Tag: St. Roch XP

World Music by William Ruben Helms

BLEUFEU is a Québec City-based event organizer and show promoter that presents festive and inspiring events, including the Festival d’été de Québec (FEQ), Toboggan — New Year’s Eve Celebrations and St-Roch XP, as well as hundreds of shows throughout the year at Impérial Bell and a new venue, which will be opening soon.

The BLEUFEU team recently announced the lineup for this year’s Toboggan — New Year’s Eve Celebrations, presented by SiriusXM. Held in the Grande Allée District, in the heart of the gorgeous and historic provincial capital, this year’s edition will take place between December 28, 2023 – December 31, 2023.

2023’s Toboggan gains a new election with the addition of a new stage at Place George V, the SiriusXM Cube, which will host festive electronic music nights between December 28, 2023 – December 30, 2023. The SiriusXM Cube is a must-faced stage that will allow attendees to see that stage’s performances from three sides, starting each day at 5:00pm.

December 28, 2023 will see Canadian duo Loud Luxury headlining, returning after headlining back in 2019. Montréal-based sensation GLOWZI and Québec-based DJ Derrick will complete the SiriusXM Cube’s first night.

December 29, 2023 will see French multi-platinum selling artist DJ Klingande, who has been a mainstay at the world’s major EDM festivals headlining. Montréal-born, Franco-Congolese, Afro House artist DJ Karaba and rising artist Millimetrik will complete the SiriusXM Cube’s second night.

December 30, 2023 will see Montréal-based electronic music pioneer High Klassified capping off the SiriusXM Cube’s final night.

The traditional New Year’s Eve show, which will take place at Place de l’Assemblée-Nationale between 8:00pm-12:30am will be headlined by Italian Grammy-nominated production outfit Meduza will bring in 2024 with a euphoric EDM set. Québecois artist La Diable à Cinq, Les Louanges and Mike Demero will complete the night’s wild party.

On-site, visitors can also enjoy the Winter Village, which will feature heated areas under tents and relaxation spaces to enhance the experience, starting at 1:00PM each day. (Believe me, from what I understand, those heated areas will be prime real estate for an outdoor festival in Québec in late December!)
And this is all 100% free for visitors to enjoy, making Toboggan a great destination to celebrate the last days of 2023.

“New Year’s celebrations hold a special place in the hearts of the people of Quebec. We are very pleased to offer these four festive evenings free of charge to the entire population in the heart of our beautiful city,” BLEUFEU’s CEO Nicolas Racine says.  “With each new edition, we aim to establish Toboggan as a must-attend event and showcase the potential of Quebec as the ultimate Nordic destination,” he adds.

“We are excited about the new stage at Place George V. It was high time to equip the event with a stage setup and production worthy of the EDM festival it has become. Performances by artists such as Loud Luxury or Klingande will take on a whole new dimension,” explains Louis Bellavance, VP Content and Artistic Direction at BLEUFEU.

Lastly, as a festival, Toboggan is environmentally conscious and seeks to reduce its ecological footprint. Among their many actions taken, the festival will soon be carbon-neutral, with the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the event being offset through Planetair. They also produce sustainable mobility through its communication campaigns, Additionally, the festival will warm attendees in an environmentally conscious fashion, by using eco-friendly logs in its outdoor fireplaces.

The festival also has come up with a Good Festivalgoer Guide, which is available on their homepage, and offers festival goers a series of green actions that they can do to minimize the ecological impact of their visit.


Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montreal’s Thierry Larose Releases an Adorable Visual for Grunge Rock Meets Power Pop-like “Cantalou”

Thierry Larose is a young and rising Marieville, Quebec-born, Montreal-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who spent his teen years with a soundtrack of 2000s lo-fi American pop and Quebec indie singer/songwriter records. During the summer of 2018, while in his early 20s, Larose moved to Montreal with the intention of taking a sabbatical from his studies in English literature to focus on music.

Within a few months of his arrival in Montreal, Larose assembled a backing band and went into the studio to record four songs. And with those first four recorded songs, Larose and his backing band were selected to play in Les Francouvertes, an annual music festival that showcases emerging Francophone artists from across Quebec. After an attention grabbing festival appearance, Larose’s profile exploded across the province: he was invited to open for Safia Nolin and Les sœurs Boulay on a handful of dates. He also landed sets at Pop Montreal, Santa Teresa Festival and St Roch XP without having much music released online — and Grosse Boîte Records approached him with a recording contract.

During that period, Larose recorded a two-song EP and then returned to the studio in October 2019 to record his highly anticipated Alexandre Martel co-produced, full-length debut, an album that finds the Marieville-born, Montreal-based crafting material that bounces back and forth between glittering glam-inspired rock, youthful and ebullient indie pop featuring heartfelt yet somewhat ironic lyricism with poignant messages.

“Cantalou,” the latest single off Larose’s forthcoming album is a decidedly 120 Minutes-like alt rock track centered around alternating shimmering verses and rousingly anthemic choruses. Sonically, the song is a slick synthesis of grunge and power pop that reveals a songwriting with both a deliberate attention to craft and an uncanny knack for writing an infectious, mosh pit friendly hook.

Directed by Charles-Antoine Olivier, the recently released video for “Cantalou” follows a young boy — an adorable little moppet if I must say so — who learns about the sturm und orang of human emotion from a TV show puppet by the name of Cantalou. Cantalou’s human friends, Larose and his backing band, teach the puppet about music, which helps Cantalou get in touch with — and control — his emotions. But when the little boy enters the TV world, Cantalou and the boy learn about friendship with the purity, innocence and joy of childhood.