Today is both my last day in Montréal and the last day of the 11th annual Mutek festival, and it's been a whirlwind of electronique adventure. But rather than the full-on immersion that Mutek diehards dive into, I've just dipped in my toes and sampled some select offerings.... missing some amazing stuff in the process I am sure, but I've seen and heard some great stuff, and saved my eardrums and energy for the upcoming week of activity back in Toronto.

My Mutek week started Wednesday night at Monument-National, which is where the self-explanatory A/Visions series was relocated last year. Previous iterations were at the open-concept space SAT, but the M-N is a huge, gorgeous historic theatre. Amazingly enough, as I walked in just before showtime at 8pm, the 800-cap soft-seater was almost at capacity. Pretty impressive numbers for a night of uneasy listening. First up were Nicolas Bernier and Mark Messier, presenting their La chambre des machines, in which the duo played some kind of a pinball game with a pair of sound boxes — one adorned with alarm clocks, the other with wooden paddles that the operator pulled on dramatically. Despite such analog tech, the sounds that came out were defiantly digital, indicating some effects-rack subterfuge. Still, the first movement of this electroacoustic work had such subsonic force it threatened to open up a Guatemala City-sized sinkhole under Rue St. Laurent.

Next up were Matmos, who I thought were headlining. One of my all-time favourite electronic groups, I have been lucky enough to follow the evolution of their live show over the last four years. This set was mostly synth-based, in the vein of their last album, 2008's Supreme Balloon. Previewing their forthcoming recorded collab, Treasure State, with the fine Brooklyn contemporary quartet So Percussion, some of their new material featured "ethnic" percussion, though incorporated in the characteristically tongue-in-cheek Matmos humour. "This song is called... 'Montana.' [pause] That's all I have to say about that," said M.C. Schmidt as he drily introduced a new piece. "Montana" turned out to sound more "South Pacific," and Schmidt even dropped a melodic reference to "Bali Ha'i" into this pseudo-exotica. Despite Schmidt falling ill earlier and claiming to be "delirious," he and Drew Daniel were in fine, charming form, and the set ended with Daniel roaming the room carrying a swing pair of speakers blasting a tabla beat. Matmos and So Percussion (who couldn't join them in Montreal) play an Alex Coleurs-presented show in Toronto this Friday (June 11) at Meta Gallery (124 Ossington), along with our favourite nogoodniks, Gastric Female Reflex.

Wednesday night ended with a performance I had been waiting years to see in person, the infamous symphony for dot matrix printers by mysterious Montréal duo, [The User]. (Pictured above, photo taken from Mutek 2010's Flicker photostream.) The stage was filled with 15 old desktop computers, connected to the ancient printing machines. The symphony was based around the familiar BZZZZT-BZZZZT, BZZZZT-BZZZZT sound of the dot matrix cartridge moving back and forth across the page — well, a sound familiar to those of us of sufficient vintage to remember life before inkjet and cheap laser printing — and run through a series of delays and other digital effects. The duo smartly incorporated cameras into the performances, allowing for close-ups of the various moving parts of this incredible 1980s technology. My only complaint about the evening was the fact that all three performances were scheduled back-to-back with no intermissions — two hours is a long time to remain seated, especially after having spent five hours on a train earlier in the day.

The next night (Thursday) back at the same venue, British industrial pioneers Nurse With Wound (pictured above) headlined the second of the A/Visions series. NWW is a group I only have peripheral familiarity with, and to my ears, this set sounded more like EAI (electroacoustic improvisation) than industrial, though there was a dark ambient undertow to the trio's sound tinkering. For the majority of the set, the music threatened to be overshadowed by the films that accompanied them (by an Irish filmmaker whose name I didn't catch)... a rather unsettling series of enigmatic shorts involving a room dripping with gore, a suburban home catching fire while its ennui-addled residents sit and stare, and a submerged home involving domestic scenes like fights and make-outs taking place underwater. But then as the band slowly started incorporating more guitar and building the volume and intensity, I realized the trio was in fact a quartet, as bandleader Steve Stapleton emerged from the shadows to grab the mic and dance across the front of the stage while delivering a Mark E. Smith-style rap-rant — "We're in a rock'n'roll session / 1959 / Observatory / What a strange story." I enjoyed hearing the anti-rock elements of the Mutek crowd complain about this as we filed out.

Over at mega-club Metropolis, I had my only Nocturnes techno-dance-party experience of the weekend. I was mainly there to see Mouse on Mars, possibly Matmos' stiffest competitor for my most beloved electronic group of the ages. Last time I saw them was around a decade ago at Lee's Palace, around the time of their 2000 album Autoditacker, and that show was incredible — powerful, dynamic, incredibly danceable. Sadly, the German duo fell flat at this show. They were undertaking some kind of house music experiment, but it never really developed into anything, and apparently, they knew it — they stopped well short of their allotted 90 minute set time. I think they may have had trouble following Coldplay-approved British chap Jon Hopkins' solo set, which killed the dance floor with both dynamics and a skillful grasp of tonal range.

I took Friday off for picnics, friend hangs and random wanderings, though ended up at one of the free Mutek "Ectoplasmes" shows in the Hydro Quebec room of Monument-National to catch an incredible performance by French turntablist Arnaud Rivière (pictured above), who was in the process of throwing all kind of objects onto his near-destroyed deck and scratching them up with the tone arm — did it have a needle made of steel or something?? — to create a glorious mess of noise. At one point he even picked up the whole table and began smashing it against the floor. Intense. On Saturday, I chose to check out the A/Visions performance at the more free-form SAT space, enjoying meditative yet high-volume drone sets by Finland's Vladislav Delay, Austria's Carl Michael von Hausswolf, Montreal's Tim Hecker and Australia-via-Iceland's Ben Frost.

Tonight however, I'm switching teams, as it is the launch for the 10th edition of the annual Suoni per il Popolo Festival, the near-month-long smorgasbord of avant-rock, free-jazz and out-there sound exploration brought to you be the people who run the venues La Sala Rossa, Casa del Popolo and Il Motore in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood. Tonight's show is also the 13th birthday party for Constellation Records and features Clues, Hrsta, Sam Shalabi and recent WL guests Elfin Saddle, and the rest of the festival line-up is the usual embarassment of riches. We're lucky to have Suoni's impetus to bring some rare international talent to the area, though, and as a result we have teamed up with both the Music Gallery and the Suoni folk to present Wavelength 504 a.k.a. the Summer Courtyard Series, which starts this Wednesday (June 9) with Grouper, Julia Kent and The Dead Letters, continues Thursday (June 10) with Pocahaunted and trio of exciting new Toronto bands: Doldrums, The Deep and Wet Nurse; then picks up Saturday (June 12) with tape-loop explorer William Basinski with guest Neil Wiernik, and wraps up on Tuesday June 15 with Victoria freak-popsters Frog Eyes (who haven't played a Wavelength show since 2003), who will be joined by Toronto musical institution, GUH. All four shows — weather permitting — will be taking place under the stars in the beautiful outdoor courtyard of St. George the Martyr, which will be licensed and also feature WL's trademark visualist, General Chaos Visuals. Tickets are still available at Rotate This, Soundscapes and Ticketweb, as is an all-access series pass.

And check out some music by most of the Summer Courtyard Series performers, on our SoundCloud player... voila!

Summer Courtyard Series / Wavelength 504 by wavelengthtoronto