Review: VIDEODROME 2012

 Infinity Dose Live, Photo Cred: Don't Know

Hamilton based disobedient electronic musician Huren performed to a packed house on Friday, June 8th, 2012 at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto. Huren's performance was part of VIDEODROME, an annual Audio/Visual event inspired by David Cronenberg’s 1983 cult film of the same name. The event was attended by over 700 this year, a healthy mix of Toronto scene queens, Burlington pre queens and Hamilton crack fiends - all united at last!

Known in some circles as David Foster and former touring drummer of Junior Boys, Huren is no stranger to the dark, weird and twisted realms of experimental electronic music.  Huren began his career over two decades ago in the German underground largely rejecting the clean and polished sounds of minimal techno, instead seeking to develop a sound more confrontational, extreme and rhythmic noise based, putting out a series of obscure releases on the Berlin division of Zhark.

The night featured a sprawling and eclectic mix of visual music consisting of beat matched visuals responding to rhythmic sonic transitions, done live using computer programs such as Max/MSP, as well as installation works, a wicked cluster fuck of awesomeness and total sensory overload. 

Huren's performance at VIDEODROME almost did not come to fruition after a near death experience earlier this year, in April he got jumped outside of Hess Village in his hometown of Hamilton and suffered a fractured scull as a result. True to his Hammer city grit and as the old adage goes: what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, Huren returned with a vengeance shouting bitcrushed, filtered and distorted criticisms of la société du spectacle against rhythmic pulsating noises and chest vibrating synth bass lines. The shit was way too real and str8 O.G. 

Huren's sounds evoke a low rent, impure, gruesome vibe and are exactly what you would expect from an artist who emerged on the heels of other early 90s counter cultural icons like Hakim Bey. Part "$cumtronic$" and part trippin’ on the separation of the $€n$ibl¥e, his lyrics are at times incomprehensible: "you paid what he paid / I paid what you paid / fuck off!!! / I paid what we all paid!", lyrics loosely inspired by the Nissan employee pricing car commercial, paradoxical as that may seem. As a musician, Huren is hyper aware of all the fucked up shit presently going on in the world - from capitalism and its discontents through wage labour and debt servitude - and few are more critical, self consciously erroneous and straight up disruptive of the system than him.

Huren’s performance also featured Toronto based A/V artist Infinity Dose, wearing a mask replete with small pieces of broken mirror. An emerging A/V artist hard as shit and with tight game all the same, Infinity Dose utilized elements of appropriated multi channel video projections juxtaposed and layered on top of one another, creating an immersive tone for Huren’s performance with scenes of chaotic and violent visual assemblages, complimenting the music and providing a strong synasthetic element. 

Organized by artist Jubal Brown whose set also blew minds as well as fists and even the World Trade Centre (multiple times and in quick succession), VIDEODROME also featured the work of other A/V aficionados including Augart, Ouananiche, Nwodtlem, Smearballs, Crazy Gnome, Ocusonic, lttlbrd, Contort and Hip.p, TalixZen, Fuctaculon, Video Samurai, Kyle Duffield & Daniele Hopkins, Pete Ohearn, dAeve Fellows, Istvan Kantor, The Whore Church, Kyle Duffield, Marisa Hoicka and VJ Jerrem Lynch. 

Look out for VIDEODROME next year kids, break out the popcorn and beamers this gesamtkunstwerk shit will blow your brain!