Mud City Fest: Atsuko Chiba / Les Païens

Montreal’s Atsuko Chiba fearlessly cross genre-defining borders with a unique blend of progressive, psychedelic, post-rock, funk, and krautrock. The band’s live performances uniquely combine their sound-based creative practices and live-triggered projections to create immersive sensorial environments. Over the years, they have shared the stage with 65daysofstatic, Caspian, Duchess Says, Tricot, Indian Handcrafts, If These Trees Could Talk, The Alarmist, Arms and Sleepers and Little Tybee, among others. The inimitable psychedelic-prog rockers are back with Trace —their second full-length album. The eight-song collection, mastered by Chris Common (Chelsea Wolfe, Mastodon, Isis), encapsulates relentless riffs and dexterously performed rhythms that feed off herds of intertwining melodies and otherworldly soundscapes. Atsuko Chiba’s daring musical blend will please fans of Tool, The Mars Volta, and Mogwai, all the while resonating with vintage rock aficionados.

Les Païens have crafted a blend of jazz, rock and electronic loop based instrumental music that crosses over into uncharted territory through improvisation. From Moncton, New Brunswick, the jazz/rock anomaly of eastern Canada has been producing albums and touring major festivals for the past 23 years with noted performances at le Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, les Déferlantes Francophones de Cap Breton, the Evolve festival and a recent 7 date 2015 Swiss tour. They just released their 9th album, “Carte noire”, just completed a 7 date tour of Belgium and Switzerland and will be announcing dates for summer 2017 shortly.