What happens when algorithms start shaping culture and when mastering digital tools becomes a survival skill? At the Pathwaves Futures World-Building workshop organized during POP Montreal International Music Festival, participants explored this question, imagining music's role in 2035. In the spirit of resisting algorithmic curation, the bands featured in this article were chosen through a deeply human process. Rather than relying on data-driven recommendations, we turned to the most original and already available algorithm: community knowledge and genuine diversity. As artistic expression is transformed by technological change, this selection of artists from POP Montreal represents a digital survival strategy—a secret language protected by the few who still believe in the power of human connection.

On the eve of a European tour with Ky Band last spring, the Montreal experimental trio Yoo Doo Right announced their return with their latest EP The Sacred Fuck. Nominated in the long list of the prestigious Polaris Prize for their second album A Murmur, Boundless to the East, released in June 2022, Justin Cober (guitar, synthesizers, vocals), Charles Masson (bass) and John Talbot (drums, percussion) left their mark with their unique sound, skilfully blending elements of krautrock, shoegaze, post-rock and psychedelia to create an atmosphere reminiscent of a car crash in slow motion, looking out to infinity and our own personal flaws.

As a key figure of the Montreal independent music scene for almost twenty years, Annie-Claude Deschênes (PYPY, Duchess Says) is still driven by a constant need to create outside her comfort zone, to renew and grow through improvisation and provocation. Fuelled by a spontaneous creative impulse in her kitchen and hungry to take unplanned risks in her musical laboratory, the songs from her debut solo album, entitled LES MANIÈRES DE TABLE (released on Bonsound and Italians Do It Better), were conceived during the confinement to fill the void of inactivity, without initially being intended for public release. In the face of increasing digital surveillance, perhaps they should have been kept enclosed… Because everything seems hopeless when randomness starts to offend.