Black Strobe and Arnaud Rebotini

As I said in the previous post, on the night of my third day in Montréal, I went to an Elektra party. The venue was the amazing Usine C, the former Raymond factory turned into an arts centre (a smaller version of London's Tate Modern). Apart from a series of digital arts installations scattered throughout the building, the main event of the night was a dance party in the main hall of the building. 

When I say dance party, I mean dance party. The band in charge of rocking our bones was Black Strobe, an exciting mix between the sounds of a 70s rock band (with a brightly distorted Les Paul), experimental sounds a la Kraftwerk, the urgent riffs in Marilyn Manson or even Rammstein, and a consistent stream of 80s synthethisers that made everyone feel like a role player in a Nintendo classic. Confused? Well, just watch the video below first, and then listen to the song "Italian Fireflies" here. Their act was complemented by a visual show projected on the enormous wall of the hall and, of course, dozens of strobes and black lights.

But the big surprise came when Black Strobe got off the stage. The band's front man, Arnaud Rebotini, stayed on stage, brought out a half dozen keyboards and samplers, and played an elegant live analog synth set that rocked my world and turned the place upside down. Thus began the REAL dance party. 

Rebotini looks like a French version of Elvis with the body of a bouncer. With his slick black hair and enormous sideburns, the man commands a stage presence that would make Mick Jagger bow in awe. When he's not busy playing with his six instruments with the precision of a Honda robot, he looks up to the crowd to give them a suave look. The man is literally surrounded and trapped by his keyboards, and he frees himself from time to time by blasting his french accent into the microphone. Standing at more than 190cms, he looks like the Goliath of DJs.

As the clocked moved towards 2 am, Rebotini tripled the intensity of the beats to a point where the bass made my neck vibrate so that my vocal chords started speaking without my consent. I left the place literally shaken and stirred. I'm not an electro fan, but this live act quickly became the highlight of the trip.