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Hey MTL - Noisey is Rolling Deep at the M For Montreal Fest

Montreal's best kept secret dropped the hammer this week, and Noisey is running on fumes trying to see a million billion shows.

A collaborative set by Ruby (from Yamantaka//Sonic Titan) and Karneef at the seventh annual M For Montreal Festival. Photo courtesy of Noisey's new best friend Glenn Alderson, who runs BeatRoute Magazine.

If our demographics are correct, you live in North America, and probably don't leave the States too often--I mean, only one in three of you even has a passport. So that means you probably haven't rolled through Canada lately, and maybe haven't heard of the M For Montreal Festival, an all-killer, no-filler yearly music fest that dropped the hammer two days ago.

M For Montreal is currently in its seventh year showcasing the absolute cream of the current Canadian crop. The festival organizers have teamed up with a handful of very established festivals--CMJ and SXSW, to name two--and manage to avoid the information overload of comparable cosmopolitan festivals while presenting a coherent array of the best new talent from the Great White North. In simpler terms, festivalgoers get the feeling they're not missing anything, and that everything they're seeing is rad as hell.

A big part of the festival's success is the sheer cool factor of programming director Mikey B. Rishwain, who is so popular that we were unable to add him on Facebook because he has too many friends. The list of talent that he's managed to bring to the festival, which takes place every November, is staggering: this year finds No Joy, Death Grips, Mac DeMarco, Young Galaxy, Cadence Weapon, Mykki Blanco, Suuns, Yamantaka//Sonic Titan, and more performing, mostly at Casa Del Popolo and Sala Rossa, the two best venues in the city, conveniently located across the street from each other.

We got in on Wednesday night and have been running on fumes ever since, trying to hit up as many shows as possible and failing to take a breath. If you're in Montreal, holler at us. Noisey's Ben Shapiro is the guy in the Descendents hat, and he'll be over at Sala Rossa seeing Suuns and Memoryhouse tonight. And stay tuned to Noisey to catch our coverage of the best bands at the fest.