We often picture Canadians as kind, welcoming, and open-minded people. We can tell you with great confidence that this is true, and that the M For Montréal festival, celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, proved it time and again, even before the festival itself kicked off.
Between a stellar lineup and professional meetings made easy by the scheduled networking slots in the festival’s program, M For Montréal ranks among the best professional conventions we’ve had the chance to attend – by far.
Here’s our recap of the experience, also made possible by OFQJ (Office Franco-Québécois pour la Jeunesse), which enabled our trip!
One guiding principle: conviviality.
“Conviviality” is the word that immediately comes to mind from the first to the last day of the festival.
As part of the OFQJ delegation – Office Franco-Québécois pour la Jeunesse – we were welcomed the day before the festival’s official opening for a professional cocktail called “Fight The Jetlag,” bringing together all international delegates at Café Bravo, run by the label Bravo Musique, home to Coeur de Pirate and Lou-Adriane Cassidy, whose music has traveled well beyond Canadian borders. This highlight enabled both networking and the first concerts to happen – we were then welcomed at Ministère, a concert venue right next door (but the path was marked on the ground with artificial candles, “follow the lights!” they said!), with concerts introducing us to the live performances of Flèche Love and Billie Du Page.
Another highlight: M For Mixer, a large-scale speed meeting organized… at the scale of the entire festival. Every 10 minutes, each delegate completed a total of 8 meetings, selected by the festival’s organizing team based on professionals’ choices and their knowledge of the profiles of accredited professionals. A titanic organizational exercise, but brilliantly executed; a highlight that facilitates connections, especially since it takes place on the festival’s first day. It’s easy to run into people met during these speed meetings at a concert or conference, and thus continue the conversation started during the speed meeting. As we said, the organization of this professional convention is masterful.
We should also mention the numerous “professional cocktails” organized in the morning, at noon, or in the afternoon, all coordinated by labels, export offices, and Canadian or international delegations. It’s quite easy to think that even someone usually allergic to networking would find their place at an event like this, as it’s so simple to make connections.
Finally, we should also mention that even before the festival started, it was possible to make connections: while most professional conventions have a directory, M For Montréal goes further. We can’t tell you what a pleasant surprise it was to discover the “Never Eat Alone” tab, which links to a WhatsApp QR code… allowing you to introduce yourself and connect with the greatest ease with the rest of the delegates. Can you imagine, an informal WhatsApp group with tons of music professionals in it? M Pour Montréal made it happen!
The timetable: exceptional organization.
Where M For Montréal is also unbeatable is in organizing the comings and goings of accredited professionals between the city’s concert venues. Most concerts took place Downtown or around Mount Royal on Boulevard St Laurent; some venues, just 30 meters apart, allowed the festival to alternate concerts: if you went to Quai des Brumes, you could move to the venue immediately next door, L’Escogriffe, at the end of the concert and enjoy another show while the stage changeover happened in the previous room. The same went for Théâtre Plaza and Ausgang Plaza, or the SAT and Café Cléopâtre.
Such organization allows you to miss almost no concerts, also because very few took place at the same time – making it relatively simple to organize your evening schedule. Also, all lasting 25 minutes for official showcases, each performance was relatively short, just enough to make you want to see them again in a longer format. Some concerts by more established artists – like Badbadnotgood – lasted over an hour.
It’s also important to note that the programming gives carte blanche to certain labels or export offices, making the lineup all the more eclectic and high-quality – after “conviviality,” the other watchword is “trust.”
M Pour Montréal: our musical favorites.
And where it’s impossible to fault the festival is for the quality of its programming.
Wonderfully eclectic, we easily alternate between pop, electronic music, rap hip hop, and noise punk; however varied, the programming makes sense and comes together under the banner of the Canadian flag.
Mainly from the Quebec and English-speaking Canadian scene, the lineup presents the future of the Canadian scene, emphasizing bands with live shows ready to tour and careers ready to take off – in Quebec and internationally.
NB: There’s no ranking! All of the artists are listed in the order of their programming at the festival, and if they played several times, we introduce them in the order we saw them!
Jashim (Lil Visions)
Combine reggaeton, alternative music, political vision, and queerness, and you get Jashim. After a quick trip outside, we climb the stairs of a legendary Montreal venue – Les Foufounes Electriques – and the air is suddenly filled with terribly catchy post-reggaeton music. Hard not to try to make our way through the fairly dense crowd in front of the stage; we discover an artist in American football gear accompanied by a DJ rhythmically delivering beats. Since we particularly appreciate alternative music and everything the Latin scene has to offer at hauméa, Jashim was an immediate favorite in the lineup!
The lucky ones were able to rediscover the artist a few days later at the festival for a hybrid experience called “Lil Visions XR,” offering a club experience oriented around a DJ set and highlighting the impact and innovative side of so-called “Global South” sounds, against a backdrop of civilizational collapse.
A debut album titled “Lil Visions” is coming in 2026!
Virginie B
We head to another legendary Montreal venue, known internationally for its electronic programming and dome shows: the Société des Arts Technologiques, also called SAT. The festival’s second day offers us programming at SAT focused precisely on electronic music; Virginie B, signed to the well-established label Bonsound, embraces the stage with feminine and irreverent energy, all over music approaching hyperpop – the dark kicks, contrasting with the artist’s soft voice, were enhanced by blue-pink lighting with bold neon tones: a magic recipe to make us dance while keeping our eyes riveted on the artist.
A heads-up to fans of free feminine hyperpop music with a strong visual artistic direction, because it seems Virginie B checks all the boxes!
Hologramme
Right after Virginie B – whose 25-minute live set seemed far too short – Hologramme was programmed, a self-produced artist and founder of his own label, Société Holographique, whose roster oscillates between electro-techno and ambient music. Progressive, his live show takes us traveling above organic lands – materialized by visuals projected on SAT’s screens, extending well beyond the stage – without losing sight of electro’s digital aspect, musically materialized by the floating rhythms of his soundscapes, and visually by the laser rapidly sweeping the contours of flowers and stones drawn on screen.
Needless to say, the live show was also too short, and we can’t wait to see his show in an hour-and-a-half format!
Léonie Gray
Change of register – we told you M Pour Montréal’s programming is eclectic! – this third festival day takes us to the sanctuary of a magnificent theater, whose seats have been removed to transform the venue into a concert hall. So we head to Théâtre Plaza for 100% female programming, which first brings us to discover Léonie Gray. It didn’t take much more than thirty seconds to be hypnotized by her voice, whose soulful aspect and accuracy gave us chills throughout the set. Lyrically and in the discourse interspersed between her songs, we hear a message oscillating between awareness of past mistakes, testimony of frustration induced by friendship betrayals, and a letter to a younger and more wounded version of herself. Safe to say we felt like we were hearing an intimate diary told with great power – an ode to self-love and holding on, because light is always at the end of the tunnel.
Special mention to the musicians accompanying her: her keyboardist and drummer are both women. A detail that isn’t one, further underlining the feminine and feminist power of her lyrics!
Chiara Savasta
Programmed right after Léonie Gray was a rising artist named Chiara Savasta, signed to Cult Nation, a label that also carries Charlotte Cardin’s productions. In a more pop-rock register, Chiara Savasta – who had just returned from a trip to Paris that very day, kudos to her! – inhabits the stage with an energy that has nothing to envy from the greats to whom it would be too easy to compare her. Over Y2K indie pop-rock, she recounts the ups and downs of a generation born facing screens, hooked on algorithms, and experiencing societal changes happening faster than their natural development. A strong generational testimony, borrowing from pop-rock scene traditions, namely a full band on stage.
M For Mothland: Mulch, Yoo Doo Right… and the entire Mothland label.
The next day, we head to Sala Rossa for carte blanche given to the Mothland label, a true home of underground and hybrid music, ranging from noise punk to conceptual ambient pop (yes, we became completely fans of this label, expect a full article on the gems in their roster in the coming days).
Mothland had carte blanche – in an evening titled M For Mothland, thus playing on the festival name M Pour Montréal – and presents 5 of its artists the same evening. With a stage placed in the center of the room and translucent suspended screens allowing visual projections, we arrive in the room in the middle of Mulch’s set, whose raw energy and political message feels like a breath of fresh air. We particularly remember a strong message launched in a raspy voice before the last track: “The money that funds our art is the same money that funds genocide” – music is political, whether we like it or not. Needless to say the applause this message generated!
Yoo Doo Right follows: progressive instrumental productions with rhythms that seem (in?)directly inspired by a dissident military march fill the room with fresh energy; warm lights oscillating between ocher and orange seem to materialize an abstract end of the world, experienced in real time and inviting collective reconstruction.
You get it: this label with demanding artistic direction conquered the festival, and us with it!
N Nao
Also signed to Mothland, we have the chance to discover her on stage on the festival’s last day, at Sotterenea, a venue located in the basement of Sala Rossa where we were the day before. This is surely our biggest favorite of the entire M Pour Montréal: between intimate ambient pop music in French and artistic performance bringing the artist to perform in the middle of the audience, lit by a construction site flashlight, N Nao succeeded in what few artists manage to do: maintain the audience in a state of complete approving silence. No untimely screams, no applause before the end of a track; time is suspended and N Nao controls its course.
To give you an idea: the audience is so won over that she returns to the stage for one last song where we see her on guitar, and the vinyl of her latest album “Nouveau Langage” is sold out that same evening.
With voice as the common thread and water as an extended metaphor, N Nao’s songs testify to the way she views interpersonal relationships, and analyze the impact they have on her. We present the last track of her set (before the encore), which in our view testifies to all the powerful intimacy that inhabits each of her productions.
PISS
TW: sexist and sexual violence and harassment.
We end the festival with a band glimpsed mid-set at Les Foufounes Electriques on the first evening – PISS – a band that was programmed twice during the festival.
You have to look beyond the band’s name, because this Vancouver-based group led by Tay Zantingh is far from ironic: in the setting of an atypical venue with a ceiling reminiscent of a classroom – Toscadura – PISS takes the audience into a testimony of victims of sexist and sexual violence. Approaching the universe of artistic performance and sound collage, the band’s lead warns the audience before starting the concert that the content of the lyrics and soundtracks accompanying the interludes will be raw and will address sexist and sexual violence and harassment. She ends her “trigger warning” with “Now I’m gonna yell at you,” and we’re taken on a complete hybrid post-punk performance, taking us into the depths of the thoughts of victims of sexist and sexual violence and harassment.
Impossible to move. Every phrase, every scream, every stop and every restart of the music wins us over, in the feminist sense of the term. We have the intimate hope and conviction that every spectator of this live show will want to relive the experience as it’s so cathartic, however emotionally difficult it may be.
“I myself favor violence, deeply” – PISS.
We warmly thank OFQJ again for enabling us to attend the festival, as well as the entire M Pour Montréal team, all the artists for making the festival what it is musically, and all the teams that support these artists daily.
And who knows, maybe see you next year?
Find M Pour Montréal on their website and on Instagram!
