Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains Perform in Les FrancoFolies de Montréal Festival
A child’s dream is to travel utopic galaxies, but as they grow old, they realize how the selected ones are able to visit the moon. Luckily, indie-folk band Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains were able to achieve that goal through their music.
The first indoor show at Les FrancoFolies de Montréal began with Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains this past Wednesday at the Club Soda concert hall. The five young musicians invited the audience to climb aboard their shuttle and travel through the mysterious sounds of space rock.
Opening for the band was a group named Barbagallo. Discovered by Les FrancoFolies de Montréal, the band fed the audience a combination of different sounds that created a spatial effect using two mixing boards attached to a synthesizer. Each note that was held down created a different sound that teleported the melody into a different world; they used sounds such as lasers and an abduction sound that you’d imagine hearing from a flying saucer.
They began with a song called “Nouveau Sidobre” that began with the sound of an acoustic guitar being strummed, followed by a progressively accelerating paced drum beat and the synthesizer keys held down from one musical note to the other.
The slow paced pattern transformed into a funky beat, until eventually the song winded down to slow melody.
Barbagallo ended their set list with their song “La Vérité.” The song began with the synthesizer’s looping effect which created a rhythmical pattern that slowly faded away. The drummer of the band Julien Barbagallo—whom the band is named after—began singing alongside a slightly shuffled drum beat.
The part that I loved was the lightly tapped bass drum. As the song progressed, the drum kept getting louder, until the sound exploded into a huge jam. The drum was the song’s heart since each beat created a rhythmic pattern that allowed other instruments to engage in the melody.
After Barbagallo’s performance ended, Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains emerged onto the stage. The group began their set with a song called “Grand Dérèglement” which started off with several random radio voices.
The beat began with a rough drum beat quickly followed by the sound of a distortion effect coming from an electric guitar, adding an electric feeling to the piece.
The backup guitarist switched over to the synthesizers, creating different echoing and looping sounds until the electric guitar took over with an energetic solo until the end of the song.
The song “Be Water (Je Suis de L’Eau),” captured the band’s essence, fusing different sounds and rhythmical patterns. The echoing sound gave the audience an all-access pass to travel into a different dimension dedicated to music.
The piece began with an echoing electric guitar chord, while the unknown sounds were interpreted on the electric drum pad.
The snare and cymbals were lightly introduced, accompanied by the electric guitar’s clean tone. The song ended with a huge jam, where every instrument was heard without overlapping each other.
After several cheers and whistles, the band came back for an encore. The improvisational piece began with the synthesizers looping with an echoing effect.
The song’s rhythmical pattern changed to an electronic and funky beat, which explodes to a loose jam session, applying their effects to each instrument they played that created a different world of music. The song quietly winds down until no instrument can be heard.
Overall, the Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains performance was quite enjoyable. The sounds and noise level that the band created amazed the audience into wanting more.
Les FrancoFolies de Montréal // francofolies.com // June 8th-18th //
1_600_375_90_s_c1.jpg)
