Matthew Sheret

Click for a field recording of the drums circles on Park Mont Royal, 05/07/09 (mp3)

At some point the idea takes shape that Montreal is an opposite of London. Here the sound of drum circles leak through the park like the smells of toffee and weed; sickly, pervasive and compelling. And this is regular, a clockwork Sunday chime that attracts a city in the summer to the shade of every copse, a dandelion picnic spreading ideas. In London such explosions are self contained, these expressions closed affairs to which onlookers and the curious are discouraged. Here curiosity is in the national character, but nobody seems to be on display. They’re just themselves, all collectively, uniquely comfortable.