This is a follow-up to my brief review of Camp Bisco that appears in this week's issue. First read that over here, then read this over here.
Because
300 words is hardly enough to wrap what essentially amounted to 63
straight hours of music. Because the bands I labeled standouts in my TJI
deserve more rub than the single sentence of praise I was able to
afford them. And because, even though I mentioned SKRILLEX and
BASSNECTAR in my brief recap, I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea
and thinking they were highlights of the festival.
They
weren't. Actually, they were exactly what you'd probably imagine a
Skrillex/Bassnectar show to play out like in your head -- undulating
fist pumpage, flames, shitty haircuts -- but any review not granting
them mention would be incomplete. Their mainstage performances drew the
two biggest crowds of the weekend and although my dubstep-phobic ears
repented, the kids ate that shit up.
But
I'm not here to hate, so I'll stay focused on the positives. There were
a lot of them. And not just the picturesque weather and hassle free
entry I referenced in my truncated print review.
For
as balls-to-the-wall the festival can be at times, Thursday is mostly
constructed around chilling. The music starts a bit later in the day
affording everyone an opportunity to unwind following their travel. I
opted for a nap myself.
All
that went by the wayside around dusk though, not coincidentally around
the time CRYSTAL CASTLES took to the mainstage. Having only ever seen
them in the recesses of a pitch black club -- where their generous use
of strobes only further contribute to their maniacal stage presence -- I
doubted whether their live show would translate to the broad daylight.
About
two-minutes into their set however, at the exact moment when Alice
Glass thrust herself deep past the first couple rows of audience, I
realized that watching someone recklessly fling themselves in harms way
over-and-over again is just as enjoyable during the day as it is at
night. For their 30-minute outing, they drew evenly from both their
self-titled efforts for a set that saw Glass cozying up to Ethan Kath to
slam some e-drums only when she wasn't moonwalking over the crowd. A
properly delirious table-setter for the succeeding Skrillex/Biscuits 1,2
wallop.
Friday
took about as long to warm-up as Thursday. This was in spite of a
ratchet early afternoon set of unrecognizable techno from ORCHARD LOUNGE
and an breezily out-of-place (but-still-welcome) tryst from PORTUGAL.
THE MAN. I blame BIG BOI for stunting the momentum. Thirty-minutes is
generally my threshold for standing around and waiting for a late act to
take the stage, but yet I opted for 45 because, hey, it's Big Boi.
Allowing
seminal UK label Ninja Tune to rekindle my charge, I ventured from the
mainstage to an outlying tent where they'd be curating an afternoon of
music. Not being aware that the prominent producer even DJ'd before
wandering up to his set, BLOCKHEAD proved to be the surprise of the
festival, delivering a concentrated array of screw-yo-face hip-hop
beats. Immediately following him came FALTYDL. I've hyped him plenty in the past,
but he really deserves all the praise. The most prevalent stateside
ambassador of a brand of bass that has completely blown overseas, dudes got chops,
slicing a number of familiar tunes to the point of faint recognition and
sprinkling them throughout his outing.
Nothing
up to that point would prepare me for the next ‘set' though. AMON TOBIN
has been traveling the world for the past year or so on his ISAM tour,
in support of his most recent album of the same name. It's built around a
large mass of glowing cubes, all jutting from the stage at random
intervals, and it looked cool enough from the YouTube clips I'd seen,
so whatever, I wandered over to take a look. Judging from the pre-show look on
everyone around me's face, I was either in for something special or all
the acid had just kicked in, for everyone. Turned out to
be a combination of both, as a woman's voice appeared over the
PA system, warning everyone to put down their floaty toys and signs, and
then a curtain dropped, revealing Tobin's vessel.
I've
batted around a number of comparisons since, and the best I can come up
with is the MOM ride at Jordan's Furniture, in terms of both his
projections giving you the feeling of taking off into space and the
pristine surround sound. Except you're not really taking off anywhere,
you're standing in a dust bowl of a field. And the sound should
presumably be the same quality it was for the rest of the acts on the
weekend. But therein lies the magic. Tobin milked the system until the
cow was dead -- flinging some of the most unsettling IDM sounds I've ever heard
(trip-hop, DnB, breakbeat) around the field like the
mainstage area was his personal playground. Really made everyone else
seem like amateurs in comparison. He's coming to our House of Blues on
September 12th. Just go.
Because
my mind was properly flogged, Saturday ended up being a bit of a wash.
The three Disco Biscuits sets were amongst the best they played all
weekend and I was able to salvage enough energy to make it to the late
nights. A-TRAK traverses a thin line between superstar DJ and
seemingly chill bro. His set possessed the auditory and visual bombast
of a Kaskade -- or whatever the kids are raging to nowadays -- but his
hip-hop leanings are enough to keep me on board. SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO
reeled things back in a bit in terms of flair, but the dirt wedged
within their beats proved a fitting complement to my mud caked self.