Category Archives: All Dressed

NicheMTL’s style and fashion column from Montreal and beyond.

All Dressed

Black Bough, Green Shoots: in conversation with Mark Molnar

“In composing, I am trying to express something that I remember but does not yet exist,” the contemporary composer Mark Molnar tells me.

Although he is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist, Molnar has spent most of his life outside the incentive structures and institutional norms of neo-classical chamber music.

When he began working on the musical triptych that would make up EXO, his 2025 debut with Constellation Records, he says, “I had no funding, no ensembles awaiting my work, no creative directors or conductors programming these pieces.”

Instead of lamenting these conditions or waiting for an invitation that might never come, Molnar decided to play and record everything himself — piano, percussion, synthesizers, and half a dozen stringed instruments. Growing up in the 1990s punk and post-hardcore scenes, Molnar has stayed true to one of its central tenets. “Whenever possible, do-it-yourself.”

DIY comes naturally to Molnar. Though he has collaborated with dozens of artists ranging from metalcore heavyweights Buried Inside to kaleidoscopic psych-supergroup Land of Kush, Molnar largely works independently when it comes to his own compositions. With methods akin to a one-man musical nose-to-tail, Molnar writes, plays, and records the pieces, mixes them, and often self-releases them through his own Black Bough label.

“Almost all of the things I have written start with a pencil, an eraser, a ruler, and a blank page,” he explains. “When writing music, I don’t work up the melodies or parts on an instrument until after they are written. I don’t want my conception of them to be limited to my meagre ability on any instrument, or the common keys or positions my hands may casually be most comfortable in.”

Playing each part himself gives Molnar the ability to craft and control every element of his desired sonic tapestry, he says, “from body and frequency, vibrato across instruments, bowing, timbre, phrasing, volume, distortion, and resonance in a space.” He describes the process as a combination of “problem solving, merciless editing, erasure, and a honing or carving down to the essential elements.”

This meticulous and hermetic process has been a feature of Molnar’s solo artistic practice since at least 2007, when under the moniker “Kingdom Shore” he released …And all the Dogs to Shark as Black Bough’s inaugural record. Launched at a time when indie rock was becoming big business and affected ennui and ironic detachment were giving way to hyperbolic, performative sentimentality, …And all the Dogs to Shark was a middle finger to it all: a searing work of uncompromising, discordant string music that owed as much to Drive Like Jehu as it did to Stockhausen.

In 2007, a bygone era of iPod battles and New Atheism debates, there was nothing quite like it. The ars poetica Molnar included in the album’s liner notes firmly established his commitment to the musical margins and his refusal to chase fashion or climb the cultural ladder.

This is not a bid for relevance. This is not modern.

In the nearly 20 years since …And all the Dogs to Shark, time marked in a wider context by the normalization of global forever wars and the subjugation of all facets of aesthetic life to algorithmic whims, Molnar has quietly and steadfastly released a number of solo and ensemble works — with Horseman, Pass By with Bennett Bedoukian, and 1/4 Tonne Overdrive with Montrealers Eric Craven and Nick Kuepfer.

Although he resides in Ottawa, Molnar is something of an honourary Montrealer due to his longstanding ties to the city’s experimental music community. He played at Constellation Records’ legendary Musique Fragile series in the late ‘90s and has performed and recorded with fixtures of the city’s out-music scene such as Thierry Amar, Sam Shalabi, and Vicky Mettler. His previous records have garnered Molnar a modest yet devoted following, and the release of EXO with Constellation brings him overdue national and international visibility.

“I don’t tend to look to art for escape.” Mark Molnar photographed by the artist.

For EXO, Molnar tells me that he wrote, learned, and recorded the three pieces that make up the album over the course of three weeks. He began with harp tracks, then reinforced them with piano, and subsequently added parts for nearly a dozen instruments. From there, Molnar mixed EXO in such a way that, “the patina of it became its own body of sound.” What results is a singular suite of dense, elegiac, and immersive electroacoustic chamber music with shades of drone, holy minimalism, doom, ambient, and musique concrete that ultimately transcends these genre prescriptions.

EXO, which comes from the Greek prefix ἔξω meaning “outside” or “external,” nods toward Molnar’s kinship with that which falls outside of and resists normative culture and processes.

The album’s opening track, “Sub Luna,” begins with a musical calm after the storm such as might traditionally be found in the repose of a classical piece. Only here, it is as if the traditional structure is reversed, and we quickly descend into more disquieting and discordant territory.

Resonating piano chords, down-tuned double-bass, and sustained tones from an MS-20 usher in a cradling envelope of sound. Syncopated harp notes and strings shimmer like filigree within the sonic undertow. Between what Molnar describes as the opposing shorelines of the piece, tidal currents of low-end drift and interweave with melodic tendrils in the higher registers before eventually returning to the opening motif.

There is an elemental heft to EXO, a disquieting sublime immensity, reinforced by Edd Allan’s stark ocean photography that accompanies the record. “My true realm of passionate experience of sound is in the sonic oblivion of low-end and its resonance, always,” Molnar says.

Nowhere is this passion for sonic oblivion clearer than on “Terre Sacer,” a ghostly dirge in which ominous melodic figures move in and out of focus in slow motion, ebbing and flowing, brooding and resisting until settling into a repeating three-chord structure; within this maelstrom, a processed human voice mournfully cries out like a siren going under.   

Music critic Harry Sword, author of Monolith Undertow, proposes that low-end drone, “exists outside of us, an aural expression of a universal hum we can only hope to fleetingly channel.” Accessing this universal hum as a listener can cradle and console, but Molnar is skeptical when I suggest that music is an escape. He suggests that the tendency to look for escapism in art is ultimately misguided. “I prefer Yeats’s contention that there is another world,” he says, “but within our world.”

It is hard to disagree with this rationale. Escape implies fantasy, which in turn suggests the spell cast by entertainment. Entertainment, a variation of well-established aesthetic territory, might provide a reassuring distraction from the hardships of life, but when the distraction is over, “the suffering is waiting,” Molnar warns, “blood-thirsty and merciless.” Only by transforming suffering into a vector for connection can music exceed escapism and become art. “I don’t tend to look to art for escape,” he suggests. “I find it brings me closer to reality and lessens my removal from it.”

Molnar may be an outsider. But his vision is grounded and decidedly anti-utopian. He stoically strives to maintain grace in the face of applause and derision, both of which he claims are distractions from self-knowledge and craftsmanship. Whatever is nascent within him, Molnar finds a way to attune to its cryptic hum.◼︎

EXO is out now via Constellation Records.

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Scenes From an Italian Restaurant: at the table with Nora Gray

The dining scene in Montreal is a central component of our metropolitan cultural identity. Other cities have restaurants. We have icons. L’Express. Joe Beef. Au Pied de Cochon.

Eating out at an outstanding establishment is one of the key criteria for tourists choosing to travel to Montreal, and among the most desirable features of living here. The restaurant industry, according to a 2022 study conducted by MTL2424, generates $1.3 billion annually for the local economy.

Our restaurants put this country on the culinary map. “Without Montreal,” the beloved food writer Anthony Bourdain said, “Canada would be hopeless.”

Restaurant culture has evolved significantly here over the past two decades. No longer is it just bagels and smoked meat, poutine and pea soup. No shade against these mythical dishes, but Montreal nowadays offers some of the globe’s most audacious dining experiences and pleasurable payoffs for those with inquisitive palates.

“Montreal diners are the best and most educated diners in the world,” says Ryan Gray, co-founder of Nora Gray, the stylish 49-seat destination in Griffintown which since launching in 2011 has consistently earned a spot on the list of Canada’s 100 best restaurants. The accolades are well-deserved.

“The expectation here is so high that it forces you to be really incredible.” Francesco De Gallo for NicheMTL.

“I’ve travelled extensively,” Gray claims, “and I think that yes, there’s incredible food in Manhattan and Paris and Copenhagen. But pound-for-pound, our restaurants are on par with anywhere.”

For this city’s discerning gourmands, Nora Gray has become a landmark. Bon Appétit comments that it, “feels like home, if your house has sleek black leather booths, a beautiful long wooden bar, romantically dimmed but not-too-dark lights, and handmade pasta readily available.” Cult Montreal food critic Clay Sandhu has definitively called it, “Montreal’s best Italian restaurant.” The décor is decidedly your grandparents’ basement. But the food is a contemporary take on traditional and regional Italian cuisine, with an emphasis on seasonal, local, and natural fare.

“Montrealers are very savvy and if something isn’t actually great, then they don’t go,” Gray says. “In Montreal, we have this wonderful French heritage where cooking good food is part of our culture. That’s not something you find in other North American cities. The expectation here is so high that it forces you to be really incredible.”

“There’s a lot more high-quality options in Montreal than before.” Francesco De Gallo for NicheMTL.

Save for the stint during the pandemic, which shuttered everything, I have been coming to Nora Gray for more than a decade as often as my budget and belt size will allow and have never left less than satisfied. Owners Ryan Gray, Emma Cardarelli, and Lisa McConnell originated out of Joe Beef’s Liverpool House, where Gray and Cardarelli worked together for five years before venturing off on their own.

“At the time in 2011,” recalls Gray, “there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of options for people like us. We really felt like we were working at the top, working for the Joe Beef group. It was certainly the coolest restaurant in town. We had an incredible roster of clients and regulars, dealing with celebrities, politicians. We were part of something so amazing and the thought of working somewhere else, or for someone else — there was just nothing else like it at the time. But we were hungry for more, we wanted to keep growing and learning, and it was either leave Montreal or open our own restaurant.”

They chose the latter and the rest is history. The Nora Gray group now operates their flagship location on Saint-Jacques as well two additional offshoots, Elena and Gia, with an Elena-adjacent pizza-by-the-slice concept set to open in September at the corner of Ottawa and Murray. “We’re stoked,” Gray exclaims. “It’s been a long time coming.”

“You’re just happy to do what you want to do and work for yourself.” Francesco De Gallo for NicheMTL.

While Nora Gray benefited from being among the first of its breed, evermore of Montreal’s eateries are taking a page from their cookbook. “There’s a lot more high-quality options in Montreal than before,” Gray notes. “Every other day I feel like someone’s opening a new Italian concept. We had the market to ourselves for a little while there. Now, there’s no neighbourhood that doesn’t have its own small Italian restaurant.”

However, maintaining a restaurant at the highest calibre is another feat. The fictional Italian chef Artie Bucco of The Sopranos delivered the now-famous pearl of dining establishment wisdom: “Running a restaurant is like owning an elephant: it costs a fortune and one day it shits on your head.”

Gray laughs, “Don’t these young people know that it’s a terrible business idea? It’s scary. The rates are crazy right now. Construction is out of control. Raw materials are so expensive. You have to be really passionate. And insane. But you’re just happy to do what you want to do and work for yourself. I think there’s always going to be an appetite for that.”

“I consume a lot of cookbooks.” Dmetro Sinclair photographed by Francesco De Gallo for NicheMTL.

Nora Gray’s new executive chef Dmetro Sinclair tells me that the self-imposed pressure of setting the menu is the most challenging and rewarding part of the job.

“I love it when you put something on the menu that maybe seems too weird or too out there and then it flies,” Sinclair says. “It reminds me how much people trust us. This is our dinner party.”

Sinclair arrived in September 2024 via Mon Lapin and Salle Climatisée and has quickly become an integral part of the Nora Gray crew. “I consume a lot of cookbooks,” he explains, “and stay on top of what’s happening at restaurants around the world. I like to change things a lot. Sometimes we change the menu three times a week. Especially in the summertime when you have three micro-seasons and everything is constantly changing.”

Maître d’hôtel Shelby Skaberna and head bartender Lexi Becker are Nora Gray’s most public faces. “Sometimes people see us working and they comment on how there’s so much non-verbal communication,” says Skaberna. “There are so many times that we could have potential collisions, but we move out of the way last-minute. We know each other so well.”

“It’s such a small team,” notes Becker, “not more than 15. If we get too busy, people help without being asked.”

Sinclair agrees. “We’re all dancing together,” he remarks.

Shelby Skaberna and Lexi Becker. Photographed by Francesco De Gallo for NicheMTL.

We are invited to stay for the staff meal — cold gazpacho and a deliciously garlicky Caesar salad followed by fried zucchini flowers, veal strozzapreti, focaccia and spiced olive oil, and a marbled torte for dessert. Everything is carefully prepared, beautifully presented, and remarkably tasty. The camaraderie around the table is tangible as Sinclair and Skaberna detail the reservations, specials, and other such subtleties. I ask Becker what constitutes her ideal customer. “We like people who are adventurous and like to try a bit of everything, share everything,” she says.

It is clear that an appetite for excellence guides Nora Gray’s ethos — from the food to the vibe, the music, the service and staff. “I can’t say enough how important it is to have good people — people who care. We’re so blessed,” Gray says.

“Our diners push us to be better.” Francesco De Gallo for NicheMTL.

Nora Gray’s list of notable clients includes the likes of Kevin Hart, Jennifer Lawrence, James Blunt, Aubrey Plaza, and Georges St-Pierre, icons in their own right.

“We have had a lot of Montreal Canadiens players and players from other teams — and musicians performing at Bell Centre,” Gray says. “Ideally, you’re the kind of place that people out-of-town want to come to. People who travel from abroad and come here, they’re always absolutely blown away. Our diners push us to be better.”◼︎

Nora Gray is located at 1391 Rue Saint-Jacques.

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Joker Moment: in conversation with Orchestroll

The trajectory of the Montreal-based band Orchestroll is a circuitous and slow-burning arc.

Its founder members Jesse Osborne-Lanthier and Asaël Richard-Robitaille have over 20-odd years become central characters in an exclusive but sprawling Dramatis Personae of Montreal’s experimental music scenes. Long associated with fellow local artists like Marie Davidson, Alex Moskos, and Bernardino Femminielli, the two have each independently achieved a sort of mythical status.

Yet despite a string of legendary works under various monikers including Meat Parade and Noir, Bataille Solaire and L’Œil Nu, releasing their music through fabled record labels such as Los Discos Enfantasmes and Ninja Tune, and performing at festivals like Suoni per il Pololo and Mutek, neither quite launched stratospherically in the way the aforementioned acts did.

Now, nonetheless, operating as a core duo with expandable potential, Osborne-Lanthier and Richard-Robitaille seem to have finally hit their stride, coalescing and combining their collective expertise into an endeavour that is one part musical group, one part design team, and one part ritual cult.

Together, Orchestroll concoct an intoxicating sonic tonic, a potent blend of timeless and contemporary acoustic and electronic instrumentation that at once is uncannily familiar and defies categorization. Across four releases in the span of two years, beginning with 2024’s Hyperwide Lustre and culminating in a limited-run cassette called Big P, Orchestroll have verified their credentials among this city’s most talented artists.

Generically speaking, they might be placed at the overlapping margins of techno, ambient, and industrial music, enchanted sorcerers of organized sound somewhere within a Venn diagram of Russell Haswell, Coil, and György Ligeti’s Atmosphères. But pinpointing their origins is a murkier task.

“It’s very hard to find the genesis of Orchestroll,” says Richard-Robitaille on a recent visit to their new studio space, a residential apartment adjacent to Osborne-Lanthier’s home in Saint-Michel.

“It was more of a code name,” Osborne-Lanthier explains. “I had a file of stuff called Orchestroll.wav in 2015 on my computer. I kept that name as something I wanted to use at some point. The initial idea was to involve different people for every record, for it to be like this orchestra thing. And then Covid happened, and it became the two of us. The idea of it being collaborative just disintegrated.”

“I built a studio in my mom’s basement when I was 16.” Jesse Osborne-Lanthier photographed for NicheMTL.

Richard-Robitaille, 40, hails from near Quebec City, having arrived in Montreal in 2004, while Osborne-Lanthier, 38, relocated here from the Gatineau region in 2009. The two have been friends since 2011, meeting in passing while performing at La Brique and The W()mb, two of the city’s now-defunct loft spaces which at that time headquartered a significant stronghold for Montreal’s DIY community. Self-organized events and spontaneous performances routinely erupted in these spaces, providing an alternative nightlife to Montreal’s Grande Public culture.

Richard-Robitaille began playing guitar as a child at his father’s influence. He later studied Classical guitar in CEGEP and attended but did not complete the composition programme at La Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. “I realized that practicing guitar for three hours a day was not my thing,” he says.

Conversely, Osborne-Lanthier’s musical abilities were entirely self-taught. “I built a studio in my mom’s basement when I was 16,” he recalls, “and just kept building on that and moving it with me, learning as I went. When I wanted to acquire a new technical skill, I would just go on YouTube or download the manual.”

I first saw Richard-Robitaille perform as Bataille Solaire at La Sala Rossa in 2012. Playing a set that would have eclipsed James Ferarro while looking like Hunky Dory-era David Bowie, I remember it as one of the most exciting electronic music performances by a local artist that I had attended until that point.

I discover on this visit that Bataille Solaire is an anagram of Asaël Robitaille. “It’s a little over-the-top. But there was always a bit of humour involved in that project,” he claims.

I caught Osborne-Lanthier for the first time as one of the local openers for the American artist Pete Swanson’s gig at Casa del Popolo on 1 September 2012. Of that show, I wrote in the December 2012 issue of The Wire: “even the heartiest in attendance is left feeling rearranged.” A hallmark of any transformative experience involving sound is that it can literally reconfigure one’s constitution, frequencies realigning us physically as well as emotionally in profound and unexpected ways.

DIY or die. Orchestroll’s studio photographed for NicheMTL.

In May 2025, Orchestroll released their magnum opus, a double LP entitled Corrosiv, via the New York City-based 29 Speedway record label, featuring a host of guest appearances including Milanese musician Heith and saxophonist Habib El Bardi.

“It’s been an ongoing project that ended up at the studio here. This record came together as a sort of broken thing where we were working on three different conceptual things that we would take along with us wherever we went. When we got here, finally, we could look at the stuff with a new perspective,” Osborne-Lanthier tells me.

“And keep the strongest stuff and refine the strongest stuff and blend it together and mix it into one concept,” says Richard-Robitaille, picking up the thread. “It’s been two or three years.” He describes the recording as the “baptism” of their new studio. “It was the first Orchestroll project that’s been produced and finished here,” he says.

Osborne-Lanthier explains: “We spent a month refining it in this studio, but it took years elsewhere in other spaces.”

The modular modus operandi befits Orchestroll’s vibe, a kind of alchemical purification process that distills their sound to its rawest essence. The tone is quietly confrontational, a reflection especially of Osborne-Lanthier’s reputation for being an outspoken, endearingly curmudgeonly, uncompromising voice on the Montreal landscape.

This approach at times has undoubtedly ruffled feathers and perhaps alienated the duo from local power brokers. But one thing Orchestroll cannot be accused of is pandering to the politics or tastes of the day. If you live by the motto ‘DIY or die,’ at times you have to accept the latter.

During our freewheeling conversation, Osborne-Lanthier takes aim at several deserving targets. The internet: “It’s a weapon used against people to dumb them down and have them subdued”; Artificial Intelligence: “It’s techno-feudalism at its best”; the corporatization of protest music: “Punk now is buying a pair of jeans online and wearing them cool”; the city’s current administration: “The municipal government seems bent on creating a nightlife where opening a pub up on Stanley until 6am is a way to boost culture.” The salvos land aptly.

“I think that maybe Montreal isn’t as welcoming and easy for a starving artist anymore.” Asaël Richard-Robitaille and Jesse Osborne-Lanthier photographed for NicheMTL.

“I’m so far from nightlife culture that I just disconnected myself,” Osborne-Lanthier admits. “It’s not my cup of tea anymore. I’m not involved as much as I used to be. It’s a very weird relationship. I feel like I have to go elsewhere to find what I’m looking for in music. There’s not enough in Montreal. There’s not enough infrastructure. There’s not enough money. There are not enough venues. It’s hard to really find a sustainability here in music.”

Richard-Robitaille agrees. “I feel like since the pandemic, things have changed,” he observes. “Inflation and the housing crisis — I think that maybe Montreal isn’t as welcoming and easy for a starving artist anymore. That was the luxury that Montreal had: you could have the shittiest part-time job and make art the rest of the week.”

“There’s no shortage of people doing amazing things here,” Osborne-Lanthier notes. “But there’s a hell of a lot of venues that are missing.”

Indeed, with Montreal emulating the concessions of other big cities like Toronto and New York to the whims of real-estate developers and neglecting what made Montreal an attractive destination for groundbreaking creative communities in the first place, it is unclear what the future holds for the next generation of boundary-pushing artists from Montreal and abroad.

“There’s still ways of keeping it alive,” Richard-Robitaille offers, optimistically.

“The first thing would be for the city to invest in actual culture and facilitate bridges so that people can learn. For the younger generation to have access to platforms and locations where they can actually enlighten themselves and take risks and become actual artists,” Osborne-Lanthier suggests.

“I wish it would happen,” he laments, “but it’s so hard to be hopeful. To the younger generation, stick together and keep doing your stuff. Keep hosting DIY events and use the infrastructure you have to keep raving.”◼︎

Orchestroll perform 14 August 2025 at the Society for Arts and Technology, 1201 St. Laurent Boulevard.

Cover image: Orchestroll photographed for NicheMTL.

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Out Of the Past: in conversation with Milly A. Dery

Deep in the heart of the Old Port, among Montreal’s most palimpsestic neighbourhoods, sits a stronghold improbably dedicated to the production, exhibition, and proliferation of contemporary art.

Years ago, The Darling Brothers Foundry, an historic monument on Montreal’s industrial map, forged steel. Today, the edifice is an engine of another kind of creativity. Neither a commercial gallery nor an artist-run centre, Fonderie Darling exists at the interstice of private and public interests, of low and high culture, of old and new architecture, positioned at the crossroads of antiquity and eternity.

The Fonderie’s founding director Caroline Andrieux took leave last October after three decades spent helming one of this city’s most venerable cultural institutions. Quartier Éphémère was launched in 1993, when the area was all but abandoned, rebar jutting out from neglected streets, on the cusp of a bitterly contested national referendum that surely would have pushed Quebec further into economic ruin had the province cleaved from Canadian confederation.

Now, with a tentative sense of permanence, the district is awash in new capital, surrounded by luxury condominiums, posh boutiques, exclusive hotels, and gourmet restaurants. And with a city block-sized footprint, Fonderie Darling boasts fresh direction at the command of Milly A. Dery, who at only 34 is tasked with navigating this behemoth out of the past.

She is here for it.

“It’s super exciting,” says Dery with an authentic grin. “It’s also super challenging. A founding director passing the place on to a non-founding director is always a big step for an organization. It only happens once. But in October when I arrived in the office, I felt ready and excited.”

Dery is dressed in relaxed denims and a crisp white blouse. Her spark is undeniable, demonstrating the desire to stoke Fonderie Darling’s fires for the foreseeable future. At once she exudes youth and wisdom, speaking with poise and confidence about managing the Fonderie’s transition.

Dery studied Art History, first at McGill, then completing a master’s degree at Université de Montréal. She worked in private galleries and joined Fonderie Darling eight years ago after dropping off a resumé on spec. “They needed someone to fill in for a month,” she says. At the end of that month, Dery was hired on full-time and has not looked back since.

“Nostalgia is an easy trap to fall into,” Dery says. “A lot of people talk about the ‘90s and how the era was better, different, the city was different, money was different. I want to step away from nostalgia and figure out how to get a place like this into the 21st century.”

“We do look at this space as a little fortress for the artists in the neighbourhood.” Photograph for NicheMTL.

Doubtless, Old Montreal in the 1990s would have been vastly different. Lofts and artists’ studios were cheap and plentiful. Fonderie Darling’s mandate of reclaiming abandoned buildings for artistic pursuits fit right in and harnessed institutional enthusiasm early on. In 2025, though, with property values skyrocketing and public funding dwindling, there is a tension these days between competing crises: affordable housing, and affordable spaces for artistic production.

“Developers used to ring the doorbell every week and make offers,” Dery tells me. “But we are the owners of this building. And we do look at this space as a little fortress for the artists in a neighbourhood that is otherwise unwelcoming for them. You come here and you wonder how this place is still standing. It’s still standing because people fought for it.”

Fonderie Darling has always possessed a scrappy spirit, combining two exhibition rooms, studios in which artists can work in-situ, and an outdoor esplanade that stages public interventions and performance pieces. The Fonderie does not represent artists as a traditional gallery would. Instead, it generates 50 percent of its operating budget from public sources, and the other half from a combination of autonomous revenues, philanthropy, and private donations.

“It’s a difficult equilibrium to maintain,” explains Dery. “Public financing is insufficient. It’s a crazy amount of work for our team to find 50 percent of our revenues.” The Fonderie does charge a reasonably priced admission, $8. Nonetheless, this accounts for only two percent of its annual income. “We have an accessibility policy,” Dery says. In today’s terminology, that means no one is turned away for lack of funds. “I worked at the welcome desk for a long time before changing roles and it’s important to keep it accessible.”

Because Fonderie Darling is free from the pressures of producing blockbuster exhibitions or programming saleable works, it is able to take risks on unconventional and edgier artists and their ideas. When I visit, the spring show is underway — embedded “liturgical-optic” paintings by Numa Amun, plus an exhibition entitled Simile Aria, an ingenious twist on the relationship between vocal and organ pipes by Fonderie Darling artist-in-residence Maggy Hamel-Metsos.

Detail of Simile Aria by Maggy Hamel-Metsos photographed for NicheMTL.

Dery gives me a tour of the facility and tells me about the forthcoming summer programme. “We have two new solo shows in June,” she says, “by Karen Elaine Spencer and Frantz Patrick Henry.” Spencer is presenting a selection of bold and poetic works that relate loosely to the process of grief. “I think it’s going to be really moving,” Dery indicates.

Henry’s show, exhibiting in the larger gallery, is concerned with architecture from Italy, Montreal, and Haiti as fragments of collective history. “They’re very different practices,” Dery notes, “but still related in methods and approach. Opposite, but connected in some unexpected ways.”

Following Caroline Andrieux’s lead, Dery relishes the liberty to curate challenging programmes. “That’s why we have such a strong reputation today,” she suggests. “Not for economic, popularity, or any consideration have there ever been compromises on the audacity, the quality, and relevance of the propositions that we present. That is a guiding principle.”

Fonderie Darling particularly tends to encourage works that are in dialogue with the space and which revolve around recurrent themes of slowness, sustainability, transformation, and regeneration.

“This sense of reciprocity between the space, the artwork, and the visitor has always been in the DNA of Fonderie,” Dery says, “and important to reinvigorate every time. This space has so many possibilities, and when the priorities are in perfect alignment with the conditions that welcome it, that’s where you get the magic.”

“You don’t need to love art to have an extraordinary time.” Milly A. Dery photographed for NicheMTL.

What, precisely, is that magic? What is art for?

“Art changes my life,” Dery affirms. “It changes my mind. It changes the way I think. It brings joy, unpredictability, a reason to live. Out of the monotony and pressure and oppression of daily life, which is a struggle for many people for many reasons, art is a comfort in many ways. It’s a way to bond, to create relationships. For me, if you come to Fonderie Darling, you don’t need to love art to have an extraordinary time.”

And yet, Fonderie Darling is situated far from what constitutes the ordinary on Montreal’s cultural landscape.

Dery is keenly aware that she has an important job balancing creativity, commerce, urban demands, local politics, and above all, the value of contemporary art in a city perennially on the verge of succumbing to capitalist excesses.

“I would love for Fonderie Darling to be known to every Montrealer,” Dery muses. “For me, it’s about how to make sure that it continues to live for 100 years.”◼︎

No Bystanders by Frantz Patrick Henry and revenons en oiseaux, être un arbre est trop dur et aujourd’hui, il neige by Karen Elaine Spencer launch 19 June and run through 17 August 2025 at Fonderie Darling, 745 Place du Sable-Gris.

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Follow the Art: in conversation with Eli Kerr

Snow once again blankets the city on 6 March 2025 and Galerie Eli Kerr, the modest-sized exhibition space on St. Laurent Boulevard, is crammed to capacity with visitors.

So much so that it is practically impossible to get a good look at the artworks presented at the show, simply entitled Three, which collects three brass, pewter, and bronze reliefs by Maggy Hamel-Metsos, two black-and-white inkjet prints on paper by Geneviève Cadieux, and a solitary impressionistic image called a failure by the painter Liza Lacroix.

Patrons mill about with wine glasses and Montellier cans clutched in hand, double kissing, laughing, mingling in spirals. The curatorial project at work here is about what is on the walls, yes. But it is also sub-textually about gathering together this assemblage of Montreal’s visual arts crowd for whom an au courant vernissage is an event worth braving a late-winter blizzard.

Credit gallerist Eli Kerr — for both the walls and crowd.

Kerr, 36, is one of a handful of visionary Montreal-based curators generating a buzz on The Main and, in doing so, reinvigorating a sense of novelty and delight amidst a global downturn in the art world. Sales in the worldwide art market fell by 12% in 2024 according to a study commissioned by Art Basel and UBS.

Nonetheless, now might be the most opportune moment to helm a new venture in the workaday art sector, where transactions have actually increased, and in a city like Montreal, where art is valued by a wider swath of the general population.

“I thought it was a good time,” Kerr deadpans of his counterintuitively deliberated enterprise, “because this is all I know. I can’t compare it to better times.”

“I really like working directly with artists. We can make decisions much quicker.” Gallery view of the vernissage for “Three,” 6 March 2025. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Kerr relocated to St. Laurent in a storefront nestled between Mount-Royal and St. Joseph, right next door to kindred spirit Nicolas Robert, from a mezzanine-level gallery on Avenue du Parc that he opened during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. A native Montrealer, Kerr was away at that time in Ontario, working through a graduate degree in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto.

“It made sense in uncertain times to head back to a place that one understood, and be home around my people,” says Kerr of his return five years ago. “My family, the artists, and the friends that I have. The first gallery came out of a sense of wanting to — needing to — do something.”

Kerr describes his initial commercial endeavour as no larger than a “parking space” that nonetheless allowed him to exhibit singular works of art in alternative ways, focussing specifically upon one sole piece, or a select assortment of them. And while museums and larger art centres were mandated by the government to be closed throughout the Covid crisis, street-level galleries like Kerr’s were among the few businesses allowed to remain in operation.

“I was able to walk this grey line,” recalls Kerr. “It provided that base necessity of being able to put on small-scale exhibitions. And then the opportunity to move to St. Laurent came up, and that opened up a lot of doors. I’m really committed to showing new work. Having artists show things they’ve never shown before. Departing from the precedent — that’s what we want to do in terms of exhibitions.”

Prior to being the proprietor of his own eponymous gallery, Kerr cut his teeth working as an assistant to a variety of local artists and eventually landing a job at Fonderie Darling. “I’ve been organizing exhibitions independently since about 2015,” Kerr tells me.

“There’s a world of insight you can gain working for people. But I’ve always found it hard to work in the arts for myriad reasons. It’s really tough to make a living. It’s tough to do the projects you want to do, in terms of artistic direction. The other option is working in a museum or in an artist-run centre. But you have to have a more by-committee way of making decisions and I really like working directly with artists. We can make decisions much quicker. We might be doing things totally backwards. But there’s an edge to that.”

Gallery view of “The Lion’s Share,” a solo exhibition by the photographer Fatine-Violette Sabiri. Photographed for NicheMTL.

At the St. Laurent location, Kerr represents nine artists, a small but robust stable of Francophone and Anglo, local and international talent. The current show on view is called “The Lion’s Share” by the photographer Fatine-Violette Sabiri, and Kerr gives me a walk-through of the gallery, describing what he finds fascinating about her works.

“A lot of the photographs are taken in these before-moments that are in the periphery to a main event,” he explains. “People preparing for a fashion show. There’s a bunch of horseback riders preparing for a competition. She’s looking at these side moments. It’s something spontaneous — and quite painterly.”

The curatorial turn more broadly betrays an impetus for the organization of people and things in a dynamic that implies a propensity for power, but reveals an aptitude for aesthetics. And Kerr possesses a keen eye and sensitivity for the artists and works of art he chooses to display in his space.

“It is such an intuitive process,” he says. “It takes a long time. The most important thing is the human relationship. You have to really want to live with their ideas. And vice versa. It’s a thick question. What I really like about our gallery is that everybody knows each other, more or less. There’s a certain chemistry in the group. It’s not just about the gallery’s relationship to each individual artist. We’re trying to make something where relationships emerge between the artists. I don’t think a lot of galleries work that way.”

While many of Kerr’s artists work within diverse media — sculpture, photography, ready-mades, drawing, and painting — there is a thread of contemporary relevance that sets his sights apart. Kerr seems to be acutely attuned to something in the zeitgeist of this precise place and time. A selection of Joyce Joumaa’s thermostat light boxes, for example, was acquired following her solo show last summer by the Musée d’art contemporain. Kerr’s is an artists’ art space that appeals not only to art lovers and collectors but also to art historians, musicians, writers, adjacent cultural workers, and most notably, his fellow curators.

“It’s been a nice surprise that the group of existing galleries has been very supportive of us,” says Kerr. “They frequent our gallery and come to our events. In most cases they are older than I am and have more experience. It is competitive — the perceived market is only so big. But at the end of the day, it’s good that we all support the same mandate of contemporary art. That does us all well.”

Kerr’s enthusiasm is infectious and evident in every subsequent show he produces. The next exhibition, he tells me, will showcase a series of artworks comprised of decomposing foodstuffs that the Torontonian artist Alan Belcher created. Still, Kerr’s affection for Montreal and the Plateau neighbourhood in particular is apparent in abundance.

“There’s a lot of energy here,” he observes. “It’s always been an exciting city that way. It’s interesting to think about the place of visual arts. But you have to follow the art.”◼︎

Since 1957, a solo exhibition by Alan Belcher opens 7 June and runs until 24 July 2025 at Galerie Eli Kerr, 4647 St. Laurent Boulevard.

Cover image: Eli Kerr photographed for NicheMTL.

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100% In It: in conversation with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh

The power is out at Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango.

The legendary Montreal recording studio on Van Horne Avenue that has produced some of this city’s most iconic recordings over the past two decades, by the likes of Arcade Fire, The Dears, The Barr Brothers, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, among many others, a building that is normally positively buzzing, both literally and figuratively, stands eerily quiet on a recent Wednesday.

In a whirlwind of apologies for the lack of electricity, its co-founder, the composer and recording engineer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh arrives right on time, to the minute. Hydro Quebec had months ago scheduled an outage to accommodate routine maintenance work, Moumneh tells me. But he had forgotten, and on this afternoon, we would have to proceed under natural light. In the studio’s main room, fortunately, the sun streams in as if from some divine source.

Moumneh wears dark glasses, his head covered by a bright pink hoodie and a pair of signature leather loafers over bare feet. He speaks rapidly and affably and philosophically and curiously self-deprecatingly, entirely void of any sense of rock star ego, even if it might be warranted by the sheer volume of celebrated albums in which he has participated. Recordings by Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Jessica Moss, and Land of Kush, just to name a few.

“The other day,” he confides, laughing, “we were at the PA, and my son turns to me and asks, ‘Dad, are you famous?’ And the clerk looks at me like maybe I am. And I’m just standing there like someone who’s trying not to be recognized, with a potato and an onion in my basket. And I say, ‘no — and we’re not getting any chocolate or chips, either. We’re getting an onion and a potato for dinner.’”

Moumneh and his business partners Efrim Menuck, Howard Bilerman, and Thierry Amar purchased the unassuming white complex that houses Hotel2Tango nearly 20 years ago. Constellation Records has its offices upstairs, and Grey Market Mastering rounds out the edifice as a one-stop record workshop. This is our Abbey Road, our Brill Building, our Sound City all rolled into one — in a city with its own undoubtedly signature sound.

“When people make their records here, it’s such a precious thing,” Moumneh muses. “So, I make sure my heart’s 100% in it. Each one is such a unique experience and a very important piece of the puzzle. And each one has really annoying things that make me get fucking upset at the artist because I’m like, ‘God fucking damn it, this sucks. This is a silly way to work. This is a silly thing that you’re doing.’ But I’m also very conscious that that is a very important part of making something. Nothing can be wholly perfect. The perfection is the bad and the good.”

Moumneh, 49, is an Orson Welles-level Renaissance man who has worked as a musician with Jerusalem in My Heart, in partnership with Edmontonian expat Erin Weisgerber, a producer, a filmmaker, a composer for cinema, dance, and theatre, an actor, and a sound designer for public art installations. He was responsible for the audio of 21 Balançoires, the musical swings created in 2011 in the Quartier des spectacles and exported to various cities around the world as a work of living urban sculpture.

The swings, a collaboration with the design team Daily Tous Les Jours, rewarded users’ cooperation with more complex melodies as they swung in unison. 21 Balançoires won numerous international awards and caught the attention of the talk show host and global tastemaker Oprah Winfrey. “I do so many different things,” Moumneh says, “but I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing half the time. I’m still such a student of everything.”

I caught Moumneh last year at Hotel2Tango performing an improvised electronics set with the Parisian musician Frédéric D. Oberland, with whom he has just completed recording a long player to be released in 2026.

“What we do is dangerous and fun,” Moumneh explains. “Just experimentation in the truest sense. Knowing that this could be not amazing and that’s okay. That’s the spirit. Let’s do something singular and unique and we’re never going to do it again.”

Moumneh also freshly wrapped sessions with the Lebanese post-rock band SANAM, with which he will perform a handful of live dates at Suoni per il Popolo, the 25th iteration of the storied Montreal music festival, in June 2025.

“I’m going to do a duo with the synth player of SANAM,” Moumneh tells me. “And Jessica Moss will do a trio with the bassist and the drummer, who is a phenomenal musician. I’m really lucky to have these people as dear friends.”

Born in Lebanon and raised in Oman, Moumneh’s family fled to Canada in the mid-1990s while he was still in his mid-teens, as part of a government initiative to resettle at-risk migrants. “My parents had no idea where Canada was,” Moumneh divulges. “But it was this or go back to Lebanon. They were just trying to offer these crazy deals to people with young children and nowhere to go.”

Moumneh remained in Montreal while his family returned to Lebanon fewer than five years later. “My parents spoke no English and no French. They hated it here,” he says, elongating the operative word. “I was like, ‘I really need to have my own thing, away from you guys.’”

Soon, Moumneh found his footing attending engineering school and teaching himself to play a variety of musical instruments. “I just started playing music because I met a couple of weirdos in class and they were like, ‘hey, do you want to try and learn how to play music?’” He relocated momentarily to Lebanon but moved back to Montreal in the early 2000s and was among the cohort that founded Hotel2Tango. “I was working on stuff before that, too,” he says, “but this is where things really got serious.”

Moumneh travels to Beirut twice a year, he tells me, to visit family and close friends, recounting how the city was bombed twice on his last sojourn. “It was typical, stupid shit,” he deadpans. “3:30 in the morning jumping out of bed because the whole fucking neighbourhood is bombed and you’re like, ‘fuck you guys.’”

It is striking how nonchalantly he speaks of the routine violence that Lebanon has endured historically, escalating again with the most recent war in neighbouring Israel. “It’s not as dramatic as it sounds,” Moumneh says. “It is dramatic, but people deal with it on a whole different level. Our idea of danger is a different thing. People like my parents can’t leave, but people who are young can’t live there. All the youth leave because it’s so dead-end.”

“I absolutely worship challenges. I live for them.” Radwan Ghazi Moumneh photographed for NicheMTL.

We talk at length about the disparities between the West and Middle East. “Two people can go to the same area and have completely different experiences of what they understand Lebanon is,” he describes. “It’s very un-understandable. That’s our sectarian system. If you want to see the extremes of all aspects of life, you go to Lebanon. It’s just extremes in every direction. It’s a really spectacular place. There is obnoxious wealth, of course. Beyond obnoxious wealth. And beyond insane poverty. And beyond insane beauty. And beyond insane ugliness. There is more beauty than there is ugliness. And even in the ugliness there is beauty.”

I ask him to contrast Montreal and its unique brand of ugly beauty.

“If someone was to come from abroad and only visit Montreal and that to them is what represents Canada, how distorted of a fucking idea would they have of what Canada is? This is a crazy place. It’s so absurd that this whole place,” he says, spanning out his arms, “is an arbitrary country. You can fit three Montreals into Lebanon. It’s so tiny. It’s like from here to Ottawa. And yet we have a million different populations that are so drastically different. There are so many dialects, so many accents, culinary differences, cultural differences, within one tiny little blob. Imagine. It’s all beautiful. But it’s sad, also, the destructive side of it.”

Finding beauty in despair, or creating it when none seems readily available, is the responsibility of the socially conscious artist, someone like Moumneh with that superpower that produces spontaneous voltage, especially when the electricity is out, either metaphorically or actually.

“I love throwing myself into hoops of fire,” admits Moumneh, speaking now more broadly about his general approach to life. “I love it. I love the challenge. I absolutely worship challenges. I live for them. I think it’s what keeps you mentally a child. It feels like you have so much to learn.”◼︎

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh performs as part of Suoni per il popolo with SANAM 21 June 2025 at La Sala Rossa, 4848 Boulevard St. Laurent.

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Our Lover’s Story: in conversation with HRT

“Enya rocks so hard,” proclaims Anastasia Westcott who, along with vocalist Kirby Lees, comprises the legendary Montreal-based Rave-Punk duo HRT.

The three of us are riffing in the living room of Westcott’s McGill-ghetto flat, which serves simultaneously as HRT HQ, on the music that we listened to as kids, delighting in many of our similarities: Free Jazz; Death Metal; Classic Rock; Hole.

Somehow it doesn’t altogether come as a surprise that Westcott, in addition to edgier artists, from Metallica to Coil, might count Enya among her influences — considering that Enya, too, is known for crafting tightly composed and densely layered electronic music.

Hailing originally from Atlantic Canada, Westcott from Newfoundland and Lees a Haligonian, there is something of a maritime work ethic and misty spirit that Enya and HRT share. And while HRT might aesthetically be as confrontational as Enya is calm, there exists an undeniable throughline.

Still, HRT is impossible to pin down, generically speaking, spanning Hardcore, Breakbeat, Electro, Post-Punk, and Darkwave. The result is a melange of infectious, industrial, danceable bangers specifically unique to this twosome, and indicative of Montreal’s appreciation for music’s most experimental margins, more broadly. Theirs is a decidedly niche brand of no-nonsense knees-up business.

For the uninitiated, HRT does indeed stand for Hormone Replacement Therapy, a not-so-subtle possession of their identity as Transgender artists.

“We kind of threw people a curveball not putting periods between the letters, I guess,” Westcott laughs. “We were initially going to start an anonymous hyperpop group called HRT because we thought, ‘what’s the most Trans-coded name we could think of?’”

“But then we were just like, ‘fuck it, go for it,’ and called ourselves HRT,” Lees elaborates. “I haven’t really thought about our music in relation to identity. We don’t write anything specifically with Trans identity in mind. We’re just Trans girls making music. I think the two just inherently happen.”

While music and identity can be mutually exclusive, every act is arguably political. And HRT are as radical as contemporary performance gets. They attract a core community of like minded devotees with volatile and cathartic live shows, one of which I attended at La Sotterenea on 7 February as part of the Taverne Tour. Standing at the edge of the stage, I suddenly realized, like a volcanologist poised on the threshold of an active lava lake, that I was precariously close to being sucked into the vortex of the mosh pit.

Their audiences “come to party,” as Westcott describes.

The crowd at La Sotterenea reacts as HRT’s Kirby Lees jumps into the audience. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“That night felt particularly insane,” Lees remembers. “It was very packed. We weren’t really expecting it either, considering Taverne Tour had eight other shows happening on that block that night. Especially lately, it’s been that kind of energy pretty consistently.”

Westcott echoes: “Often when we play shows, I have to be like, ‘how was it?’ Because I don’t see. I don’t think. I’m nothing. Which feels amazing.”

The indomitable vibe that Lees and Westcott conjure together is vital, and it seems that the pair have their division of labour down pat. HRT formed in 2018 and, like everyone, was compelled into a two-and-a-half-year hiatus during the coronavirus crisis. “We had to take a forcible stop where we tried to write stuff together over Zoom,” says Lees. “I learned a lot about how to use gear, but it was kind of a nightmare.”

“The original songs were like Kirby making janky beats over a vocal sample and me turning them into songs on actual gear,” Westcott explains. “We’ve written in so many different ways at this point.”

“I learned how to play bass during the pandemic,” Lees professes. “And I did a lot of gear stuff. But my comfortable space is handling lyrics, largely.”

Both Lees and Westcott are self-taught musicians with no formal training. “I’ve been playing shows since I was 14 or 15,” Westcott tells me. “I did some Jazz guitar lessons in my early 20s. But most of my experience comes from just playing music.”

Lees fronted a band called The Dolly Partners after she moved in 2014 to Montreal from Halifax. “It was a Punk Dolly Parton cover band,” Lees deadpans. “But this has been my longest-standing project.”

Westcott decamped from St. John’s in 2012. “Originally I was going to go to Concordia for Jazz studies and didn’t get in,” Westcott confesses. “I’ve been part of a lot of different scenes, made a lot of different types of music. I’ve been in, like, way too many bands.”

Lees explains that HRT’s modus operandi is, “just doing it because we like it. The sound of it keeps changing, too,” she says, “between each thing we record. We’re not sticking necessarily to any one particular genre. We’re just doing what we want to do, when we want to do it.”

That liberatory ethos has served the band from their first release under the name Dregqueen, Connective, in 2019, to a live EP recorded at Café Cleopatra just before the lockdowns and launched on Bandcamp in 2021, and ultimately, to their most recent LP, entitled warm wet stroke of luck, released in late 2024.

If there were a band motto, Westcott says, it would simply be, “making people feel like they have a place to dance.”

“Our main goal is to keep doing it until it’s not fun, honestly.” Ana Westcott and Kirby Lees photographed for NicheMTL.

Providing that safe space is central to HRT’s endearing appeal. Unfortunately, however, North America, and expressly our neighbours to the south, seems dead set upon making public spaces less safe for Trans people. The U.S. under Donald J. Trump has just passed an executive order banning travellers whose passport documents don’t conform to their birth-assigned genders.

“We would love to do a good tour,” Lees says. “But it doesn’t really look like the states is the place to do that right now. So maybe a European tour at some point. We’re literally living in a hellscape. But our main goal is to keep doing it until it’s not fun, honestly.”

For the moment, Westcott and Lees are content to hunker down in Montreal and explore the possibilities afforded by incremental technological innovations.

“I got a computer,” Westcott boasts. “I didn’t have one that could run Ableton before. So, I’m making music on the computer instead of hardware. It feels pretty good so far. But it’s weird to have everything because I am really used to working within limitations and having limitation act as a creative tool.”

As a cultural observer, I am tempted to suggest that social limitations to a large degree encouraged Westcott and Lees to pursue creative fields rather than, say, careers in finance. Some artists are made while others are born. Nonetheless, Montreal has nurtured HRT to an extent that few other metropolises would. How long this continues, though, is unknown.

“It’s changed a lot, but this city does offer you space and time and access to work on passion projects,” says Lees.

“Up until recently, there’s always been a lot of DIY venues,” Westcott recalls. “But housing is so fucked in Montreal right now that that’s having an impact. When I moved here, I was paying $170 in rent. That’s not the situation anymore. Community is what makes bands. And the more that Montreal becomes like other cities, the less it will be like Montreal.”

Lees concurs. “If you make it harder to live here, you’re going to lose everything that made this city what it is: its art scenes; its music scenes; the actual culture that makes up this city. And for what? Don’t wreck your city. It’s the last one we have in Canada where you can actually make something happen if you want to because you have that access. We’re losing it really quickly. Make living affordable. That’s the baseline.”◼︎

HRT perform 9 May 2025 at the D4E Rave, Location TBA.

Cover image: Anastasia Westcott and Kirby Lees photographed for NicheMTL.

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