : Quebec Indie-tronica to French Hip-Hop
With, like, 500 freakin' bands to pick from during Canadian Music Week, there's a lemming-like tendency to hit the showcases boasting the most buzz. But while this greatly improves one's odds of, y'know, being entertained, these city-crushing monster festivals are supposed to be about discovering new talent.
Which was why I wound up watching Misteur Valaire to kickoff Thursday night's a-wanderings-and how I discovered the best band I've seen thus far….
Hailing from Montreal, this little-known indie-tronica five-piece littered the tiny stage of raggedy rock club Sneaky Dee's with their equipment-real drums, drum machines, tablas, saxophone, trumpet, turntables, guitars, laptops and banks upon banks of synthesizers and keyboards. Oh, and cowbell.
You name it-one of these argyle sweater-wearing hipsters was playing it at any given moment. This kitchen-sink instrumentation sure sounds like sensory overload-think the Dust Brothers' "sampledelica" production on Beck's Odelay, except played live. But somehow, someway, the mashed up mess of soaring horns, DJ scratching, rubbery synths, jump-up beats and occasional rapping all gelled into insistent, jazzy dance grooves.
The only problem was that it was 9pm and the audience was sparse-put Misteur Valaire on at 1am in a party situation and people would collecting lose their minds.
Still, it was an auspicious beginning… [...]
To be fair, Cuizinier had a great flow (French is the only non-English language able to handle hip-hop) but he was somewhat anticlimactic-or perhaps I was too much old and not enough drunk. Doesn't matter anyhow-I only expect to see one great performance a night at CMW and since I started with Misteur Valaire, the rest of the night was mere gravy. Or rather, poutine.
