Industry mechanized modern life. A sense of self-awareness made the mechanical post-modern.
As culture in the 21st century pushes past modernity’s afterword, a new zeitgeist of hybridity characterizes our current moment — a simultaneous collapsing of past, future, and the now.
No music captures and encapsulates this post-human condition more than techno, its automated rhythms mimicking the machinery of industry, while its groovy organicity speaks directly to the human body’s corporeality.
Félix Gourd, who currently records and performs as Eƨƨe Ran and heads Montreal’s premiere techno imprint, Humidex Records, understands this dichotomy.
“The groove in techno is what helped make it so popular,” Gourd tells me, from across a picnic table in Little Italy’s Dante Park. “People could relate to it, physically. Their bodies could be involved. It’s what drives you.”
Humidex Records celebrates its 5th anniversary in 2024, having begun operations just prior to the pandemic.
The label’s first offering was a three-song compilation featuring works from each of its co-founders: Leticia Trandafir, aka softcoresoft; Simon Chioini; and Gourd, who at that time operated under the name Absurde.
Trandafir since departed to work with Ableton, the music technology company, and Chioini is pursuing a Ph.D., leaving Gourd alone in the driver’s seat.
“Honestly, the biggest challenge for me is doing everything almost by myself,” Gourd admits. “It’s a lot of time — for practically no income.”
Nonetheless, Humidex is thriving, having recently released Timbres Oblitérés by Montreal producer Errance, a self-financed cassette comprised of soundtrack music composed for Rodrigue Jean and Arnaud Valade’s Maple Spring documentary film entitled 2012/Through the heart, and Patterns / Threshold, a four-track 12-inch split EP of club cuts from Measure Divide and Gourd’s own Eƨƨe Ran.
And on Friday, June 7th, Humidex fêtes its half-decade with a proper knees-up at the Société des arts technologiques, showcasing live performances by Pascale Project, Amselysen & Racine, and the Detroit-based headliner, 2Lanes.
“I got really excited listening to his stuff,” Gourd tells me. “He has old-school influences.”
Gourd, 33, was born and raised in Montreal, having lived his entire life within the Hôtel-de-Ville-Plateau-Mile-End district. His parents were artistically minded, enrolling him in piano lessons at age nine, and encouraging Gourd to pursue a creative life path.
“My mom loved classical music,” Gourd recalls, “and my dad was friends with all the Musique Actuelle community.”
Gourd studied percussion at École secondaire Pierre-Laporte and was a young fan of French Touch and British Drum & Bass music.
“In high school, I was really into Justice, MSTRKRFT, Sebastian, Daft Punk. I remember going to a Daft Punk concert when I was a teenager. Also, a lot of Mr. Oizo, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Venetian Snares. Weird rhythms,” explains Gourd of his adolescent influences.
“Because I was studying percussion, I was really interested in different types of rhythms and sonorities.”
Travelling to Berlin in the early 2010s, Gourd encountered the viscerality of techno in a large club for the first time. He returned to Montreal and immediately connected with this city’s underground rave scene, completing the Intermedia Cyber Arts programme at Concordia and working as a visual artist and VJ for various local musicians.
Gourd turned his attention in 2017 back to musicianship, beginning with modular synthesis and improvisatory electronic music.
“I always enjoyed a powerful kick drum,” Gourd says, “the effect that it has on your body.”
Gourd and Chioini collaborated on a live hardware music project called Musique Nouvelle, performing at Mutek’s franchises in Mexico and Buenos Aires before launching Humidex with Trandafir in 2019.
“Leticia’s vision was to focus on Canadian techno,” Gourd explains. “Simon comes from the more experimental and academic background, and I wanted to make more experimental dance music. We did a bunch of parties that summer, and all of our DJ fees would go back into the label to finance further releases. But then the pandemic came.”
The strict global coronavirus measures meant that live music fell silent and the label “slept for a few years,” as Gourd recounts. But he continued to produce recordings, releasing an album of dark, atmospheric bangers called Derelict Memories in 2022, and Constant Decay, a crunchy and throbbing three-song EP, in 2023.
Although Humidex’s roster is small, the label quickly garnered a mythic reputation along the lines of Juan Mendez’s Jealous God, or the legendary Sandwell District collective. Eƨƨe Ran’s tracks in particular could drop seamlessly within a DJ set of Regis or Surgeon, some of the genre’s heaviest hitters.
In addition to helming Humidex, Gourd is presently producing music for the Montreal choreographer Andrea Peña’s dance company.
“It has these two faces: techno and experimental,” Gourd says, describing the project. “It’s weird and unconventional. There’s lots of ambience. But sometimes there will be a looped rhythm. Dancers need rhythm. And the work she does is really intense for the dancers. They’re like athletes. They’re like beasts. Sometimes I need to feed them something.”
Although Gourd draws from across the spectrum of international electronic music’s subdivisions and scenes, there is still a quintessentially Montréalaise quality about his compositions, an indefinable note of the Quebecois carnivalesque.
These are records that yearn for a late-night dancefloor, that land hardest in the live context, where music is experienced as collective and cathartic and transcendent. They also bridge the gap between languages and civilizations, fusing influences from Europe and America and distilling them into something distinctly chez nous.
“What’s unique about Montreal is that it’s very accessible to make art. The rents are still low, and we need to do everything possible to keep it that way. I mean, the CAQ’s recent abolishing of lease transfers is outrageous, their corporate mindset and total indifference towards people in precarious situations is threatening Montreal’s and Quebecois culture. But life is easier here — in comparison to bigger cities like Toronto, New York, or London. There, you need to have two or three jobs to pay for your small apartment.”
Ours is a city of monumental industrial history, timeworn warehouses and factories-turned-ateliers haunting every neighbourhood like ghosts of a revolution that modernized and transformed western society.
“Techno was not born in Quebec,” says Gourd. “So, we definitely appropriated something that comes from elsewhere. But that’s why Montreal is so rich, culturally,”
“It’s a meeting point of different cultures.”◼︎
Humidex Records celebrates its 5th anniversary 7 June 2024 at SAT, 1201, Boulevard Saint-Laurent.
Cover image: Anna Arrobas