Cult classics 2012: The festivals

Cult MTL‘s music team was all over Osheaga, Pop Montreal and M for Montreal this year, delivering gold from the field, often under duress. Here are some of our favourite festival reports.
 

Osheaga

It’s amazing what a lot of sun and heat and roaring soundsystems and copious alcohol can do to a team of reporters. We had the best of times at Osheaga last summer. Check out this photo gallery, and this one. And read on.

Filthy, wet, calloused, tattered and lightly battered, Cult MTL is back from the field. And what a fucking field.
Osheaga grew another limb this year, expanding as far as it could on Montreal’s baby sister island, Ile Ste-Hélène. Next year, we might be riding La Ronde’s Monster right into this bitch, armed with glow sticks, rum and cokes and barf bags courtesy of Air France.

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Pop Montreal

It was difficult to choose just one report from Pop Montreal, which as usual offered up an excessive bounty of musical happenings for us to have fun with. We’re running with day 3, but for those who’d like to delve further into our Pop coverage, here’s day 1, day 2, day 4 and day 5, plus photo galleries by Susan Moss and Walmor Santos.

Between David Byrne and St. Vincent at the stunning Église St-Jean Baptiste, rival rock operas in Mile End, major hip hop and post-punk gigs and more awesomeness at Breakglass Studios (Besnard Lakes!), there was so much to choose from last night. Here’s what Lorraine Carpenter, Erik Leijon and Darcy MacDonald got up to.

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M for Montreal

The festival that promotes local bands to a captive audience of tipsy-to-drunk industry pros attracts more locals every year, and their occupation of uptown venues aided immeasurably in building vibes in 2012. Here’s our report from M’s big weekend, with a photo gallery by Cindy Lopez.

As the M for Montreal music fest rolled full steam into the weekend, the air was filled sound, light, dry ice, business cards and so many tweets that Twitter nearly collapsed. Here’s our take on the bands that played Friday and Saturday night.

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Bonuses: Skrillex! FME! ■