MUTEK2008: Friday, May 30th

Panel 3: Copyright VS Creativity

Covering such topics as sampling, piracy and copyright in general, the star of this panel was undoubtedly producer and Hyperdub label manager Kode 9, also known as Steve Goodman in real life. Starting with a few anecdotes about the Kafka-esque process of clearing samples with a major label, his advice was to not even bother. Rare amongst dance music labels, Hyperdub splits legal liability with their artists, so to avoid legal troubles, he’s encouraging his artists to camouflage their samples, stating that “piracy will always be a tool for economic empowerment”. Recording Industry Association of America, meet your worst nemesis.

Partly this aversion stemmed from the Byzantine nature of major labels - his dream is for a world where majors are open and communicative. Ken Taylor, writer for XLR8 magazine amongst others, agreed, saying that talking to majors was useless. Goodman even went so far as to call artists that work within the context of a corporation “less than human”, backing it up by adding that since a corporation is a legal “person” and the artists are only a small part of that, they are in fact less than a person. Ever the crowd-pleaser.

Like clockwork, the Creative Commons form of copyright was mentioned and while all panelists seemed in favour of it as an option, Larisa Mann, also known as San Francisco’s Dj Ripley, said that most artists aren’t making music to “further a legal form” - meaning that much of the music available under this license is rather lacklustre, a comment that the rest of the panel agreed with. Also, since it allows more freedom for artists sometimes at the expense of major labels, support from the majors wasn’t to be expected.

Also mentioned were REM’s “open-source” release of their new video, and plans to monetise file-sharing along the lines of the recent Songwriter’s Association of Canada proposal however the unusually quiet audience had the most questions for Montreal’s Jordan Wynnychuk of Relab a site where remixers can remix commercially available tracks and then sell them online.

Panel 4: Demo Derby!

Philip Sherburne might have finally found his MUTEK niche. After so many poorly-moderated (”Let’s talk about me for a while!”) panels, this one, based on pure subjective opinion, seemed to fit like a glove. Also present was an army of local music types: Guillaume Coutu-Dumont, Vincent Lemieux (Musique Risquée and MUTEK2008 curator) and Pheek (Archipel records), rounding things out with Germany’s Mathias Kaden. Together they judged audience-submitted demos for quality and commercial appeal.

This year’s edition was notably more constructive than last year’s - Patty Schmidt can be harsh! - but then the music seemed a touch higher quality as well. The highlight was certainly the joker that submitted some bosh-bosh-bosh wailing-diva electro anthem - it stunned the panel and made the audience have a good laugh at its inappropriateness. MUTEK is all about leftfield beats - that’s just how they do things here.