Event Details
X AVANT
Saturday October 16
“TRADING SPACES”
X AVANT Festival opening party featuring
JEFF MILLS
Detroit techno pioneer presents his live A/V piece “Believe”
with Big Zang percussion ensemble
+ DJs Jamie Kidd + Martin Fazekas
Co-presented with breakandenter
Location: SPK (Polish Combatants Association Branch 20), 206 Beverley St.
Doors open at 9pm
Tickets $20 regular, $15 member
Advance tickets $17 at TicketWeb.ca, Rotate This, Soundscapes, Slinky Music, Shanti Baba, Earth & Fire, Plastic Wrap
Admission included in $75 Festival Pass!
Legendary DJ and Detroit techno pioneer Jeff Mills is notorious for his clean minimalist sound and exceptional virtuosity as a turntablist. In recent shows at Berghain with Toca Loca, and Le Poisson Rouge with Kathleen Supové, Mills created astonishing episodes of sound collage that would have been equally at home in a fantastical IRCAM program. Artists like Mills who defy categorization raise questions like: if it sounds like one thing, but looks like another, what is it? Also, will electronically produced sound ever overcome the resistance of the mainstream classical mafia?
“Trading Spaces” presents Jeff Mills in our festival opener, with opening DJs Jamie Kidd and Martin Fazekas and the explosive new Montreal percussion band Big Zang, performing pieces informed by DJ culture, by composers such as David Lang and Dennis DeSantis. Toronto techno promoters breakandenter are on board to make this a party to remember.
Jeff Mills: Believe
Ufology has always been of great interest to me. Even as a child with all the institutional brainwashing of 1970s and ‘80s, somehow I always tried to keep a balanced and fair view of the subject. Raised as a neo-conspiracy theorist, I could never quite learn to distinguish the difference between “the truth” and what “they” want us to believe is the truth. Hopeless and unwavering in my belief, neuroticism would be a understatement. Though the past decade has brought forth more convincing evidence in favour of theories like “Zoo theory,” based on the idea that humans are being kept, studied and observed by higher lifeforms from afar, pesty little things like "doubt” keeps popping up to ruin the ending of a perfect science fiction disaster plot.
My goal is to make you see my view, to make you believe what I believe so you'll never be the same. And when the time comes and Aliens invade Earth, only to take the ones that “believed,” you'll thank me. — Jeff Mills
Jeff Mills is considered one of the most brilliant DJ and producers of techno in the World. He is the most recoｇnized representative figure of the Detroit techno, where he began his career as a DJ on the WDRQ radio in 1984. With Mad Mike Banks, he created the collective Underground Resistance, which became a common reference in the electro sphere. In 1992, Jeff Mills created his own label Axis in Chicago, so he could keep his artistic independence and produce his own timeless electronic music compositions, inspired by science fiction.
Jeff Mills’ artistic career goes much further than techno music. For over a decade, he’s been transcending disciplines with a large number of collaborations within contemporary art. Interested in cinema and attracted by images, Jeff Mills started working on the fusion of image and sound. In 2000, he created and presented at the Centre Pompidou a new sound track for the film Metropolis by Fritz Lang. A year after, he created Mono, an installation inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick. In 2004, Jeff Mills produced the DVD Exhibitionist, which presents DJ sets filmed from various angles (from front, top and side). At that same period, he acquired a new tool, the DVJ-X, which allowed him to manipulate image and sound together.
In 2005, Jeff Mills made a new soundtrack for the silent movie Three Ages by Buster Keaton for MK2, and created a serie of six video artworks presented in Paris at the Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois and at the rendez-vous vidéo of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. Jeff Mills continued this work period with a production on Josephine Baker, presented during the FIAC 2005 in the Grand Palais. On July 2nd 2005, Jeff Mills played together with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Montpellier, for the 20th anniversary of the Pont du Gard's inclusion in the world heritage list by UNESCO. Together with the orchestra, Jeff Mills performed his own compositions, orchestrated by Thomas Roussel for this occasion.
In 2007, he was invited by the movie director Claire Denis to create the sound environment of the exhibition Diaspora at the musée du quai Branly in Paris.. That same year, Jeff Mills received the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French ministry of Culture. In 2008, Jeff Mills was commissioned to create a contemporary installation for 100 Year Anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto at the Pompidou Center. At the Sonar Festival in Barcelona, Jeff Mills and Mad Mike Banks were together again for a historical performance called X-102, Rediscovers the Rings of Saturn, mixing video and music. Always busy, Jeff Mills is involved in numerous projects at this time.
Big Zang brings a unique program of “progressive percussion” repertoire created by sound designers and electro-acoustic musicians. Composers who draw their influences from their “pop culture” backgrounds and revamp it in a classical setting, David Lang and Mark Applebaum are probably two of the most influential and involved modernist composers today. Placed alongside DJ/percussionist Dennis Desantis and Italian composer and cellist Giovanni Sollima, this show will be a vexing and delightful listening experience. Wit core members including Eric Derr, Ben Duinker, Sandra Joseph, Corinne Renné, and Dan Morphy, this Montreal-based collective came together during the “Roots and Rhizomes” residency at the Banff Centre led by none other than percussion guru Steven Schick.
Toronto based Jamie Kidd is a multi-instrumentalist turned electronic producer and DJ. His obsessions with rhythm and skills as a musician inspire him to take the spirit of live music into every performance. As a funk, jazz and rock bassist, Jamie has recorded and toured with numerous live groups throughout Canada and the US. A graduate of the Humber College esteemed Jazz Performance and Composition program, Kidd has since focused on improvisation-based ensembles including the Chameleon Project, a live drum’n’bass, dub, and disco quartet with whom he released the full-length album Stereoscopic in 2003. As a producer, Jamie has composed singles and remixes for several labels including Toronto's own Thoughtless Music. In 2006, Kidd joined Frederik Hatsav to form Metalogic. Their collaborations have accumulated in edgy, dynamic and highly rhythmic electronic music for such labels as London's Perc Trax, New York's Addon, and Brooklyn's legendary Hidden Agenda imprint. Metalogic’s next album, Torus, is set to be released on Berlin's Nachtstrom Schallplatten in the summer of 2010.
In one of the most vibrant underground scenes in North America, Jamie has quickly distinguished himself among the city’s finest techno, tech-house, and minimal DJs. Since its inception, he has been the resident dj for Toronto techno titans Platform, performing alongside some of the world's most respected artists, including Jeff Mills, Speedy J, Trentemoller, Adam Beyer, Tiefschwarz, Radio Slave, Matthew Dear, Rob Hood, James Holden, Timo Maas, Junior Boys, and many more. A fetish for bass heavy, pulsating sub textures, dubbed-out effects, and long teasing blends, Jamie Kidd hijacks your mind on an impulsive journey in and out of deep unauthorized darkness, and manic but pleasurable innocence.
