A rave of many FACETS in the heart of Griffintown

The second-to-last week in August is a busy one for lovers of electronic music. With MUTEK well underway, local and international producers are doing live sets in the neighbourhood of Place-des-Arts. After seeing the final act of the free outdoor Éxperience event, some head home, while others go to one of the late-night MUTEK events. Some of us, myself included, are headed to a different kind of after-party.

FACETS is the first rave run by FANTOM, aka Fédération des Arts Nocturnes. It’s an 8-hour, all night event with two rooms, 15 DJs, artist installations, film screenings, and paid dancers. However, it also serves the second purpose of acting as a fundraising event for FANTOM. A non-profit organization, they have as their mission to advocate for those who are employed in and organize Montreal’s underground nightlife, with special focus on queer, trans, BIPOC, and other marginalized individuals. They work both by advocating for comprehensive nightlife policy in the city, but also by communicating with the different collectives, organizers, employees, and partygoers in order to share resources and promote collaboration.

All of this to say, FACETS is more than a rave. Talking to Oli, one of the FANTOM founders, he explained that this was both a fundraising event as well as an opportunity to bring several of the city’s more established collectives to the table, to sit down and have a conversation with them all.

Biking to the event from MUTEK took less than twenty minutes. The building looks nondescript from the outside, and I might have worried I was in the wrong place if not for the booming bass I could hear from the sidewalk and the groups of partygoers standing outside to talk. The inside had an industrial feel, with concrete floors and exposed ventilation on the ceiling. What jumps out immediately is the effort put into creating an atmosphere. Both of the rooms have their own art installations, with hanging artifacts and projections from artists @trinityfearon + @vivfirlie and @giotto.the.imposter. Dancers in the center, chill areas to the sides, there’s something for everyone. In the main room, referred to as “The Studio”, four towers of speakers from local soundsystem Factory keep the dancefloor alive, with music hanging around 100 decibels, although I did catch it spike up to 115 (earplugs necessary!)

Each of the rooms provided unique musical experiences, with different DJs from the respective collectives bringing their own taste and mixing styles to their sets. When I arrived, the Homegrown Harvest residents esme and Lia Plutonic were selecting for the main room, combining vinyl and digital tracks with heavy bass and crisp highs, playing genres ranging from techno to bass music. In the second room, “the loft”, projections played out on hanging sheets of cloth, barely illuminating the dense crowd below. In the booth, Flush residents Fieldnote and Mx. Blaire brought bass-heavy thumpers that poured out over the custom-built Pomelo speakers, another favourite soundsystem among the Montreal underground.

Overall, FACETS is much more than a simple party. Like the electronic music scene itself, it involves so much passion and dedication, with artists, sound engineers, DJs, and organizers putting their all into creating a night that is not only a stellar musical experience, but one that builds community, where artists of all sorts contribute to creating an unforgettable night. Many of the people involved put their time in for free, out of a love for nightlife, including photographer Philippe Manh Nguyen, who was kind enough to let me use his photos for this article.

FANTOM, like these parties, need appropriate fundraising to continue operating, and to continue fighting for a better nightlife, so that everyone involved can get paid appropriately for the work they do and have the financial security to keep going. For FANTOM, a comprehensive city nightlife policy is a critical step to making cool, fun, musically experimental raves like FACETS sustainable in the long term, in a way that works for the employees, artists, organizers, partygoers, and nearby residents. If you’re interested in learning more or getting involved in one of their projects, you can find more information at their website: https://fantomtl.cargo.site. I’m eager to see what FANTOM will do next, and can’t wait to see the DJs at their next event.

Photos by Philippe Manh Nguyen @philippemanh