The past year has been great for Montreal’s music scene, and by ‘great’ I mean absolute fucking insanity. It’s well-known that this city has a booming music scene but it’s astonishing how tough it can be to keep on top of it all. We tried to have as many of our dirty fingers in as many pies as possible to bring you everything the city has to offer.

Montreal is truly the city of festivals and no one stops going out just because the temperature drops. Igloofest weekends in January were some of the coldest of the year, but that didn’t stop our contributors Heidy Pinet and Naakita Feldman-Kiss from being there and having a good time.

Igloofest
Igloofest

The outdoor fun doesn’t stop there: the end of February brought us another successful edition of Montréal En Lumière, culminating as always with Nuit Blanche, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.

Misteur Valaire at CMW
Misteur Valaire at CMW

In March, Forget The Box was at Canadian Music Week, which takes place in Toronto. Heidy Pinet caught the M for Montreal showcase, representing some of the best in French-language artists from our own backyard: Misteur Valaire and Ponctuation. Stephanie Laughlin caught both sets by Ben Caplan and Stephanie Beatson had a chat with Mo Kenney.

As winter gave way to spring, festival season was really upon us. The Montreal Hip Hop Festival celebrated its second edition this year and truly established itself as a permanent fixture of the festival circuit.

Heidy Pinet is the authority at FTB when it comes to electronic music and she created a playlist as a preview to Mutek, which took place at the end of May.

June brought us the Montreal Folk Fest, held outside along the Lachine Canal and the stinking piss-fest that took over the small town of Montebello, also known as Rockfest.

At the end of June, some of us got to go away to Toronto to experience the mind-boggling craziness that is NXNE. We saw Quiet Company, D I A N A, Dan Deacon, Imaginary Cities, Smif-n-Wessun, The Julian Taylor Band, Coeur de Pirate, Moon King, Foxtrott, Whiskey Epiphany, Odonis Odonis, Joey Bada$$, Crhymes, Star & Micey, Frank Ryan, Willie Stratton & The Boarding Party, and Santiago X The Natural.

Santiago X The Natural at NXNE
Santiago X The Natural at NXNE

Those of us stuck in Montreal had plenty to do with the 10th anniversary of the Montreal Infringement Festival taking place. We interviewed Brooklyn natives Sunshine, who played a raucous set at Barfly; caught the Infringement Hip Hop Show, where our own Jay Manafest had some words to the wise; and braved the rain for the Dumpster Dive Art Drive.

Continuing our festival coverage, we saw the Stooges Brass Band at Festival International Nuits D’Afrique.

The beginning of August brought us the 15th anniversary of MEG, Montreal’s oldest electronic music festival. Festival founder Mustapha Terki spoke to us about the changing face of electronic music and the future of the festival.

Meanwhile, our Toronto contributor Stephanie Beatson found herself at the last ever edition of TO’s ALL CAPS! Island Festival, which featured performances by Hooded Fang and Shotgun Jimmie.

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Heavy MTL crowd props

Here in Montreal, Heavy MTL offered two days of metal madness. The 5th edition of the festival offered new features like their live pro-wrestling event. They even managed to convert a self-proclaimed festival hater.

Taking place the same weekend as Heavy MTL was the second annual Passovah Summer Music Festival. The team over at Passovah are some of the hardest-working promoters of the local scene in the city and this year, they saw their festival double in size from last year’s. We spoke with Passovah founder Noah Bick about it.

The POP Montreal team put on another stellar festival at the end of September. We got the chance to see many of our top picks this year including Portugal. The Man, Bearmace, Crabe, and METZ.

New to the festival family, Psych Fest took place in October. Festival co-founder John W. Stuart told us how the festival came about.

YT//ST
Yamantaka // Sonic Titan at M for Montreal

Closing off festival season was M for Montreal in November with sets by Seoul, Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, Murray Lightburn, Born Ruffians and Mac DeMarco.

Although festivals took up our attention all year round, they were by no means the only things we covered in 2013. We also had the chance to interview some solid noisemakers. Many were part of the local scene including Melted Faces, Atsuko Chiba, How Sad, Braids, Canailles, Two-Year Carnival, the Emery Street Records crew, and the ladies of Hip Hop Karaoke Montreal. We also spoke to some notable out-of-towners including Indian Handcrafts, Crhymes, and Grammy-winning artist Carl Craig.

Rather than partaking in the slimiest of lazy journalistic traditions – the Best Albums of the Year list – I will point out that some fantastic releases have come out of the indie scene in Montreal and surrounding areas. In no particular order, here are some of the releases that have caught our attention this year:

Atsuko Chiba – Jinn

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan – UZU

Seb Black – On Emery Street

Land of Kush – The Big Mango

Crabe – Mort de fraîche date

Saltland – I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us

Sunshine – Down & Up Blues

Groenland – The Chase

Ponctuation – 27 Club

No Bones – Belongings

Blood Ceremony – The Eldritch Dark

Well that wraps up the 2013 year in review for music here at Forget The Box. We’ll start it all over again in January.

10-things-food-josh

Many seminal things happened in 2013 in the culinary world. Here is a review of 10 moments that will forever affect how we eat, cook or play with our food.

But as “the culinary world” is really a thousand worlds, I’ve picked two from each of five different “regions.”

Montréal

1. We got food trucks back

However sanitized their reentry, 2013 saw the dismantling of legal obstacles to “mobile” food-selling and preparation in this city. After 60 years, this is no small feat and we shouldn’t take it lightly. Staid and stationary as the trucks might be right now, their presence will inevitably grow more fluid–and irrevocably change our sense of public space. Moreover, as mobile food enterprises grow, traditional restaurants will be challenged to evolve to remain viable, affecting cost, menus and overall experience.

2. No-shows got shamed

Thanks in part to a great article in The Gazette, those self-absorbed you-know-whats who simply vanish at reservation time were finally outed. While they weren’t exactly named, they were certainly shamed. Dialogue from the article spread far and wide and the concept of snubbing restauranteurs became akin to aiming a crossbow at the heart of a vulnerable local hub.

 

Québec

3. Rooftop greenhouses hit the big time

Once just a curiosity in an Ahuntsic warehouse, Lufa Farms has in two short years become well-known to Montréalers. The rooftop greenhouse has been supplying local homes and restos with foodScreen Shot 2013-12-29 at 1.48.43 AM since 2011.

But it was in 2013 that its mission hit the mainstream–and became a household name province-wide. This year Lufa opened its second, arguably more ambitious operation in Laval, vowing to export the model to the states. Québec City has already gotten on board, with a massive industrial rooftop greenhouse in the works for next year. Hell, rooftop greenhouses were so big in 2013 that they could even be spotted in yuppie-oriented Toyota Prius ads!

4. Critics finally learned to eat “out” (of town)

A proliferation of rural eateries seemed to make the press this year, led by Lesley Chesterman’s choice forays to À la table des jardins sauvages, Vices-Versa, and Bistro Champlain and M-C Lortie’s recurring crusades. Not to mention Dany St-Pierre (of Sherbrooke’s Auguste) winning Montréal’s chi-chi “Golden Plates” competition. Will finicky urban masses be quick to follow?

Canada

5. Celeb Canadian chefs trashed celeb American chefs for posing with this creepy mascot

I won’t get into the entire complicated backstory of the Chefs for Seals campaign, which hit fever pitch this year as thousands of the most glitzy (and Food Networked) US chefs signed on as mouthpieces for the warm and fuzzy cause. What’s important is that the fallout might have dented our neighbourly culinary relations and strengthened our national culinary community forever.

The US boycott of Canadian seafood provoked so much bark-back (seals, harbours…get it?) that Canadian chefs stood united and found a common voice. Their cause? To support hard-working fishing communities, respectfully-fished Canadian seafood products and the tradition of common sense.

There’s no end to the boycott in sight…but even a cursory glance at the debate reveals that Canadian chefs emerged victorious: respectful, rational, and reinvigorated in the face of their hypocritical foie-gras touting counterparts, most of whom just seemed desperate for a photo op.

6. Poutine restaurants officially became an epidemic

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Though poutine took Williamsburg, then the world, by storm a few years ago, the explosion of the “poutine restaurant” belongs to 2013.

With few exceptions, the poutine-only resto has been a novelty even in Québec until very recently. And though many scoffed at Smoke’s Poutinerie et al.’s attempts to usurp casse-croûtes on their home turf, the reality is that most poutine restaurants have thrived.

2013 saw poutine the theme of a Top Chef Canada episode, an otherwise respectable production, whose host introduced it (without irony) as “the one and only Canadian national dish.” And lest you think poutine still hasn’t found the mainstream, consider this: McDonalds across (gulp!) Toronto now feature the oozy delight.

North America

7. Jiro got reincarnated in New York (sort of)

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 1.45.38 AMMany consider the greatest living sushi master to be Jiro Ono, proprietor of ten-seat Sukiyabashi Ono in a Tokyo métro station. Ono has won three Michelin stars and international fame after David Gelb’s acclaimed 2011 documentary.

Portrayed as a rare relic of en era where masters lived, slept and, yes, dreamt sushi, critics were divided on whether Ono’s lineage would fully survive in Japan. But it seems it is North Americans who can breathe the most easy.

Ono protégé Daisuke Nakazawa (whose devotion to his master is insane in the aforementioned documentary) has opened his own shop in New York, and it appears to be the real deal…dare we say the boldest embodiment of Ono’s ethos outside Japan?

Unexpected, amazing, and only a six hour drive away now! North American sushi will never be graded by the same standards again.

8. Mexico is part of North America, remember?

The hard work of Enrique Olvera is legendary–only a decade ago, the hard-working chef was hand drywalling his space in Mexico City. Now, he has climbed inside the top 20 restaurants in the world. Sure, it’s an elite and controversial list. But it’s not only a testament to Olvera’s perseverance and artistry with Pujol, it’s a sharp reminder to the US (okay, Canada too) that Mexico is part and parcel of “North AmericanScreen Shot 2013-12-29 at 1.53.00 AM haute cuisine.” And, when it comes to culinary “fine art”–they’re here to stay.

World

9. The art of fermentation exploded

Not literally: no cooks were reported hurt by shards of broken glass from flying kimchi. But in 2013 chefs and cooks took the art of fermentation to the next level.

First, there was Sandor Katz’s landmark book, which proved its relevance to flavour, cooking and health. Next there was David Chang’s heady hit show that explored the intricacies of tsukemen, katsoubushi, kimchi and more, and MAD Food Camp (the culinary TED)’s focus on fermentation as the vanguard of gastronomical experimentation, and many other chefs’ insistence that given global food uncertainties anyone could–and should–culture at home. Far from a trend, the culinary world’s interest in fermentation is here to stay and will only get better with age.

10. Eggless eggs happened

Explosively-popular mayos and doughs suggest that “tech startup” Hampton Creek is well on its way to its goal of an eggless society. Its goal is to “surpass” the egg in taste, nutrition, cost and sustainability. Using only plants. So far, it has managed to draw sustained ire from the dominant industry, a good marker of any product’s culinary impact!

What were the most important moments of your culinary world this year? Let us know in the comments below, or tweet us at @forgetthebox or @joshdavidson

 

This Saturday welcomes the tenth celebration of Montreal’s Nuit Blanche. These festivals have been happening all around the world for over two decades now. The goal: to transform a city into an all night art party. With events from dancing to performance to  poetry to visual art, there is something for everyone. This is the one night a year we are shaken out of our homes to experience the city and it’s cultural decadence illuminated.

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Programming is in five different zones: Quartiers de spectacle, Old Montreal, The Olympic Park, The Plateau and Mile End, and even an underground site throughout the metro stations. During Montreal’s all nighter,  the metro will stay open all evening, as well as shuttle buses around the city to get you to and from each happening – clearly you have no excuse to stay in this Saturday! Do your best to plan the night accordingly as there’s lots of ground to cover and lots of hours to fill. After a few fantastic Nuit Blanches in several major cities, I look forward to see what Montreal brings to the table.

Here is my advice on how to get the best out of your Nuit Blanche experience:

1. Plan accordingly! Make a list of the sites you want to visit, plan out your route and double check times to make sure you can get there on time. Most listings include start and end times, as well as the times that the artist is present (if you’d like to get a more immersive understanding of what you’re experiencing). With many things closing at 3 a.m., do your research and check out what you’re really interested in, there is nothing worse than making it across town to be disappointed with the experience.

AS_6_2_C_Bolduc2. While the snow might be melting, let’s not forget it is still winter. The best advice I can give for enduring a full Nuit Blanche is keep warm. You might be bouncing between sites but remember travel time is included, and as the sun goes down it gets chilly. Wear an extra layer or two if you’re trying for endurance this Saturday.

3. If you plan on enduring the entire night – make sure you get enough sleep. Maybe catch a nap, and take the first couple hours off. Getting out a bit later means that the crowd becomes thinner, which allows you to have a more intimate experience as a viewer. If you take this route, make sure you double check times of the events you’d like to get to as some of them aren’t open the full duration of the festival. Remember, the metro is open all night, no reason to rush!

4. Let yourself be fluid. While it’s best to have a plan, it’s okay if you don’t hit each spot on your list right away. You have all night, and there’s tons of beautiful art of each persuasion to experience.

Here are some of the events I recommend Nuit Blanche 2013:

Catherine Bolduc, Labyrinth (Ikea) (Square-Victoria)

Caroline Dejeneffe, La Naissance, La Vie et La Mort (McGill)

Emily Hermant, Hésitations (Bonaventure)

Matériaux Composites and Marie Eve Fortier, Living Room N˚2: L’effet Tunnel (Square-Victoria)

AS_1_4_F_DuboisFrance Dubois, Nébuleuses (Place-des-Arts)

Vincent Ducarne, Still Lives (Square Victoria)

Luminosonicities, Goethe-Institut (Place-des-Arts)

Every Song I’ve Ever Written, Usince C (Beaudry)

The Divine Comedy, Galerie Bac (Beaubien)

Turn on a Dime, Citizen Vintage (Mont-Royal)

Spaces Between, Mainline Theater (Sherbrooke)

 Nuit Blanche at the CCA

You can also download the Nuit Blanche iPhone/Android app for updates.

A happy Nuit Blanche to all!