photos by Rachel Carr, words by Daiana Feuer

Gorillaz Clash

The third and final round of the Coachella Music & Arts Festival was funky, and not just because the port-a-potties reeked. Keeping a loose theme every day (see Friday & Saturday), Sunday focused on relentless rhythm and groovy basslines. The absolute golden moment belonged to Yo La Tengo's blistering final song. Rhythm that revels in repetition + guitar that tries to destroy itself = wee mind blown. Sometimes the moodiest things are the most uplifting.

Thom Yorke brought his dancing shoes, his favorite Flea, and Nigel Godrich. His band Atoms For Peace played almost every song off The Eraser, many of which featured strong world rhythm sections. When Yorke didn't have a guitar in hand, he danced, whirled, and punched the air like he was rehearsing a scene from Fame. We wanted a high kick, but it didn't arrive. King Khan & The Shrines, on the other hand, featured legs flying all over the place, DJ Lance Rock and Yo Gabba Gabba characters, burning money, as well as a visit from the police-who crept on stage to snap pictures. Probably the first time Khan runs into cops and doesn't leave wearing cuffs. Sunny Day Real Estate had the audience offering bids to buy property, and Phoenix had people choking on dinner as they tried to dance and eat at the same time.

King Khan Gabba Gabba

Not every Julian Casablancas song captivated, but his band delightfully binged on rhythms. Each musician had a personal backbeat player supporting each fill. The drummer plus his sidekick especially sounded great. Matt & Kim's ebullient smiles inspired chaos in the audience, as usual. Mayer Hawthorne and the County revived Motown soulful brassiness and covered Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." The Big Pink played some new songs from next year's album, reaching out for Depeche Mode with a drummer in a pink bathing suit. Electro sweet popper Little Boots forgot her pants as well, wearing a sparkly shirt and knickers, and played with the lasers on stage. Charlotte Gainsbourg inaugurated her "first tour, first everything" with a feminine "Candy-O" sensibility, sometimes in French. Florence & the Machine rounds out the great lady performances of the day, and brought on Nathan Willett of Cold War Kids.

All clad in white, France's DJ ego-powers Club 75 demonstrated the ability to cooperate together with just a few elbows thrown. Cassius, Justice, Busy P, and DJ Mehdi still use CD's (so old school), and took turns passing on the headphones between them and finishing each other's remix sentences, trading places at each station. Backstage security bobbed along while staying tough. When it was their turn, Rusko turned the Sahara tent into a mechazoid robot battle and Orbital live-produced virtual reality anthems for Satan wearing Matrix miner lights around their heads. Infected Mushroom instructed on the benefits of "Becoming Insane" flanked by two mushrooms with red eyes.

The Middle East should not be confused with The Soft Pack, formerly The Muslims. The former may be from Australia but it sounds like a back porch band from Woodstock, and the latter offers a "Parasite" infestation that's as pure as sunshine and a neat drum set up that packs a giant tom punch. What appears as regular rock on headphones reveals its brilliance when experienced live. One of the strangest live moments of the festival belongs to Sly Stone, who played four hours late and on the wrong stage. He bitched, he slurred, he cursed, lay down, walked off, stopped songs and good grief, made a total mess of himself. But that's rock and roll.

Sly Stone made history look unable to get past its youthful drug phase, but Jonsi, Pavement, and Spoon come from a music scene that did a little bit less cocaine. Jonsi repped the awesomeness of Sigur Rós and great hats. Steve Patterson of White Rabbits joined Britt Daniels and the rest of Spoon to add percussion on "I Turn My Camera On". Spoon's tour-mate Bradford Cox (who played earlier in the day in Deerhunter) also joined Spoon on stage, like he did on their recent Kimmel appearance. Pavement ran through the hits during one of their first U.S. shows since reuniting. "That's the 90's in a nutshell," said Stephen Malkmus after the angsty "Unfair"...

"...Pavement, the iconic slacker band of the '90s, who took the main stage against what turned out to be one of the fest's chief attractions, the finally wildly popular French dance-rock band Phoenix, who wowed possibly the biggest crowd of the entire fest ... while Pavement played to a field half-full of true believers rather than the massive throngs many expected, and thought the band deserved.

No matter, though. Pavement still delivered a set that vindicated the group of prior crimes -- namely a Coachella performance near the end of their career so notoriously bad, many in attendance point to it as the moment the band decided to break up.

This night, however, they were tight, they were loud, and they sounded large on that vast field -- an odd statement, given the fact that in their heyday they were far more known for being introspectively small rather than arena-ready..." [The OC Register]

Virtual Snoop Dogg introduced the Gorillaz set, but Blur's Damon Albarn appeared in the flesh, with a few special guests including Paul Simonon, Mick Jones, De La Soul-who kicked their own old school jams earlier in the day-and Little Dragon's Yukimi. One unique rhythm transcended the next, showing the mutability of hip hop and dance music. And then that was it, suddenly. The festival ended and tens of thousands of people started wondering where they left their car keys...

Radiohead Peppers For Peace

Daiana's Weekend Top 10:
1. Yo La Tengo's last song
2. Little Dragon's Yukimi
3. Gossip leading a revolution
4. Thom Yorke dancing to African rhythms
5. PiL giving a history lesson
6. Sly Stone wigging out
7. Bouncing penises + fat people in undies (Die Antwoord + Major Lazer)
8. Devo putting on the hats that ushered in modern pop culture for "Whip It"
9. John Waters corrupting many young minds
10. The Gorrilaz lyric: "Super fast jellyfish going super fast. You can't even see him but you wanna eat him."

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Owen Pallett, Local Natives, Miike Snow, and Yann Tiersen also played the fest Sunday. Gary Numan was among those who couldn't. Reviews & pictures from Day One, HERE and Day Two, HERE. Setlists (Thom Yorke and Pavement), pictures, and videos from Day Three, below...

Continue reading "Coachella 2010 - Day Three in pics, video & review (the Thom Yorke & Pavement setlists included) "

Midnight Juggernauts @ Le Poisson Rouge - September 13, 2008 (CRED)

Last week/weekend in dance was one of the best I've had in a long time.

Thursday night at Santos, Cassius' Boombass played a more mellow set compared to the Cassius set from '02 that I remember so fondly. It picked up at times, but around 3:30 when the music took a retro turn with Pump Up the Jam and This is Acid, I headed home.

Friday I found myself last minute at Été d'Amour's party on the Mini Rooftop which wound up being awesome. From there I headed to Robot Rock where I couldn't tell if Linus Loves set was just ok, or if I was just having trouble shifting gears from Trevor's funkier style to Linus' more straight-up electro.

Saturday night I witnessed the best performance yet from Midnight Juggernauts. I think it all boils down to the soundsystem. Though the Bowery Ballroom show was better than seeing them at the cavernous Terminal Five, I thought the Midnight Juggernauts' spacey, guitar-driven, electro-peppered tracks found their perfect balance thanks to Le Poisson Rouge's impeccable soundsystem. I didn't have the best spot either. I watched the the show from a spot off-center, to the immediate right of the stage. All of the more subtle, electronic loveliness, previously obliterated at Terminal Five, and overshadowed slightly less at Bowery Ballroom, fully came through, delighting the audience with the electro-space sound that brilliantly shines through on Dystopia.

Sometimes it's better to quit while you're ahead, but instead of heading home after the great Midnight Juggernauts show, I headed to APT to see Kaos. His set was a nice mix of modern and classic disco I've come to expect from him, but the place was DEAD, especially for a Saturday night.

Sunday marked the great end to a nearly flawless weekend in dance. Holy Ghost started things off on the mellow/discoey side at the Yard, followed by a great set by Stretch Armstrong. He played a great mix of literally everything, a lot of which I wasn't familiar with along with some current tracks I love (the Boys Noize Happy Birthday remix of Cut Copy's Lights and Music). Unfortunately it was early, and daylight and nobody (myself included, despite almost doing it multiple times) had the nerve to hit the floor. Once Feadz began his set people gradually started getting up to dance. Going in I had absolutely no idea what to expect from Feadz. I don't like Uffie so I never really took the time to check out Feadz extensively. It became apparent almost immediately that I had been missing out. A set that began with a hip hop track quickly moved from genre to genre, touching on techno, house, b-more, and everything in between without a single misstep. The young Frenchman treated the now packed floor to a nearly 2-hour set that was as bouncey as he was, bopping up & down as he scurried between the decks.

I never made it to Minitek over the weekend, but I heard it didn't all go as planned.

A week like that is going to be hard to top, but before we get into that, we have a contest! We have 5 copies of the deluxe, double-CD edition of the Chemical Brothers' Brotherhood to give away. Details on how to win are at the bottom of this post, under all the Friday night events....

Continue reading "the Friday night in Dance w/ Showtrotta"

DOWNLOAD: 2 hours and 26 minutes of Dave Dresden for August 2008 (MP3)

Watch Her Dance, Coney Island (New York Observer)

Hopefully by the time you read this you will be recovering from some dancefloor devastation no matter what you decided to do. Options abound for the weekend as well (for those staying in town) (or those visiting):

Continue reading "the weekend in Dance w/ Showtrotta"