Whether it's your first Bonnaroo or you’re a music festival veteran, we welcome you to Inforoo.
Here you'll find info about artists, rumors, camping tips, and the infamous Roo Clues. Have a look around then create an account and join in the fun. See you at Bonnaroo!!
I’m a very big Roísin fan and this would be a terrible drop for myself since I have tickets to her standalone show in LA a few nights before. But actions have consequences, and I guess that could be on the table.
I will say the record label didn’t drop her. So in my opinion they are just hoping that this blows over in the next couple weeks and don’t want to get her name constantly blasted in the news cycle right before the album drops.
Will be interested to see how this impacts reviews…. Specifically Pitchfork. They’ve already given two or three tracks on this album best new music and a glowing pre album interview where they previewed the entire album with high praise.
Well she's about to release an album so the label dropping her right now could be difficult.
But the LGBTQ community is a big focus for this festival, especially considering it's in SF and keeping her in the lineup might be a bad look.
honestly I would be surprised if Roisin gets dropped from the festival. But perhaps more importantly than the LGBTQ community being a focus of the festival, the LGBTQ community is basically the entire focus of Roisin's audience, so I would be surprised if a lot of people show up to her set at this point, too.
Post by abefroman1 on Aug 30, 2023 23:17:04 GMT -5
I wonder of her non-apology apology had more to do with it than the initial screenshot.
I also noticed her new tracks disappeared from BBC6 playlists and she literally hosted The Blessed Madonna's show for a month this summer. She was their darling, now, nothing.
Was really looking forward to the album, but that non-apology on top of the comment was ick
Ok so I’ve been sober this weekend and so I’m going to be much more lucid each morning so I’m going to write about each day individually. My feet are already destroyed after one day (per my step tracker yesterday is somehow the most I’ve walked all year lmao!), why not destroy my thumbs too?
Getting into the festivals was very easy, security was light but as one of those Goldenvoice constants they used the same AI detectors so I didn’t have to do a bag search which was convenient. As soon as you walk in, you see the warehouse, which is mind bogglingly massive. It was much better organized than last year (more on that in a bit) but I’m amazed they had organizational problems at all - its capacity appears to be “the entire festival”. Overall I really loved this more industrial setting - it’s incredibly unique to have all these cranes and ships around with great views of the San Francisco skyline next to the main stage. It almost felt like if Primavera took place somewhere illegal. The pier is pretty long but the locations of the 3 stages aren’t too far apart, it’s mostly just far apart from the entrance/exits of the warehouse.
We got situated, went to the porta potties (of which there were mercifully a lot, I never waited to use one at all), hilariously labeled as “pee pee/poo poo” on the signs, and headed on.
Yung Singh: I dragged my friends to this because I thought he’d start off with the club music he’s known for but he played a lot of really boring house music to start. I left because I was more intrigued by Model/Actriz. It was a good call but according to my friends he started playing the good stuff as soon as I left.
Model/Actriz: I don’t know why I don’t like IDLES but loved this but that’s how it goes. By the time he gets in the audience, Cole Haden feels a bit…confrontational in a way I’ve seen only a few times (his presence weirdly reminded me of the singer of the now defunct Minneapolis band STNNNG), and the band played the right amount of repetitive bass lines and snare fills to keep me going. Their last song was fast and in 6/8. That’s crazy.
The Dare: I was nervous about this going in. I’ve listened to “Girls” more than any other song this year and it has creeped up into my life so much I even have a button that when pressed says “That’s what’s up!!!”. But I knew that it was either going to be new music or a lot of covers to fill the time. It was mostly new music but it was…good? A qualifier: it all sounded like pure 2007 nostalgia, with silly verses (eg about wearing cheap perfume) leading into a huge buzzsaw synth riff after the bridge in multiple songs. It’s not for everyone. But holy fuck is it for me. It hits all the right pleasure centers in my brain: the style of Peaches or Kesha but with a bag of tricks stolen from old Justice tracks (and hey, if justice is going to keep making the worst disco you’ve ever heard for the rest of their careers I don’t mind.)
LF System: barely saw them, this was the only time of day they didn’t have the warehouse entrance wide open. Security was very permissive but for some reason people were moving very slowly to get in (I’m assuming mostly for Barry Can’t Swim). However what I did see was good. I was in for 15 minutes and left lol.
Hot Chip: As always, they function like a well oiled dance machine. Never too loud, never too fast but still somehow build it up just right to keep you dancing the whole time, no talking, no bullshit. No Al Doyle today for some reason which was a bummer but it was still a great set top to bottom. I fucking love Hot Chip so much. PS Alexis Taylor was wearing a pink cowboy hat and a custom button up shirt with the A Bath Full of Ecstasy cover art cut and pasted. True fit goals.
FKJ: stayed for a bit of this. That boy can really play piano!!
Overmono: but I wanted to see this because I wasn’t into it at Coachella and thought seeing it inside would make it better. Whomp whomp, it didn’t, but I think I figured out the reason why earlier this week: the album isn’t that good.
Chromeo: sorry I am Inforoo’s premiere Chromeo defender and I am here to tell you I still love seeing them. I love doing the awkward group two step during Fancy Footwork. I love Dave-1’s shiny ass guitar. I love P Thugg doing the vocodered “let me hear you SCREEEEAAAAAAMMMMM!”. It works every time for me. What I’m getting at is that it doesn’t matter how corny you get, charisma goes a long way. (Side note: they had a new song called “Feel Like This” that was actually pretty good? But also I’ve come around and I like “Must’ve Been” now so ignore me.)
Nelly Furtado - I got worried at first because she started off strong with four of her biggest songs and was only like 15 minutes into her set. But she delivered throughout, with a weirdly frontloaded but somehow still well paced setlist. She sounds great too, noticeably ditching her trademark weird, vaguely foreign affect on a couple songs, most notably dropping it on the verses for “Turn Off the Light” and then bringing it back for the chorus. And even better she’s got a great a presence, even for someone who’s not doing elaborate choreography, often gesturing towards her status as a beloved millennial figure claimed even more strongly by a younger generation. To wit: when she brought out Dom Dolla to stand on the side of the stage while she did their collaboration, every 21 year old around me went nuts. This was mentioned this in the Coachella thread but at a lot of sound here is crazy loud, and more importantly, super bass boosted, which really stood out here. But more to Nelly’s detriment - and honestly maybe the reason she wasn’t my number one of the day - she had two rows of 20 lights behind her flashing out into the audience which made it really hard to see her on stage.
Jon Hopkins - dropped in for a bit. Way ravier and a lot more psychedelic than I expected. It had gotten dark in the warehouse by this point and this is where this stage really shines, like the Yuma but with more variety and bigger (but slightly worse lights). Jon Hopkins had some cool animations behind him too.
Jai Paul - After seeing him at his first show, this went a lot better - he’s still not charismatic or anything but he’s relaxed and way looser now which is good. The sound was mixed kind of horribly here, with songs that should’ve had more prominent synth parts sounding more guitar heavy than they should (especially notable on “100,000”). But I saw “Genevieve” and the final 3 song run of “Jasmine”/“BTSTU”/“Str8 Outta Mumbai” is still impeccable. He has a new cover of “It’s My Life” in his setlist that sounds terrible lol.
DJ Koze/Purple Disco Machine/Eric Prydz - grouping them together because their sets were really similar to when I saw them at Coachella last year. I kept waking over to Eric Prydz often during these sets, both entranced by the holo technology but still not convinced of its effectiveness. I think it actually looked best standing at the edge of the crane stage, listening to PDM play “Don’t You Want Me” while an astronaut swipes his out, never quite reaching over the stage.
Underworld - their Coachella set was my favorite of the festival (and still my favorite of the year) but this one didn’t quite come close. I mentioned earlier that the sound was bass boosted everywhere - it was here but something sounded muddled; the kick drums were loud but plodding. That combined with a weird beginning where a guy walked right next to me and started yapping and getting in my personal space led off to a not great start. But it picked up and by the end I was dancing again and having a great time. They busted out a song from their 2010 album and also a really cool drum n bass version of “S T A R” so that was nice.
Myd: bone tired, feet sore, still not satisfied, I checked out this aftershow at Grey Area, a small theater in an art gallery. The sound was shocking amazing for what has to be a 200 capacity venue. The Myd set was great, playing a high BPM, vocal forward, melodically strong type of house I really like.
Kavinsky - Kavinsky on the other hand was bizarre. He had an assistant on stage who did not do much but at one point lit a cigarette for himself with the butt of a cigarette Kavinsky had just put out on the decks?? (It was very French and very weirdly homoerotic.) Kavinsky played a lot of generic house tracks by French guys until the end when he played his own stuff, some classic Ed Banger tracks, and, weirdly, the Mortal Kombat theme song. I had to leave early though because I was falling asleep standing up lol.
All right that’s it for now. I’ll be back tomorrow with more!
My feet are still sore from this past weekend. Fuck that pavement. They even took out the turf from VIP this year. And removed the VIP sections from Warehouse and Ship Tents.
Beers/Drinks being $18 should be a crime.
Jon Hopkins was amazing Friday night at Gray Area and their sound system.
Wait so there was no turf or fake grass anywhere at the fest?
No, it was all asphalt. I personally didn’t really care that much by my other main complaint aside from sound is that they really didn’t add many sitting areas at all like what they implied they would earlier this year.
Wait so there was no turf or fake grass anywhere at the fest?
No, it was all asphalt. I personally didn’t really care that much by my other main complaint aside from sound is that they really didn’t add many sitting areas at all like what they implied they would earlier this year.
Sort of related, was there any improvement in how the overall infrastructure looked? One of my biggest complaints last year was a lot of underutilized areas that could have been used to enhance the surroundings. I was hoping they would go for more of a Day for Night vibe with art installations everywhere but it felt bare bones most of the time.
No, it was all asphalt. I personally didn’t really care that much by my other main complaint aside from sound is that they really didn’t add many sitting areas at all like what they implied they would earlier this year.
Sort of related, was there any improvement in how the overall infrastructure looked? One of my biggest complaints last year was a lot of underutilized areas that could have been used to enhance the surroundings. I was hoping they would go for more of a Day for Night vibe with art installations everywhere but it felt bare bones most of the time.
I wasn’t there last year so I can’t answer this entirely accurately but not really. There was a shipping container with a chicken on it near the ship tent but that was the only really public outdoor one. The biggest improvements here were opening up the crane tent to a stage so you could see the crane/ship fully, as well as a sponcon tent that had a bunch of old rave flyers and streetwear art in it that was really cool (and really the only corporate tent I’ve ever enjoyed spending time in at a festival come to think of it).
Sort of related, was there any improvement in how the overall infrastructure looked? One of my biggest complaints last year was a lot of underutilized areas that could have been used to enhance the surroundings. I was hoping they would go for more of a Day for Night vibe with art installations everywhere but it felt bare bones most of the time.
I wasn’t there last year so I can’t answer this entirely accurately but not really. There was a shipping container with a chicken on it near the ship tent but that was the only really public outdoor one. The biggest improvements here were opening up the crane tent to a stage so you could see the crane/ship fully, as well as a sponcon tent that had a bunch of old rave flyers and streetwear art in it that was really cool (and really the only corporate tent I’ve ever enjoyed spending time in at a festival come to think of it).
There were minimal improvements on this front. The chicken and sticker pop-up were new, as well as some food areas got named. Some people described the grounds as "spartan".
Ok I’m finally getting around to finishing these reviews. I started writing most of them using speech to text when I was sitting up in my hotel room on Sunday, unbelievably wired on Red Bull lol. So let’s pick up where we left:
Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul - This was an identical set to when I saw them at Pitchfork but still so good. This time, I sort of got the feeling their personalities are more different than would appear at first glance (see: Bolis immediately jumping off stage near the end and looking at Charlotte, who said “no, I’m too scared” before eventually doing it on her own”) but whose artistic vision is so similar the pairing ultimately works really well. Speaking of juxtapositions, the combination of progressive lyrics couched in comedy/slow beats with noisy synths continues to amaze with how little it should work but makes both for great records and great live experiences.
Jayda G - I think she’s changed her style a lot from the last time I saw her a couple of years ago. These days instead of a lot of slower disco songs, she’s playing a lot more higher energy house, which I think works a lot better with her own tracks, especially when she’s playing songs, like “Both of Us” towards the end. However, of course you can’t stray too far away from that style when when you started out with and having Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation” as a closer was a perfect choice.
Little Simz - This was interesting. The set started off with Simz performing over prerecorded beats before transitioning to a live band in the second half. Looking back at the setlist I’m not entirely clear why certain songs were picked for either set, especially considering at this point her and producer Inflo have such a singular, almost orchestral aesthetic that really doesn’t work with either a DJ set or a small band (in this case, a guitarist and bassist). However, as a live rapper she’s still fantastic and it’s always a pleasure to watch her. But….
Pabllo Vittar - ….after I realized that Little Simz had already played all of the songs that I had wanted to see, I ran over to check a little bit of this out. Luckily for me, Pabllo played all of the songs that I like by her back to back to back in my brief time over there. It’s a little bit funny because I don’t find her terribly impressive as a singer, a dancer, or even a drag queen, but she’s definitely got the look and the charisma to be a pop star. (Side note: there really weren’t a whole lot of people at this set, which genuinely surprised me.)
Art: around this time, I went into this area that was sponsored by Spotify that had a bunch of rave flyers and old streetwear-type stickers in it. I was skeptical at first because it was sponsored content, however, I was really impressed with the truly massive collection posters they had. Honestly, it was one of the best art displays I’ve ever seen it any festival. Right now, there’s sort of a big comeback with Y2K fashion and design, but looking at these posters and flyers it was really clear that we lost a lot skipping from the early 90s to the early 2000s without any consideration for the time when people in the US discovered anime and techno fonts for the first time.
Avalon Emerson - Avalon gave one of the best DJ sets that I’ve ever seen at Glastonbury last year, so I had really high expectations for this one. This didn’t meet those lofty expectations, but if I had to pick this would be the best DJ set I saw at this festival. I feel like DJing contemporary techno in an interesting way is difficult because the best parts about listening to it usually blend together in the same indistinct mess after a long enough time. The last time I saw Avalon I was impressed the most by her truly leftfield song selections, but this was a very techno-forward set; however, her ability to dip into other styles (particularly acid) without veering too far off course to really scare off people was really impressive.
2manydjs - This was the only major letdown that I had all weekend. The worst part was it wasn’t the brothers’ fault. The visuals were plagued with technical difficulties and for the first 15 minutes or so of the set there were basically no visuals at all. There were a few members of their team on stage in the foreground, trying to make it work by unplugging and replugging in cables. Eventually, the visuals came back on but they were all in black-and-white for god knows what reason. Eventually, they managed to get the visuals working again in full color, but then almost immediately after that this seven foot tall guy pushed way right in front of me, which irritated the absolute shit out of me. I really am not a fan of pushers during shows but sorry if you are seven feet tall you should not be pulling that shit. Even worse: he was doing really annoying hand waving gestures the entire time. However, the actual 2manydjs set was musically fantastic, with plenty of different tracks from when I saw them at Coachella but with just enough overlap to make it satisfying. It’s a shame it went down the way it did because if the visuals had worked from the start this would’ve been a top set of the weekend for me, seven foot tall jackass or no.
Basement Jaxx - First of all, I have been a fan of Basement Jaxx for a very long time. When I was first really developing my own music taste as a teenager, I’d go to the library and check out CDs there. Because I was really into Daft Punk, I’d listen to a lot of the electronic music albums they had, and they had a lot of Basement Jaxx for some reason; as a result, I have been listening to them for a very, very long time now. So what a treat it was to finally be able to see them. I saw them the week before this and both sets were very good, with their classic hits mixed in with more current house tracks. The one downside is that a DJ set doesn’t really capture the chaotic magic of these songs in the way that their live sets do (if you’ve never seen their Glastonbury 2005 set before, you’re in for a treat.) so I hope I’ll get to see them actually perform live one day. But for now, this will do. edit: forgot to mention their set-closing highlight of playing a ten-minute "Where's Your Head At" that starts as a original before transitioning into a house remix, then a dubstep remix, then a drum'n'bass remix. Absolute scenes, as they say.
Charlotte de Witte - Yes, it’s business techno, but it’s business techno done right: super high energy, enough going on melodically to keep you interested, and like Avalon some good dips into other adjacent styles. Nothing mind-blowing, but I’ll be honest, I had a great time at this set.
Carl Cox - Certainly one of the most omnipresent DJs to have ever existed, and given that it was a half-live set, I was expecting quite a bit. I shouldn’t have.
The Blaze - At this point, my friends were saying they were going to leave at 10:30 but I wanted to check out The Blaze, so I gave myself 15 minutes to go over. The first two songs in their set were all right, but then the third one had a synth riff that legitimately made me laugh out loud so I left. I couldn’t find my friends in the warehouse when I went back in, so I ordered a separate Uber home; amazingly, as soon as I arrived at our hotel so did my friends. Funny coincidence.
Overall, I had a great time at this festival, I compared it a few days later to “rave Pitchfork”: small size, urban setting, greater emphasis on niche acts, but of course since they have the booking muscles and tastemakers of Goldenvoice, they’re not going to be truly like Pitchfork and get Axel Boman or The Soft Pink Truth or whatever. But it felt like the best of both worlds of a festival like Coachella and the smaller festivals here in Chicago. If any of the problems they had last year persisted, I didn’t notice because from a logistics perspective everything was so smooth. My only complaint was the sound. Base on the stage layouts I can understand the necessity of making it super loud but there was really no reason the low end needed to be as loud as it was; on the other hand, being at this festival really emphasized how absolutely immaculate the sound quality at Coachella is. On top of that, San Francisco was a beautiful city and I’d love to come back and spend some more time there. This festival is definitely on my radar in the future and I hope it’s good some longevity in it.
Shuck reviews are the best reviews. You gotta elaborate on Carl Cox!
I don’t have much to say honestly. I’d keep looking over at all the equipment he had on his setup and he wasn’t doing anything with it. I know it was a hybrid live/DJ, but either he was creating wholly unmemorable music live under my nose or he was mostly playing other peoples’ wholly unmemorable music.
ra.co/news/79670 Looks like it might be over, though this happened last year and it didn't affect this year's edition. I find it ridiculous that a city in the bay area, literally bordering San Francisco, has a curfew of 10PM
Last Edit: Oct 14, 2023 10:57:12 GMT -5 by Deleted - Back to Top
ra.co/news/79670 Looks like it might be over, though this happened last year and it didn't affect this year's edition. I find it ridiculous that a city in the bay area, literally bordering San Francisco, has a curfew of 10PM
Alameda already stopped protesting it, I don't think this is a big concern.
ra.co/news/79670 Looks like it might be over, though this happened last year and it didn't affect this year's edition. I find it ridiculous that a city in the bay area, literally bordering San Francisco, has a curfew of 10PM
Alameda already stopped protesting it, I don't think this is a big concern.
if any one of the suburbs asked my city for something like that I would laugh in their faces, the fucking gall of these people
