- Ever since 1999's inaugural Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, staged in the oasis of the Empire Polo Grounds in the deserts of Indio, California, electronic music has played an integral role in what has become one of the United States' most popular music festival destinations. From an initial bill with Chemical Brothers, Moby, Underworld and others, through to performances over the years featuring Kraftwerk, Richie Hawtin and Daft Punk's laser pyramid, the voluminous Sahara dance tent consistently produces defining Coachella moments. Dance is just one part of the experience, though. Although a few intrepid beat-heads refuse to leave the dance tent, to most fans Coachella is a place to sample scads of indie acts in the daytime and experience reunited legends and chart-topping headliners at night.
Moreover, it's easy to get the feeling that beats got the short shrift in 2010. Early-day Sahara line-ups have often featured cutting-edge performers like Booka Shade or Gui Boratto, but this year's bill looked a little more like Monsters of the Club. The organizers assuredly blew their budgetary load on secondary headliner Tiesto, so they must have gone on subsequent spendthrift for subsequent dance acts. Never mind, though: Those seeking desert beats still found pay-dirt.
Friday
Returning to a festival that saw them underwhelm in 2008, Vampire Weekend arrived in the Coachella Valley slicker, bigger and in general far more ready for an outdoor festival. That's due in part to the polish powered by this year's Contra and the web of synthesizer pop that informs it. Cycling through such standouts as "Cousins" and "Giving up the Gun," Vampire Weekend's set illustrated how far the band has come in the last two years. Although battling occasional winds and resultant inaudibility, lead singer Ezra Koenig delivered a consistent take on the diffident prepster, the boat shoed rock star belting coyly to a crowd already familiar with his band's catalogue. Earlier, spare cuts like "Walcott" and "One (Blake's Got a New Face)" didn't hold up quite as well in the wide open space of the Outdoor Theatre, but in the ten-o'clock hour of the first day of Coachella, Vampire Weekend's slate of Contra cuts were clearly ready for prime-time. [Mike Orme]
"Be safe, drink lots of water and take care of your friends." So ended Passion Pit's set with closer "Little Secrets" on the Coachella outdoor stage, a performance surprising (to me at least) in terms of its earnestness. On Manners, Passion Pit sounds clean and happy, overproduced and overly busy. What doesn't come across so clearly is that the falsetto positivity isn't false at all. As they worked through the album's singles, frontman Michael Angelakos repeatedly thanked the audience for making his dreams come true. I kept searching for a trace of irony. But there was none to be found, a rarity in an irony pit like Coachella. PP aren't really that great of a band, but they had such fun playing to their strengths (pumping feel-good anthems that would make Maroon 5 blush) that I can't help but call myself a fan. [Noah Barron]
A little Johnny Rotten came out on Friday. After holding the crowd at bay for almost fifteen minutes, John Lydon and his motley band of studio vets and hired guns strolled out nice and late, and Lydon entreated concertgoers to "take a PiL" as an antidote for the competing Jay-Z set. It's like Lydon never left us. Certainly, the recent passing of Sex Pistols manager Malcom LacLaren weighed heavily on the set. Indeed, in his shining, billowy duds, Lydon looked like he could use a consult from the late fashion icon. However, Lydon can still belt it out, delivering interpretations of Public Image Limited cuts with a vocal range that, while truncated at the high end, nearly matched that of his tenure with late '80s PiL. At this point, John Lydon is as rotten as ever. [Mike Orme]
Presiding over the main stage like a rock & roll Tom Wolfe (white-suited and arch), LCD Soundsytem's James Murphy seemed ill at ease. His set, tellingly, rode heavily on This Is Happening tracks recently (leaked? released?) on the internet. The lyrics of new single "Pow Pow" seemed to lampoon the performance itself: "From this position I can say 'serious' or 'cop-out' or 'hard-to-define' / With you on the outside and me on the inside, there are advantages to both." He pranced, pouted, sat...even wallowed across the main stage. Who can blame him for his malaise? A career based upon outsider self-awareness, based upon FM curatorship and cred cultivation, is essentially D.O.A. when you become the headliner right? Being the first to play Daft Punk to the rock kids stops mattering when you're now on the stage once held by Daft Punk. James Murphy is an outsider no longer. He looked downright forlorn as he slugged champagne with his wolf-shirted drummer. Borrowed schtick run dry, Murph implored his audience to download the first and second Suicide records and walked off the stage. [Noah Barron]
Karin Dreijer Andersson's phantasmagoric presence and the flashing lamps onstage gave the appearance of a house of horrors. Playing out the fantasies of "When I Grow Up" and "I'm Not Done" to the visual accompaniments of a laser salvo and Andersson's Volta-era Bjork-inspired mask, Fever Ray provided the opposite point of view to the concurrent Jay-Z set rumbling across the grounds. Jay is a larger than life motormouth, while Andersson draws her syllables out in an electronic slur. Andersson inhabits oblique lyrics about magic and the cold, while HOVA reps his familiar dueling sensibilities of prosperity and paucity. Point is, fans of the fantastic may have been few and far between on Friday night, but as the majority of concertgoers flocked to the main stage, a loyal few found sanctuary in spooky lights with Andersson in the Mojave tent. [Mike Orme]
Deadmau5 is a creep. He tweaks his bass deep and a little bit off kilter. He drops cavernous, chest-crushing beats that wear out even the most enthusiastic and caffeinated crowds. His soullessly smiling mask glitches and slides sideways, face dissolving into a distorted pattern. And he samples Chris Isaak. Long live creep house. Joel Thomas Zimmerman took the stage in the Sahara techno tent after a cheesily feel-good Benny Benassi performance and had something different in mind for the flushed and grinning party people. Break after exhausting break, throbbing atonal subterranean bass assaults, snares popping like chicken gristle. This was the nasty side of dance music and we loved it. Dancing geometric beams poured out of DM's elevated DJ boothcube on highlight "Moar Ghosts n' Stuff," a geyser of kick drum filth that got the whole tent stomping in sweat-soaked Caucasian near-unison. Reliving the set via YouTube, I'm bummed out by cheap collective memories and the recording's crap tinny sound. For those heads who were there...it was way fucking loud, wasn't it? [Noah Barron]
Saturday
Hot Chip rolled out a shined-up festival configuration at Coachella on Saturday, cycling through some of their best known cuts in largely modified form. Hot Chip has been known to tinker in the past, but the addition of trance-inducing synthesizers and steel drums filled out the dry desert air and bespoke a certain maturity from a group with a catalogue now four records deep. Songs like "Over and Over" and "One Pure Thought" received synthetic space-funk makeovers that bring them closer to the archetypal DFA chug and which also faintly remind of Bowie's Station to Station. The huge, beachy synthesizers inserted into closer "Ready for the Floor" sparkled in the growing chill of the evening and received the biggest crowd reaction of the night. It's a little sad, however, knowing that Alexis Taylor and Co. have outgrown the sweaty corners of the smaller clubs they used to inhabit. The guys used to find themselves prone to joyous dancing, the husky Joe Goddard alone conducting a one-man show. Saturday showed Hot Chip in regalia, calmly delivering their wares. For long-time devotees since the stutter-start days of Coming on Strong, well... our boys done grown up. [Mike Orme]
Flying Lotus was surprisingly disappointing. I love Los Angeles for its meticulously cracked craftsmanship, but played live Steven Ellison's beats come across as simply stumbling party music. You can either have fascinating textures or thumping beats. What doesn't work is thumping mistimed beats that prevent dancing and obscure your fascinating textures. FlyLo himself was a grinning demon behind his Ableton controller, twisting knobs and dancing as hard as the sweatiest bro in the crowd. Which is saying something, since the crowd was entirely sweaty bros. The air was thick with herb and yelling as he worked his way through "Camel," albeit with the tempo hopped up and the good parts lost in the roar. The set's one saving grace was an excellent audiovisual presentation, showing technoerotic Japanese girls in electrical tape twitching in embryonic UFO glow. Basically, it was how I envision Flying Lotus beats exactly. If only the beats had arrived to the Indio desert intact. I left a little bit early, miffed to watch highbrow art fail to become lowbrow art simply by cranking the volume. [Noah Barron]
One of the more questionable decisions of the weekend, at least on paper, was sticking The XX in a relatively early timeslot in the Outdoor Theatre. For a minimal group thriving on the dark spaces of night, an interrogating sun and notoriously finicky Theatre threatened to strip away the mystique surrounding the London group's swoon. Under the circumstances, however, the band performed admirably, running through spacious cuts from their self-titled debut and winning over a sizable (and, over the course of the set, growing) crowd poached from neighboring Coheed & Cambria. Indeed, cuts like "Infinity," all breathy vocals, guitar tone stuffed through a reverb coil, and drums caressed with kid gloves, benefitted from the thin desert air. Fitting, as the group is often compared in passing to the music of Chris Isaak, no stranger to the sands of the beaches and the arid interstices of the American West. Still, starting the group half an hour later would have been optimal, placing them squarely in the magical twilight timeslot that has produced a memorable Coachella atmosphere for a number of bands in previous years, and which worked to the advantage of the previous day's Passion Pit. [Mike Orme]
Ah, Tiesto. What can be said about a man whose name is synonymous with dance music as an international brand. The Mountain Dew of trance. If you're reading this and have a pulse, you've heard Tiesto. He's reliable at what he does, i.e. earnest n' cheesy girlvox singing inspirational choruses over impeccably sequenced pads and foot-stomping drum patterns. Intro, crescendo, good part, crescendo, break, good part, next, onward, repeat. Writing about Tiesto 's set in the context of other DJs at Coachella is like trying to write about seeing Avatar versus seeing some B-grade indie film. Sure, his set was wildly, dishearteningly egotistical, four-story screens encouraged the audience to "Make Some Noise!" in what amounted to the musical equivalent of a MLB Jumbotron. Picking primarily from the upbeat cadre of tracks off Kaleidoscope, Tijs Michiel Verwest neither surprised nor disappointed. Each song has a sing-a-long animated video with bouncing lyrics and everything. A shimmering cathedral to the cult of Tiesto. That's what he does, and he does it exceedingly well. 80,000 people can't be wrong. To be sure, not everyone is impressed by the Dutchman's self-importance. The day after the set I was grabbing a salad at SouPlantation and a group of preppy hipsters were miffed when a nice but dust-begrimed Lexus blocked their RV into a parking spot. "Whose car is that?" one asked me. Without missing a beat, his friend deadpanned, "It's Tiesto's." [Noah Barron]
Major Lazer the man is a cartoon commando with a laser ("lazer") arm. Major Lazer the act is a conceptual collaboration between Diplo and Switch informed by the rhythms of dancehall. The two met as part of their respective dealings with MIA, but the Major Lazer personality allows the two to put a face to the group on their own terms. Much like Gorillaz before them, Diplo and Switch seem not to approach the gig not as a side-job, but as a lost weekend or a swinger's party, the guys hidden behind a Technicolor masque and re-invented behind the boards as suit-wearing Corinthians. The duo (plus MC Skerrit Bwoy) held the entire Mojave tent in thrall throughout, bouncing in rhythm to the heavy beats of cuts like "Pon De Floor." On that song, in fact, Bwoy recreated a particular stunt from the video with the help of a ladder, an expectant woman and a swan dive. The crowd absolutely ate it up. The shtick might not have the shelf life of Gorillaz. Hell, it may not survive the year. However, the notoriously ADD Diplo and Switch have hit on an effective and frivolous folly that strikes this writer as way more fun than Diplo's solo sets. Let the lazers play on. [Mike Orme]
Sunday
Rusko's got a deep crate and he dug well for us in the Sahara tent. Cuts as diverse as Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" (Giant remix) and Kid Sister's "Pro Nails" bonked woozily into his own concoctions like "Woo Boost" in a gloopy kick-drum swamp of sweet and stale beer. Too bad he played at 2:30 in the afternoon, since it would have been a rump-punishing nighttime set. Christopher Mercer opened big with a stoned-out, sun-bleached suite, agitating the crowd with his thick Yorkshire come-ons. But the amplitude couldn't hold. Perhaps he poured on the jacking beats a little too generously, as the crowd stopped bouncing about three-quarters of the way through his set. It was hot. We were tired. But for an artist that was barely a blip on my radar before the show, he acquitted himself admirably and sent me on a search for torrents bearing his name. [Noah Barron]
In past years, Phoenix has arguably experienced problems with their live show, what with the underwhelming presence of Thomas Mars' voice and the difficulty of recreating the band's slick early studio records. And the last time Phoenix was at Coachella, they opened up their travel gear to find a broken synthesizer. Nothing's broken in 2010. A year after the rough-edged release of Wolfgang Amadeus and ten years after their debut United, the band has finally broken through. The quartet plays Coachella at night like the big boys. It's got car commercial fame, even. And the quartet delivered one of Coachella 2010's most dynamic performances. Rolling through "Long-Distance Call" and other standouts off 2006's It's Never Been Like That, Phoenix held their own in the difficult space of the Outdoor Theatre. It helped that the band had little competition from the neighboring main stage during the meat of the show. To close, the band first played their hard-hitting take on "If I Ever Feel Better," once the everyday closer, and then newcomer "1901." Phoenix has come a long way since soundtracking Sofia Coppola films. Now, they hawk Cadillacs and kill Coachella. [Mike Orme]
Miike Snow consists of a swaggering American frontman named Andrew Wyatt and the producing duo Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, credited as Bloodshy and Avant on luminary electro cuts from Madonna, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. They did "Toxic," for chrissakes. It should come as no surprise that they are masters of slick timing, tricks of tempo and melodic pop wizardry. With a full band mashing their keyboards and kits wildly and Wyatt's fuck-me stage presence, Miike Snow was really more of a capital-P performance than nearly any other synth-inflected act at Coachella. Black inflatable balls fell from the ceiling, the crowd went nuts and on "Animal" they worked perhaps the most compelling false-end to a song I've ever seen. I mean, sure, these guys are as studio-clean as Muzak and ultra derivative, but come on, it's so euphoric, why fight it? Songs like "Sylvia" do exactly what you want them to do, as many times as you want them to, plus a few extra for good measure. Miike Snow makes me super homoerotic, though. A big sweaty dude backed his ass into me during the finale one too many times and so I just started freaking him. I mean, cupcake, if you're gonna grind that thing on my junk, what else do you want me to do? [Noah Barron]
21 years and an endless string of festivals later, Orbital could be excused for playing dead. After revolutionizing dance performances over the span of more than a decade, the duo consisting of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll called it quits in 2004. However, the two have got the band back together over the last year, and their "reunion" is admirably producing more than just rehashed versions of the duo's back catalogue. Once again donning the Egon Spengler flashlight specs that they've previously used to aid their dark work, the duo framed themselves with huge rotating screens. On Sunday evening, playing to an audience filled with rubbernecking festivalgoers killing time before Thom Yorke, Orbital dropped remodels of past hits like "Satan" and "Halcyon," updated for 2009 greatest hits collection Orbital 20. Some things, however, never change: Orbital still dropped in the '80s cheese with samples from "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" and "You Give Love a Bad Name" into "Halcyon + On + On": a palpable reminder that the duo's outsized samples and beats aren't all that different from the stadium fillers of the immoderate '80s. The cut serves as a thoughtful counterpoint to some of the unintentional excesses displayed earlier in the weekend's electronic line-up. Apparently it takes a 21 year old dance group to teach the festival organizers a lesson in tastemaking. [Mike Orme]
Arriving despite the skeins of volcanic ash filling European skies, Little Boots put on a hellkitten of a show. Like a junior Kylie Minogue, Victoria Hesketh strutted and pranced through her singles and lasers, looking resplendent (and a little bit thick) in a borrowed reflective mumu. Her schtick is very British, very likeable but perhaps a little stagey for the verite crowd at Coachella. Her call-and-response antics on "Stuck on Repeat" kind of fell flat, but her voice held and her charisma carried the day. Kylie's are big stilettos to fill, but what Boots lacks in immortal choruses she more than makes up for with well-times vamps and coos. Not to mention the girl can actually sequence her Tenori-On pretty damn well. She had a few words for Ke$ha too, her stateside doppelganger who apparently bit the idea for a "laserharp," stage beams that play synth notes when strummed. [Noah Barron]
Along with Orbital, Richie Hawtin's Plastikman injected much needed credibility to the third day at the Sahara tent (hell, to the entirety of Coachella 2010's dance lineup). Sunday night, he administered a clinic in the classics. Veiled by a flashing semicircular screen, Hawtin delivered a bass-heavy set of retro-futuristic cuts, providing an exclamation point on a weekend of conversations between electro bangers like Deadmau5 and Club 75 and the stadium-sized progressive soliloquies of Tiesto. Hawtin mixed past and present, utilizing both analogue and digital technology as well as rolling out an interactive iPhone app, the Plastikman Synk. The set didn't go off without a hitch. Their regular lighting guy was stuck in Germany, a victim of the Icelandic volcano's ashy quarantined airspace, and the iPhone app didn't end up much more than a novelty. However, the strength of Plastikman's playbook, with many of the cuts rivaling the age of some kids in the crowd, proved a timeless draw that kept bodies moving well into the night.
Hawtin's set may have even saved Coachella for the clubgoers. Beforehand, the general consensus was that Coachella 2010 threatened to melt down into a full-blown logistical nightmare. Adding fifteen thousand extra attendees per day led to confusing entrance gate re-locations and long lines for 2010's new wristband tickets. Questionable headliner choices (Muse?) and solid if anticlimactic reunions (Faith No More, PiL) left longtime Coachella vets unimpressed with the lineup. And as mentioned, a little seismic event in Iceland stranded a number of acts in Europe. Most criticisms disappeared by the end of the first day, but it was clear that 2010 was the weakest year in recent memory for dance music at Coachella. No matter: energetic closing sets by vets Orbital and Plastikman showed that even in a lean year, the Sahara can still provide sonic sustenance. [Mike Orme]
Photo credits
Vampire Weekend - Lee Barth
Friday crowd, Hot Chip, Major Lazer - Jared Berhardt
The XX - Dusty Knapp
Deadmau5, Coachella lit up, Coachella aftermath, Plastikman - Travis Bowles