Kinetik: Day Two

Headscan
Catching only the last two tracks of their set, we don’t necessarily feel qualified to pass judgment on the Canadian duo. We will however note that what we did hear was more or less what we expected, if maybe a touch less techno oriented. Perfectly serviceable atmospherics and beat oriented with hissed vocals.

Memmaker
Thus far, the unquestioned show stealers. An enthused hometown crowd were validated by a performance that would’ve quickly won over even the most staid and unfamiliar audience. The high-tempo, breakneck tracks guaranteed instant dancefloor mayhem, but also delivered plenty of rhythmic complexity for those with a yen for chin-stroking restraint. Much of their material uses classic techno song structures, but with a punishing, all-enveloping wash of noise indicative of Yann Faussurier and Guillaume Nadon’s pedigree. Copies of their debut LP “How To Enlist In A Robot Uprising” (Replete with BPM listings on the back cover! Old school!) were flying off merch tables afterwards, and hearing multiple cuts from this beast at the club this year is an absolute certainty. Get your ass to Mars.

Rabia Sorda
Balancing electro and acoustic elements is always difficult in a live context, and in Rabia Sorda’s case the keyboards were unfortunately buried in the mix, making it difficult to follow each song’s progression. In spite of that, the band delivered an energetic set, largely fuelled by live drums which lent the proceedings a more traditionally “rock” sound.

Funker Vogt
A metric fuckton of Funker shirts could be spotted over the course of Kinetik, and the reception the long-standing German band received spoke to their evident popularity. We’ll assume from the cheers that those stoked on seeing Funker got exactly what they were hoping for, but in our humble estimation that’s little more than the uninspired rehash of a single, relatively vapid and fluffy formula over, over, and over again. “This is German electronic body music!” declared lead singer Jens Kästel as the band started in on their set. If that’s the case, we can lay EBM to rest alongside the Weimar Republic and other long since deceased teutonic cultural movements. An improvised game of being able to sing the lyrics to “Tragic Hero” overtop of each song that was tossed out soon ceased to be a joke. We’d conservatively guess that two-thirds of their set follows roughly same chord progressions and general song structure, not to mention never straying from a range of four or five BPM.

Outside of the overarching modern military conflict theme, Funker’s ethos is a slightly muddled one. On one hand there’s the traditionally distorted vocals, on the other there’s the cheesiness of the horn voices that carry their song’s melodies. This schizophrenia carried over to their stage show and costuming. One dude thinks he’s in Covenant, another thinks he’s the DJ for Scooter, and another’s under the delusion that he’s playing paintball. We just don't get what's hip with the kids these days.

Kiew
Oh Jesus. Following a band as popular as Funker and going onstage at 1 am’s an unenviable task (we’d guess that a full half of the crowd left as soon as the final beat of “Tragic Hero” was played), and Kiew were also the first band who had to deal with substantive technical problems. Neither of these factors provide enough cover to excuse what was not only hands down the worst set of Kinetik, but the worst set by an electronic band of any repute either of us had seen in years.

Acceptable glitchy shit out of frontman Thedi's rig, but his repeated yelling of inane slogans drowned out anything interesting that might've been going on. Factor in a guitarist and bassist apparently jamming out in an entirely random fashion and you've four elements heading out in entirely different directions and getting absolutely nowhere. We've no idea if Kiew takes an improv approach to live performance, but we've seen enough excellent improvised electronic sets and more than enough mediocre ones to know the difference. Any audience member could've been on stage wanging on a theremin for the duration of the set and it would neither have added nor subtracted a thing from this shoddy and embarrassing wankfest. Kiew have a sizeable following (having been active since 1990), but given that this was our first exposure to them, we certainly can't count ourselves amongst it (sorry, Richard).

Noisuf-X
Acceptable noise-EBM hybrid that got feet moving (no small feat this late in the evening) but didn't leave much of an impression. Good workrate. In all honesty, we were too tired by this point (not to mention zombified by Kiew) to really digest anything remotely complex or challenging, so this was a bit of a relief.

Kinetik: Day One

Kinetik has come and gone. We've left Montreal with beer in our guts, CDs in our bags, and plenty of noise buzzing in our ears. We'll be offering a general write-up of the organization, mood and presentation of the festival as a whole, but first let's get run down the bands, day by day. First up, Phase One: Electro.

The Horrorist
Suprisingly more stark EBM than we would have expected. Aside from well worn hardcore classics like "One Night in NYC", most of the tracks featured a traditional, Belgian EBM sound, exemplified by his straight-forward cover of "Body to Body". Aside from adding occasional Atari Teenage Riot style vocals, The Horrorist’s assistant manned the backing tracks on an iBook (the official computer of, well, everyone at Kinetik), leaving Chessler free to roam the stage and crowd with a handheld halogen lamp and distract from the limitations of what was essentially a laptop set. Bonus points for playing "I Am A Sex Machine", as seen being demo'd by Chessler in the "where are they now" portion of Depeche Mode’s classic concert film "101". Even more bonus points for rocking a hairstyle so memorable, iconic and ridiculous in that film that someone in the crowd felt moved to sport it in tribute twenty years later.

Ascii.Disko
Not a disappointment, but certainly not a pleasant surprise either. One man behind a laptop, one track flowing into the next with no change in BPM doesn’t make for as much of a live experience as it does a DJ set. Fine, workmanlike electro that lacked the synthpop flourishes of his recorded output. The crowd seemed to enjoy it, but we could’ve used more vocals to break up the repetition.

Nitzer Ebb
Kicking off with "Getting Closer", Nitzer Ebb justified their status not only as the biggest name at Kinetik by far, but also one of the two quintessential EBM bands of all time. McCarthy was in fine form (and remarkably well-preserved to boot), bouncing back forth for the duration of the set, barking, goose-stepping and tanzing der Mussolini. No effort was made to retrofit their songs as some of their late 80s/early 90s contemporaries have done in recent years. The vitality of the material transcended its age and still sounded as brash, bombastic and relentless as the day it was released. Were an uninitiated party to take in their set, there’d be no indication that the bulk of these tracks dated back to the Thatcher administration. And yes, we joined in the chant and shouted golden shouts.

Ek = A Buttload Of Angry Germans With Laptops

Two thirds of the IEI team will be forming like Voltron (albeit a heavily amputated Voltron) this week in Montreal for the much touted three night Kinetik festival. The line-up's been the talk of "this thing of ours" for months: Fiendflug, This Morn Omina, Displacer, Kiew, Xotox, Mono No Aware, Headscan, Terrorfakt... But let's face it: like the majority of the folks there, despite whichever obscure Finnish powernoise act we make like we're really excited to see, for us it's all about Nitzer Ebb. And, by Fulber's beard, the merch tables! Between Ant Zen, Industrial Shirts and Storming the Base all bringing swag to the shows, I fully expect to be reduced to a Wonderbread n' Kool-Aid diet for the subsequent couple of months.

This trip's been in the works for months, and we're both crazy stoked to be checking out what's sure to be a landmark event for live dark electronic shows in North America. Montreal's a city that promotes revelry, and by the end of the second night Alex and I plan to be three sheets to the wind and heckling Funker Vogt (who are, let's face it, Very Silly) and demanding that they play "Shaven" (to the unfamiliar: Google the lyrics at yr own risk).

Watch this space for our personal Kinetik highlights, lowlights and preferred fashion "don'ts" from the Unix Sysadmin Rivet Runway, featuring the gorgeous (and pasty) models of the Side-Line forums.