Recently, Buraka Som Sistema came to play in Montreal. They played at a dance-club called Zoobizarre located on a peculiar section of Avenue St-Hubert, where the street becomes a covered, never-ending strip-mall. It feels as if you have been teleported from Montreal’s back streets into a suburban retail experiment. Baby clothes and wedding dresses are propped up, fading in the shop windows.
Zoobizarre has been modeled to look like a tunnel, or a wine cellar, or the underside of a bridge. The room is long and the ceiling is very low. Everything is done up in rough gray brick, and when you are inside it is hard to come to terms with the fact that this grotto is on the second floor, high above street level. But of course there are no windows.
Sometimes Zoobizarre is one of the worst venues in this city: cramped, claustrophobic, and it is hard to see the stage. But at other times it is the best venue in this city. The room becomes a prism. The speakers thump and the whole room dazzles. A hundred shades of sound refract across the curved concrete ceiling.
Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Sean Michaels Listens to Music in Montreal.
I miss Montreal for places like Zoobizarre. There just aren’t places like this in Vancouver…or are there?
