Piknic Electronik celebrated its 10^th anniversary this past Sunday June 24^th – after a week’s worth of hype, I was very excited to be attending the festivities, especially with local legend Soundshaper  on the decks alongside another Montrealer, Maus.

According to the Piknic Electronik fan page, there were big plans in the works in honour of Piknic’s past ten successful years as one of the only weekly outdoor musical festival in Canada. Such success has inspired similar festivals to pop up all in Gatineau, Quebec; Vancouver, Canada and Barcelona, Spain as well as weekly open air events at Toronto’s Cherry Beach.

Sunday’s events at la Place de l’Homme, Parc Jean Drapeau, with beautiful weather for most of the afternoon and early evening, the day was highly anticipated, and the site was more packed than usual. Maus and Soundshaper were set to tag-team from start to finish, which, in itself, is quite a bit of work – though the vibe of the crowd stayed strong all day, the quality of the music itself fluctuated. Between a couple very underwhelming moments from Maus, Soundshaper’s unconventional blending of electronic genres kept up with the high-energy and anticipation of the crowd. Famous for his sound that cannot quite be pinned down, Soundshaper is a pioneer in Montreal’s music scene and his style definitely lives up to his status: big-room beats that fuse tech house undercurrents with everything from dub to techno to electro.

Over on the other stage, with a clean opening set from Canadian DJ MacGuffin 

The crowd became more and more packed as The Gulf Stream took over with an amazing set. Made up of Kodok (http://soundcloud.com/ivann-kodok-urue-a) and Archibald Singleton (http://soundcloud.com/archibaldsingleton), The Gulf Stream, who are signed to renowned Montreal label Archipel (http://soundcloud.com/archipel), dropped a unique mid-tempo blend of hip-hop-like structures jam-packed with unique samples. Upon closer investigation, we realized that their live set, in fact, used nothing but samples, percussions and synths looped and intertwined to create a style that I don’t even have a word for – at times down-tempo, at times glitchy but consistently grounded and strong.

The afternoon ended with confetti and balloons exploding into the air around sunset, while the evening was finished off with sparklers handed out among the crowd, making Piknic’s 10^th Anniversary an amazing event to remember.

Emma Robertson

Links:

http://piknicelectronik.com/

http://dj.beatport.com/soundshaper

http://www.facebook.com/PiknicElectronik

http://piknicelectronikgatineau.com/

https://twitter.com/#!/cherrybeach

http://www.facebook.com/PiknicElectronikBarcelona