Tag: Factory Floor

LIVE REVIEW: Pitchfork Music Festival 2014

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All photos by Ellie White Photography

Pitchfork Fest 2014 came and went in a flash. Literally. Peruse our photo editorial from the weekend, courtesy of  our photo editor, Ellie White, who snagged highlights from all of our favorite shows over the three day extravaganza situated in Chicago’s beautiful Union Park. Our personal faves from the spectacularly-curated lineup this year included sets from the ever-brooding black-metal gents of Deafheaven; glam goddesses in black, the Dum Dum Girls; headliners Beck (whose set topped the best of the fest list for me, hands down without question), Neutral Milk Hotel and Kendrick Lamar (though Danny Brown–who won best hair of all time with his forest green ombre–and Earl Sweatshirt battled it out for best rap performance in our opinion); a stunning, once in a generation set from shoegaze pioneers  Slowdive (Rachel Goswell’s dress looked like sexy, glimmering armor); a wildly exuberant performance from Tune-yards –whose addition of African Dance inspired backup choreography had everyone in a frenzy; Boundary-pushing electronic music from The Haxan Cloak and Factory Floor (um, can we please hear it for that badass drummer??); Intelligent ambient down-tempo from heartthrob Jon Hopkins and a performance from the Range that could put anyone else’s obsession with and knowledge of rap jams to shame. Oh and I think everyone is officially  in love with FKA Twigs and Neneh Cherry.

Honorable mentions include Majical Cloudz, whose keyboard broke after the second song. As a result, lead singer Devon Walsh performed an array of  songs sung acapella (at one point standing up on a chair to belt out Magic, leaving the entire audience in tears), stand up comedy and audience-participation fueled beat boxing. At the end of the set, keyboardist Matthew Otto, so adobrably contrite and just adorable in general, had us all count down from 10, and then proceeded to smash the defunct synth to smithereens for all the world to see. A lifelong dream of his come true, he proclaimed.

All in all it was an amazing, sunny weekend full of cantankerous, gorgeous, feisty, live performances from some of the very best and brightest talent that exists in music today. We can’t wait  to see what the fine folks over at Pitchfork have in store for next year. In the meantime, read on and enjoy.

 

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LIVE REVIEW: Factory Floor @ MHoW

Factory Floor

Factory Floor play MHoW

As electrifying as Factory Floor’s self-titled debut record was, there’s only one way to truly experience the post-industrial outfit’s particular brand of tachycardiac disco – to be utterly immersed in it. At Music Hall of Williamsburg last Wednesday, the British trio’s mesmeric visions became the crowd’s own, thanks to floor-to-ceiling pixel-patterned projections and pulsating rhythms. Standing by the soundboard with the base of my skull on the booth, I could feel each throbbing beat reverberate down my spine, in my brain. Like an elixir, Nikki Colk’s anodyne vocals drifted over the manicured drone, a syrupy echo bouncing off bright-light flashes. Like a synaesthetic, it was hard for me to tell which sense was what; the synth lines purple laser beams, the drum punches articulating somewhere on the roof of my mouth rather than in my ear canal.

With an all-enveloping blitz such as this, it didn’t need to be deafening. The sensory onslaught was amplified in its repetitions and the drama of drawing them out. As danceable as the band’s catalogue is, the crowd hardly moved, transfixed and moving as though submerged in thick liquids. And you get the sense that this is exactly how Factory Floor wants its audiences to feel. They’ve existed in some form or another for almost a decade, but their singles have trickled slowly from various boutique labels in just half that time, serving as a primer for what they’d later dish via DFA. This trajectory is also a clue as to how Factory Floor operates; each spin of lead single “Fall Back,” for instance, builds the dance club around its listener, no matter where the listener is. So imagine, then, hearing that happen with the band is right there on stage, constructing an almost tangible atmosphere in real time. There are very few acts of similar ilk who even attempt to do this, let alone succeed in it.

What sets Factory Floor apart is that you get the sense they’ve thought all of this through, that this is far more orchestrated than it is by accident. It’s as if founding members Gabriel Gurnsey and Mark Harris sat down and decided to make this project as expansive and hypnotic as it could be, as though they wanted to invent an experience yet unestablished in the club scene in London, or else replicate the essence of Europe’s most notorious dance parties. When Harris left and was replaced by Dominic Butler, it was a torch he was willing to carry; but the addition of Colk’s manipulated vocals and samples were the essential elements that galvanized their aesthetic and made their record so buzzworthy. If you haven’t basked in the live iteration of their stellar debut, though, you’re missing something; they’re a must-see act, whether you come to bask in the atmospherics or move along to their voracious velocity.