- A typical attendee of the 11th edition of LA's FYF Fest could leave thinking the event was an unmitigated disaster or a breezy success, depending on when they arrived. I was lucky enough to be in the latter camp, having turned up on day two, after poor planning and a flood of early arrivals left hundreds (thousands?) unable to see Todd Terje or hometown hero DJ Harvey on the festival's first day. By the time I showed up, though, all had been forgiven.
FYF began in 2004 when then teenage Sean Carlson took over a few venues in the Echo Park neighborhood and had some punk and indie bands play in the street. In the decade since then, the festival has mirrored Carlson's broadening tastes, and the past few years have seen an integration of Pitchfork-friendly dance acts as well as an administrative takeover by Goldenvoice, the people behind Coachella. Carlson's success, and the willingness of the city to back the festival, has been stunning. Attendance nearly doubled from 20,000 to 40,000 per day this year, partially due to the addition of headliners Phoenix and The Strokes.
The festival also made a moderately successful attempt at installing a dark and sweaty (if cavernous) dance club in the middle of the outdoor indie rock festival. For the past few years, FYF has been held in the dusty Los Angeles State Historic Park, a sprawling field where shade is hard to come by and sonic bleed between the four stages is inevitable. This year the field is in the midst of renovation, so the festival moved to the LA Sports Arena Exposition Park (site of the 1984 Olympics). FYF programmed the more straightforward dance acts in the complex's basketball arena, with an elaborate disco ball display and an LED wall that dwarfs the ceiling at Watergate.
On Sunday, I found a darkened dance floor with an unseen warm-up DJ playing relaxed dub techno. The lights came up when Dan Snaith took the stage to DJ as Daphni, his second set of the weekend (Caribou played live in the Arena the day before). He began with his own soul sampling "Yes I Know" and worked his way through Italo, Hessle Audio-style bass mutations and top notch modern disco-house like Carl Craig's remix of Tom Trago's "Use Me Again." The 6,000-capacity floor was about half-full, but the young crowd was completely going for it at 5:15 PM—something almost unheard of in LA, especially for a relatively heady act like Daphni.
Out in the sunshine, the crowd swelled as Blood Orange turned in a stylish set of emotional funk hugely indebted to Prince. A full 15-minute walk away, Earl Sweatshirt was dwarfed by the massive lawn stage, an effect compounded by his choice to spend half the set without a hype man or any accompaniment besides his DJ. A fair portion of the outdoor crowd seemed uninterested in the music, choosing to remain in the drinking areas far away from the action.
Back in the arena, though, it was tough to ignore the explosive light show and volume of John Talabot's set. His concession to the bigger room came in the form of heavily delayed, melodic breakdowns that fell somewhere between his sunny house and the more tasteful side of trance. He dropped Barnt's bracing "Chappell" (upcoming on Hinge Finger) and ended mixing Christian S's "Gasoline" into International Music System's anthemic 1983 synth jam "An English." Headliner Jamie XX also played as weird as he wanted to, dropping Delroy Edwards "Untitled" into Plastikman's "Spastik" early in his set.
Outside, The Strokes played their hits from 2001 and 2003 to an enraptured crowd. FYF is clearly pursuing divergent paths—and why not? Coachella's 2014 lineup included acts like Bicep and Cajmere, even if the big draw was Outkast's reunion set. There is a schizophrenic, something-for-everyone booking philosophy at both festivals, nuanced in FYF's case by Carlson's personal tastes and pet projects. That said, watching young music fans get switched on to heady dance sets makes a music nerd wonder if FYF can push the envelope even further.
Photo credits: FYF official (FYF flowers), Takacs (lights, disco ball)