Toronto's Mod Club is a tough venue to fill by any musical standards, let alone by a Norwegian electronic musician whose music is most commonly labeled as "cosmic disco." That said, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm was still able to draw a large crowd of eager fans who happily enjoyed the club's space and ample personal movement room.
Lindstrøm took stage just before 1 a.m., his set being preceded by My Favourite Robot who performed a set of relatively uniform four-four-filtered techno that in the end proved to be a good contrast to headliner's set. Immediately after powering up his gear, the vast increase in production quality and size was evident through Lindstrøm's long-drawn ambient introduction, even before he officially kicked into his set. The bulk of his performance was characterized by slow-building grooves, similar to those heard on Where You Go I Go Too, the most exciting track played being an uptempo version of "Grand Ideas" from the aforementioned album. Lindstrøm's knack for arpeggiated melodies and subtle harmonies allowed the huge size of his lead synthesizers to shine beautifully over carefully crafted percussive accents.
Unfortunately, fans fond of Lindstrøm's work with Christabelle were audience to only a couple tracks featuring her chopped and re-cut vocals. But with a wealth of new material being performed, Lindstrøm's set was by no means disappointing.
Despite the stellar performance, Toronto seems eons behind European cities (or even Montreal for that matter) in showing efforts to cater to creative musicians such as Lindstrøm, cutting short what likely would have been a two- to three-hour set in Europe at 2 a.m. At that point, the Mod Club's house lights were fired up and patrons encouraged to go home, just as it felt Lindstrøm was really getting going.
Lindstrøm took stage just before 1 a.m., his set being preceded by My Favourite Robot who performed a set of relatively uniform four-four-filtered techno that in the end proved to be a good contrast to headliner's set. Immediately after powering up his gear, the vast increase in production quality and size was evident through Lindstrøm's long-drawn ambient introduction, even before he officially kicked into his set. The bulk of his performance was characterized by slow-building grooves, similar to those heard on Where You Go I Go Too, the most exciting track played being an uptempo version of "Grand Ideas" from the aforementioned album. Lindstrøm's knack for arpeggiated melodies and subtle harmonies allowed the huge size of his lead synthesizers to shine beautifully over carefully crafted percussive accents.
Unfortunately, fans fond of Lindstrøm's work with Christabelle were audience to only a couple tracks featuring her chopped and re-cut vocals. But with a wealth of new material being performed, Lindstrøm's set was by no means disappointing.
Despite the stellar performance, Toronto seems eons behind European cities (or even Montreal for that matter) in showing efforts to cater to creative musicians such as Lindstrøm, cutting short what likely would have been a two- to three-hour set in Europe at 2 a.m. At that point, the Mod Club's house lights were fired up and patrons encouraged to go home, just as it felt Lindstrøm was really getting going.
