LowerState

Yes indeedy, Christmas time is a coming and boy oh boy have we got a treat for you on December 19th @ Deeper. Not only have we got our two fabulously talented residents (Audiofeen & Ruari) doing one of their all expansive back-to-back warmups (they actually tie themselves together back-to-back for this, it really has to be seen to be believed), we have one of the funkiest mofo’s in house & techno visiting Galway - Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts.

Ever an energetic actor in the electronic music scene, Montreal based artist Guillaume Coutu-Dumont maintains numerous collaborative projects, performing regularly in his hometown and around the world. Driven by his passion for hybrid forms of musical expression, Guillaume continues on his quest for the ultimate ham bone funk recipe with his solo project: Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts - a special blend of funk, house, techno, gospel, swing and afro-beat.

His first album FACE À L’EST was released on Musique risqué in 2007. So far, his solo outputs are available on Mutek_rec, Musique Risquée, Hartchef Discos, Floppy Funk, OSLO, Raum Musik and on French labels Circus company and Karat.

Guillaume’s initial musical forays were as a percussionist in a funk band, after which he studied latin and classical percussions in college before discovering electroacoustic composition, which he pursued further at university. It was during this period that he joined [iks], a contemporary jazz formation with whom he recorded two albums and toured for several months in Senegal. Upon his return to Montreal, Guillaume decided to focus his efforts on composition.

Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts - Sous L’arbre

Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts - I Was On My Way To Hell

Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts - Les Gans

Influenced as much by concrete music as by techno, which he discovered one night in the midst of a lightning storm, Guillaume founded Egg (Mutek_rec, Karat, Floppy Funk), Luci (Mutek_rec, Morris Audio), Chic Miniature (Raummusik, Musique Risquée), Flabbergast (Mutek_rec), as well as the artistic collective Racam. He has toured with one or another of these projects in north/south America, Europe and Asia.

Since january 2007, Guillaume has reached European soil. Like many other, he chose Berlin as his new homebase. Traveling all around the block, he is always looking to get the dance floors grinning with guilty pleasure.

A few of us made the trip over to London on May 2nd for the fantastic lineup at Fabric, which included a Kompakt night in Room 2, including DJ Koze, Reinhart Voigt (live) and the Wighnomy Bros, and a quite varied lineup in Room 1 which included Sebo K, Damien Lazurus (live) and Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts (live), the latter of which we were very excited about.

As we got to Fabric around 1am things were quite unexciting with Terry Francis, DJ Koze and Sebo K failing to impress. At 2am Damien Lazarus took to the main stage in Room 1 and brought everything back to a starting point with quite an original live set. His own vocal featured heavily, with two female twins gracing the stage on either side of him adding their voices in unison throughout to great effect. His new Moment 12″ on Get Physical had been in my bag since February, so I had a half-clue of what to expect. Quite a dark and techy set, which dragged on at some points but yet managed to maintain a groove. He finished with quite a tasty version of André Kraml’s Safari (the James Holden Remix) which was released on his own Crosstown Rebels in 2005.

Room 1 was quite warm when Lazarus finished, which was quite a waste as Sebo K proceeded to play even more monotonous music than before. Not to worry, Reinhard Voigt was starting in Room 2.

I had seen Wolfgang Voigt live as Gas in Barcelona last October as part of the RBMA, so I was pleasantly surprised to find Reinhard on a ‘make-no-bones-about-it-this-is-techno‘ tip. The performance (and it was a performance) involved one arpeggiated lead organically evolving atop a thunderous bassline for what seemed like the entire set, which says quite a lot about Voigt’s mastery of techno. Between throwing water on himself, making ‘Yes I know this beat is evil’ faces and running out to the crowd to see if they liked it, Voigt had Room 2 up in arms and looked like he reveled in every minute of it. Quite an eye opener and the highlight of my night.

As the Wighnomy’s began their onslaught, Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts (live) was well into his groove in Room 1, and quite a groove that was. We’re big fans here at LowerState of Guillaume and he didn’t disappoint. With a live midi-percussion pad, Guillaume jammed with all sorts of percussive flavour to his already awesomely flavoured arsenal of tunes, almost all of which were re-edited for the live set. Production quality was at maximum and everyone was feeling it. We kind of kidnapped the poor man afterwards, but someone had to explain to him exactly why he was so good, which we did. Lovely fellow, but he’s from Montreal so we kind of knew that already.

At this stage, Craig Richards started to play a cracker of a set in Room 1 and the Wighnomy’s were pulling out some great tunes back in Room 2. I posted a link to their Bucharest mix recently, and the set was quite similar, which is definitely not a bad thing. The Obama vocal was there, riding on a very funky beat, much to the delight of the crowd. A great crowd of Kompakt supporters in Room 2 as well, with a good energy up the front. All in all a fabulous night and well worth the trip. Big word out to fellow ravers Mike, Wayne, Agneta (who took the snaps), Aisling & Celine. There’s quite a nice writeup of the night as well over on the House Is A Feeling blog. Check it out!