Pitchfork Music Festival Paris
It wasn't too bad actually.
Avery bad presentiment seized us when we stepped into Grande halle de la Villette : one pint of Heineken cost seven euros and it seemed like Heineken was the only sponsor of the event. We went to see Flavien Berger, a French musician that neither of us had listened to before, but he somehow became the surprise of the day. His deep raspy voice melded with the funky beats and spaced out synths in an eccentric yet coherent way. As my friend Alicia, who just moved to Paris, got excited about the successful exploration of French music, we gradually forgot about booze issues and became confident that the level of soberness would not affect the experience at all.
Instead of just ‘pressing play on the stage’ as Alicia put it, the collaboration of Todd Terje and the Olsens performed excellent disco covers of some classical electronic pieces including Firecracker from Japanese electronic trio YMO. In the end, it was the disco version of Inspector Norse that finally got the crowd going. The day finished with Moderat. The mind-blowing stage effects made it the best performance of the day, but that’s what you’d expect from Moderat.
On day twoI was looking forward to M.I.A, my celebrity crush, but her performance was surprisingly underwhelming. Instead of singing, she just talked to the crowd for most of the set. There was no bass at all and her sound was too weak to be heard sometimes. As we all got very disappointed we thought that the day was pretty much doomed, but the electronic session after midnight saved everything. It started with the symbolic quirky melodies from Acid Arabic, followed by a twist of hard techno and disco from Motor City Drum Ensemble. The vibe was then refreshed by Daphni, the side project from Caribou. The epitome of the rebellion against predictable mainstream EDM, it was the best music to dance to when sober and surrounded by those who aren’t.
For the first day everyone was well-behaved. Alicia said that it was a Paris thing; Parisians don’t need drugs and alcohol to enjoy themselves. And then there we were on day two, stood in the middle of the crowd watching people around us getting high and losing themselves.
‘We are in England again.’ Alicia turned around and said to me.
People aren’t that different after all.
