German remixer, DJ and producer Michael Mayer performs at Montreal's electronic music festival, MUTEK. (MUTEK)

A decade ago, North American audiences regarded electronic music with a mixture of apprehension and resistance. In 1999, two crucial developments helped shift public perception of the music.

The first was the release of Moby’s album Play. Until then, Moby was best known for playing hardcore punk rock and creating obscure techno remixes of other artists’ tracks. Play fused the pulsating rhythms of house music and sampled excerpts of traditional gospel and folk songs. Tunes like Porcelain and Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad became ubiquitous, thanks to a novel marketing deal in which Moby licensed every track on his album for use in TV shows, films and commercials.

The second key event in the history of North American electronic music happened in Montreal, where a whiz kid named Alain Mongeau — who had a PhD in interactivity — became the head of developing new media programs for Ex-Centris, a new cultural centre. Mongeau’s inaugural project was MUTEK, a forward-thinking festival celebrating electronic music and the digital arts. Though similar events existed in Europe, MUTEK was the first of its kind on this side of the pond.

'We were all aware that there was a lot of potential in Canada in terms of electronic music and culture, but we needed exposure. MUTEK helped build bridges between the Montreal community and the rest of the world.'—Marc Leclair, aka Akufen

This year, Mongeau’s vision celebrates its 10th anniversary. MUTEK_10, which runs until May 31, showcases 150 artists ranging from local stars like Akufen and Stephen Beaupré to international icons like Detroit DJ Carl Craig and Chilean-German legend Ricardo Villalobos. MUTEK organizers are hoping to attract 20,000 people this year – 10 times the audience that attended the original festival.

Mongeau – who incidentally credits a 1991 Moby show for sparking his love of electronic music – claims he never anticipated his brainchild would explode the way it has.

“I guess you don’t really project yourself so much in the future,” he muses during a recent interview. “From the first edition, our target audience wasn’t just Montreal. We were trying to attract attention from all across [the continent]. That proved to be right, because the first year, even though it was a small edition, we attracted a lot of people coming from all over, and it was an [international] critical success. Part of the success in Montreal for the second [year] came from the fact that, when [local artists and music fans] travelled, everywhere they’d go, people would talk about it very excitedly. Montreal people didn’t really know about it till then!”

Despite the crossover success of artists like Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers (all European imports), the majority of record-buying fans in North America back in the ’90s dismissed DJs and electronic music producers as a passing fad. Canada boasted its share of talented, tech-savvy individuals — people like Richie (Plastikman) Hawtin and turntable specialist Kid Koala — but they were by and large relegated to the underground.

Microhouse producer Marc Leclair made his debut as Akufen at the inaugural MUTEK festival. (MUTEK)

“MUTEK came at a time when it was really necessary,” insists Marc Leclair, who made his debut as Akufen at the inaugural festival. “We were all very much aware that there was a lot of potential in Canada in terms of electronic music and culture, but we needed much more exposure. MUTEK helped build bridges between the Montreal community and the larger Canadian community, but also the rest of the world.”

Leclair won international acclaim for his 2002 album My Way, which showcased a form of cut-and-paste composition known as microsampling. (It was largely spliced-together snippets of FM radio broadcasts.) Akufen is one of many artists who have returned to the festival year after year.

“What makes MUTEK so different from other festivals is that it’s a family thing, it’s a community," he notes. “You come to meet people and to rendezvous.”

That sentiment is echoed by Colin de la Plante, who produces jazzy, disco-influenced music as The Mole. Bred in B.C., he relocated to Montreal in '98 — partly, he says, because the electronic music scene was more vibrant there than on the West Coast. De la Plante now spends much of his time in Berlin and tours throughout Europe.

“MUTEK helped me launch my career,” he says. “They took me on my first tours through Mexico and Europe. As a spectator, it’s given me a chance to see a lot of good music by people I’d never seen before and, as an artist, it’s exciting to see people pushing the envelope alongside you, right there at the same place.”

Another key element of MUTEK has been Mongeau’s insistence on live performance. Many haters deride electronic musicians as mere button pushers and assume that their performances are largely pre-recorded. The festival has promoted innovative strategies in performing digitally created music in real time. This emphasis on performance has gone a long way in earning respect for the genre.

“We were trying to introduce a sense of credibility to this whole field,” Mongeau offers, “so one of our first ideas was to not program any DJs, and we’re still sticking to that today. Ninety-eight per cent of this year’s acts are live. Also, the way the festival has always been programmed is that we have in mind a spectator who will go and see everything from beginning to end, so we offer a trajectory that goes through different states or different areas, genres from experimental stuff to more danceable stuff.

“What was important for me was that behind the music and scene there were real artists who were as creative as any good film director,” he states.

Detroit techno artist Audion (aka Matthew Dear) plays to the crowd at MUTEK. (MUTEK)

Leclair appreciates the unconventional venues and live performances in MUTEK, because “electronic music can be too claustrophobic.”

“I’ll be straight: I want out of the clubs. I think I’ve paid my dues. I still want to make danceable music, but I want to push it further, and I don’t think clubs are the place to do that.

“It’s necessary to have artists who challenge convention, but just having a festival of constant experimental music would be too heavy,” he adds. “It’s important to let loose and have fun also.”

As de la Plante says, MUTEK is a great place to do just that.

“People always wonder how long electronic music will last. The funny thing is that you start to get a sense of history thinking about people like Francois K, who’ve been doing it since the ’70s, or the European guys who’ve been doing it for two decades, like Sven Väth.

“I’m not so immersed or involved in the intellectual or cerebral aspects of art with a capital A,” he laughs. “I’m just a clown who’s here to entertain. Styles come and go out of fashion, but the reassuring thing, I guess, is that people always need some way to forget about how lame the week is and how lame working is. They’ll always come back to dancing.”

MUTEK_10 runs though Sunday, May 31, in Montreal.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.