Montreal New Years Eve 2012 :: the Blog

This week promises to be big in Montreal.

First, starting tomorrow our beloved Beer Festival (Mondial de la bière Montréal 2011) is back in full force, to make beer lovers as well as beer novices discover everything this amazingly amazing drink has to offer. Not only will you discover new, smaller or independent breweries, but you will also be served some finger-licking-good beer accompanying foods, such as all sorts of wieners, sausages, pâtés and much more. Only problem, the Beer Fest has moved from the historic but small Windsor station to the modern and soul-less but huge Place Bonaventure (near the Central Station). Hopefully they will have an outdoors section, like they used to at the Windsor Station.

And then, this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the city will explode into the mechanical and petroleum fueled orgy that the F1 race is. The Montreal Grand Prix (sill the only F1 race in North-America), is always a week-end filled with fun, even for those who couldn’t care the least bout the F1 race. Crescent Street is closed and will have shows, Peel street is closed (I think) and will feature all sorts of amazing cars on display. Most fun, St-Laurent street is closed and becomes a pedestrian and terrasse paradise, with its beautiful people sipping cocktails on the street instead of being hidden inside those exclusive nightclub walls.

Yes, this week will be heavy and fun. Make sure not to take your car downtown over the week-end: the traffic will be rough with all the street closures, and there is already enough pollution caused by those amazingly fast F1 cars.

Here is what the F1 is all about to some people. Simple stuff for simple folks:

Some more of just standing around, yet worthy to be uploaded on YouTube (yes, you really do find just anything in that giant garbage dump for videos that YouTube is):

PS: For more spicy videos of the craziness that the Grand Prix is in Montreal, read Montreal-Clubs.com’s advice on surviving the F1 week-end in Montreal. If you discover some great F1 activity in the next 2 days, don’t hesitate to leave a comment bellow, and share the world. Especially if it is about an underground F1 team party.

As you hopefully know, Mutek is currently going on at full speed, bringing electronic music to Montreal.

This passed Wednesday was the opening night of the festival, and the Metropolis was invaded by Amon Tobin with his new live show, ISAM. I learned about it from a trailer on the Ninja Tune YouTube channel, and was psyched to see this kind of production going on. Considering that the show will play in very few cityes, and it premiered in Montreal, I couldn’t miss the event.

Well, maybe I should have missed that event. I don’t know, it just didn’t do it for me. The 1st DJ (a dude with some amazing hair) and the 2nd DJ, Gold Panda, were more fun than Amon Tobin’s extravaganza. Tobin’s sound was too loud, too industrial and undanceable.

To me, electronic music should still be danceable or at least groovable.

And then, the visual effects, yes there were impressive, but impressive is all they were. They were not inspiring nor did they transfix you. The giant flying space ship was especially a turn-off: what was that supposed to be, an into to a science-fiction PlayStation Game?

Maybe I am too detached from this iLoving, iPad and SPS playing generation? Maybe I wasn’t high? I don’t know, but I missed the message on ISAM. All I saw was a giant display of computer power, without any inspiration behind it.

Enough with the bitching, because looking at the trailer of ISAM, it looks like lots of people wasted their time on it.

On a better note, this Saturday is the nig night of Mutek, at Metropolis again, and it will feature super amazing Four Tet from the UK. Hopefully he won’t go on a computerized binge like Tobin and he will deliver some more groovable beats.

Here is an old school electronic song that I find amazing, and the visuals are gold:

If you still want to see ISAM, here are people killing their time on it:

Finally, some Four Tet gold, this song and video are simply amazing: