Almond Milk performs at POP Montreal

Almond Milk performing at Quai des Brumes on Sept. 27. Photo by Ryan Pyke / The Concordian

The Concordia student’s second-ever festival performance was packed with energy.

Second-year communications major Simon Vandermeulen Kerr began his music-making journey at 13 years old, when his father got a MIDI controller for Christmas. His dad never used it, so Vandermeulen Kerr began experimenting, and he quickly started posting songs to SoundCloud with a prolific output. 

“I was really lonely and had no friends, so I was making music all the time,” he said of this period of his life.

When Vandermeulen Kerr was 15 years old, he began incorporating singing into his music and publishing his songs on streaming platforms. Around this time, a carton in his fridge caught his eye, standing out to him as a perfectly novel and unique stage name: Almond Milk.

On Sept. 27, Almond Milk performed at Quai des Brumes as part of POP Montreal, a local underground music festival that combines rising local artists and more well-known acts. This was his second show in Montreal, his first being on June 15 at Turbo Haüs. 

A supportive community surrounded Vandermeulen Kerr. Students and strangers gathered to see his solid vocal performances and thematic light projections come to life on stage. Almost half of the audience were Concordia students, and many were there to see Almond Milkhimself. However, they weren’t the only ones that showed up.

“A good percentage of the crowd in there was just people who wanted to come out for live music,” said Vandermeulen Kerr.

And they got quite a show. Almond Milk had a remarkable amount of endurance, dancing and jumping across the stage to the point where he was baking under the stage lights. His performance began slowly before following a crescendo towards brash, energetic tracks.

By this point, he came down from the stage into the audience, to much fanfare. Almond Milk actively kept everyone engaged, allowing audience members to feel like they were part of his music and art.

Aisha Igbinoghene, 24, who works at the Concordia dining hall, attended the show. She had been invited by a mutual friend of Almond Milk.

“I enjoyed when he went down into the crowd while performing to interact with people,” she said. “I think it’s a sign of good character when an artist enjoys getting more interactive with the crowd.”

Almond Milk also performed with his longtime friend and collaborator Luella (real name Olivia Whitfield), who, like him, hails from Kingston, Ontario. They notably collaborated on the track “Too Late,” which they performed during the set. 

He had played a handful of shows before Turbo Haüs, all in Kingston. Through these events, he developed connections with two festival organizers, Moira Demorest and Marc Garniss, who are involved with KPP Concerts, a Kingston-based event management company. They were the ones who organized this specific night/showcase for POP Montreal.

With artists coming from all over to perform, the festival included a wide musical diversity. Almond Milk was one of several local Canadian performers in this show, alongside Luella, Mint Simon, and The Petras

“I think it’s clearly a festival that has a lot of heart in it,” he said.

He added that he sees a strong demand for more new faces among Montreal audiences: “The city wants to see new artists. They want to see underground artists and people who don’t really have too much of a following yet because it benefits the cultural heart of the city.” 

“I’m optimistic about the next little while,” said Vandemeulen Kerr after the show.

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