Erstellt am: 19. 6. 2011 - 14:43 Uhr
Urban Art Forms 2011: Night Three
Saturday, as a festival day, started out bad. Really, really bad.
Urban Art Festival 2011
And I'm not even referring to the throbbing headache I woke up with, or the fact that I slept terribly, and kept dreaming the security guards wouldn't let me through to the main stage.
I'm referring to the fact that - according to some rule of nature we simply fail to understand - no Austrian festival is ever complete until at least one day is washed out, raining so continuously and so heavily that some outdoor stages are simply forced to close down.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
To be fair, none of us could say we didn't see it coming. Dark storm clouds loomed ominously on the horizon all afternoon, and already in the early evening, when I started my walk over to the Arena Nova, I'd felt the first drops of rain land on my skin. Naturally, in the last two hundred metres of my walk, those light drops of rain turned into a virtual monsoon.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
One good thing: unlike Friday's schedule, which had me wandering from venue to venue nearly every hour, almost everything I wanted to see tonight was on the main stage. And there were some fantastic bands coming up: Canadian duo Crystal Castles, the flamboyant and colourful performance of Deichkind live, Modeselektor, and so on. The main stage line-up was relentless; even if it had been a warm and sunny day, my plan would've been to stay more or less stationary.
Carrying on, however, with the bad omens, the first band I would see this night (Does It Offend You Yeah? out of the UK) was touring sans lead singer; the guy's father had just died, and he was busy with personal family things, which made for a slightly disjointed and weird live performance from the rest of the band, on guitar, bass, and drums.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
The band, for their part, were extremely solid. They did a good job of making nearly every song work, to the point where you could almost not even notice that the lead singer was Not There. It was anyway a nice change after yesterday to have an actual honest-to-God band playing live instruments, rather than merely laptops or turntables.
For the fact that it was not much later than 7:30pm when the electronic rock band took the stage, the crowd was amazingly hyphy, really shaking their asses and raising their fists in the air like they just don't care. (I wasn't quite there yet, although I could respect the intensity of their set.)
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Actually, I have a hard time imagining how the Crystal Castles set -which began already at 8:45pm- would have even worked, in a Does It Offend You Yeah?-less world. Without the said last band to stir up so much unresolved energy in the crowd, I fear one of my favourite trashy electro bands would have still been playing for a bunch of repressed adults.
In fact, just being honest here, if the audience were made up only of people like me, I think the gamble wouldn't have necessarily paid off. Only about halfway through their set did I even start to rhythmically twist and gyrate my hips, let alone shake that ass or do any fancy footwork. For me it was still late afternoon or early evening -definitely not nighttime- and therefore somehow it seemed Weird and Wrong to party like it was 1999.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
I got into it though. Crystal Castles were in fine form - this was (I think) the fifth time I've seen them live now, and one of their better shows to date. Although I'm lukewarm on their newest album, my favourite track is their Platinum Blondes cover, I'm not in love feat. Robert Smith. They played it live, which I was not expecting at all.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Obviously the Cure frontman was not there. However, Alice Glass sang his part very, very effectively-- much more effectively than I would have imagined, because she usually just shrieks her lyrics. With this song, they formally pushed me over the edge into the PartAY.
And so, when Modeselektor came on, disappointment didn't even set in when I realized that all they would be doing tonight was a DJ-set. But even this - which really ought to have been one of the most conventional concerts of the evening - turned out as performance art, with Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary trading tongue-in-cheek fake-microphone duties for the Björk-Antony Hegarty duet 'Dull Flame of Desire'.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
You know what is strange, though? In a weird sort of way, I realized that a line-up made up of ONLY bands that you really, really like can get in the way of the whole festival experience. Friday night, for example, the line-up (for my tastes) was weaker, and there were many occasions where I just wandered around and met people, because I didn't know where to go. Somehow I'd had more of an adventure, because I didn't concentrate all the time only on the music-- the bands and DJs ultimately took a back seat to the atmosphere and the shared experience.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
I'm not complaining, obviously. Musically-speaking, it would be hard to pinpoint a low point in the evening. I can, however, tell you the high point, and that was the next band: Deichkind.
I'd never seen them before, but what I can tell you is, it is very easy for hiphop in a language that is not your own, to get very boring and fast. Most of the words fly by way faster than I can catch them, and I am lucky if I even understand the sense behind the chorus.
Deichkind circumvent that by performing in elaborate colourful costumes, and using a variety of props in their show, including trampolines, blow-up boats, bicycles, pogo sticks, glitter, and a mountain of confetti. I've seen theatre productions with less work put into the visual backdrop.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Their backing music is also really, really great, with thumping electronic beats speaking to you in a universal language that goes back to the drum circles of some of our earliest ancestors. I really started to go buck-wild with the dancing during the show... and this was great, because I seldom get there anymore. I'm one of these guys who doesn't usually dance, but when I give in, I really fucking give in.
Deichkind came off stage with a massive explosion of confetti, after several pseudo-encores. There was a dreamlike post-concert period where everyone and the floor was covered in a sort of confetti-snow, and people kept picking it up and throwing it at one another.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
I had but one thought in my mind: How the hell is Simian Mobile Disco, the next artist, gonna compete with that??
The answer: They're not.
After two nights of Urban Art Forms, I have come to the conclusion that the festival organizers invested a LOT of time and thought into their line-up; not even just who is going to perform, but when, and in what order.
Anyone who has been to more than a couple summer festivals knows how much damage you can do with two great bands, placed badly. One time I saw Prodigy, followed by a comparatively very mellow set from Die Fantastischen Vier- it just didn't work.
Booking someone so over-the-top like Deichkind, you risk falling into the same hole afterwards. Therefore, I must give kudos to whoever thought of booking Simian Mobile Disco as the next artist.
To explain: Simian Mobile Disco, music-wise, keep the flow going well. With regard to their live performance elements, however, they are extremely minimalistic - they simply play analogue synths and a big mixer, looking very scientific as they press buttons and pull knobs.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
In short, they are not competing at all with the flamboyance of the Deichkind stage show, not even trying to. On the other hand, they are not boring us by standing in front of their laptops the entire show, and occasionally mixing it up by raising a singular fist in the air.
No, they treat what they are doing with the seriousness of codebreakers or mathematicians, and their sophisticated boxy set-up is extremely stylish - who knows how much of it is live? Who cares? It looks interesting, it looks serious, and it is so completely different from the live show of the previous performer, that no toes are stepped on in either direction.
Touché, anonymous festival organizer, touché.
Shades of Yesterday
A confession: Digitalism, the next band on the main stage, isn't particularly my cup of tea. I'm not saying I haven't played songs from them in the odd DJ set. But when I heard they would be playing at this festival, my heart did not especially start beating faster, I did not start feeling faint, and missing their show was not something I dreaded in the darkest, loneliest moments of the night.
I opted, with some friends, to close out the evening instead with a different stage than the main one. Yes, I SAID IT: even though it was still raining, I would still go outside and to a different stage!!
Yesterday I mentioned that the Drum n bass stage was always pretty much exactly the same, like some sort of bizarre gravitational vortex, or someone's theological explanation of either heaven or hell. No matter when I came there, it was as if no time had passed since the last time I'd been.
I thought it would be sensible to return one last time, to pay my respects to the place of constant predictability, the comfort of people dancing in the same hardcore way to the same hardcore beats - with the same mood, same sound, and even a lot of the same people, as the last four times I went to this stage yesterday.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
I lasted about twenty minutes. It was enough, to cement the image in my mind, that if things go badly enough in one's life, one can always return to the drum n bass stage. Even now, somewhere it is happening.
Right. That established, I went back and checked out Digitalism.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Wow! Live drums?! Did not realize that in advance. As well as real-life singing. OK, that's kinda cool. Fair enough, Urban Art Forms, fair enough.