Decided to put up the rest of the festival’s photos. Here we have Metric, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Sonic Youth, and of course, Ben Harper and the Relentless7.
Just for the record, these photographs are 100% unadulterated, undoctored, just pure talent. No photoshop.
Ladies and gentlemen, the 2009 V-Fest was altogether epic — two days of blistering heat, one pelting lightning thunderstorm — couldn’t sway the spirits of 22 bands and their some 15,000 fans.
The morning and early afternoon were spent getting used to the grounds; the fest was held at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby, a beautiful and almost bucolic setting not too far from the city life. From pole dancers to beer tents, the grounds had it all.
At approximately 4:30 in the afternoon, Kevin Brereton a.k.a. K-OS strutted onstage and glamoured the audience with his funk-reggae-rock jams and charismatic showmanship. Gradually, people from around the park come closer to the glorious thumping basslines. At this point, K-OS tells “all the ugly people be quiet” before an immaculate performance of his 2002 hit “Heaven Only Knows.”
Shortly after that, the very talented Jules and I prepared for our interview with the guys from Plants and Animals, which is coming to SPINearth.tv soon! They took the festival stage and played a furiously energetic set, finishing off with a rendition of “Bye Bye Bye” from their Juno-nominated album Parc Avenue. Their performance of “Faerie Dance” was played with an edge that made the show all that more cathartic.
Being a proud devotee to the musicians of Arts & Crafts, I was incredibly excited to see Broken Social Scene take the main stage. Brendan Canning showed off his newly trimmed-appearance, and luckily for the audience Jimmy Shaw from Metric played guitar and horns onstage too. Not too long into their second track, clouds of pot smoke wafted through the grounds, an all-too necessary component of the BSS experience. Things got heavy when the band tore through “KC Accidental,” a classic single from their debut album You Forgot it in People. Kevin Drew killed it in the finale with “Superconnected,” truly reigning in the spirit of the festival with their powerful baroque-rock symphonies.
Then at the most perfect time, Our Lady Peace took the stage and took us all back to that memorable time… mid 90s Canadian popular rock. The quartet, older, more mature than the videos I remembered them from in elementary school, played classic hits such as “Clumsy,” “Naveed” and “Superman’s Dead” and took the crowd down nostalgia lane.
Despite the glory of all these wonderful bands, it couldn’t keep mother nature’s wrath at bay. Huge raindrops fell from the angry sky, causing organizers to cancel the final set being The Roots! Huge disappointment to miss out on the headliners, but all in all it was a fun day…
If you want to see some RAD photos of the Virgin Festival weekend, check out David Thai’s photoreport on SPINearth.tv.
Plants and Animals Official Website
@ the Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver BC June 4
Crystal Castles gave a blistering electronic performance that meshed together their digital eccentricities and powerful rhythms, producing an overwhelmingly cathartic, organic flux of a dancing crowd surrendering to their wall of sound.
The duo’s name originates after a sky fortress from the Mattel toy series called She-Ra, who was the twin sister of He-Man. The ferocity of vocalist Alice Glass’ raw, borderline-animal screams came across as borderline mythical during their rendition of “Courtship Dating,” giving her supernatural qualities.
The show kicked off with an energetic, strobe-light saturated debut, as Glass slinked onstage and adopted an intimidating, huge stage presence wearing a tube skirt and black button-up top, her eyes thick with black makeup, her trademark jet black bob throbbing to the basslines. She pushed everyone to the brink of epilepsy as she picked up the strobe light, flashed it in the faces of the entire front row as she screamed overtop the myriad of Nintendo sound loops.
Multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath showed off his versatile musicmanship by flaunting his seamless transitions from turntable to synth, with a machine-like exactness, entrenched in the shadows of the stage in his hoodie like some kind of electric Darth Vader.
The most unique thing about Crystal Castles is their talent to create heat, chaos — all the elements of a natural disaster — without burning up in it themselves. Things got a little stagnant when Glass stepped off the stage for about 10 minutes while Kath entreated the crowd to some of the instrumental montages such as “Magic Spells.” When Glass returned, she was smoking a cigarette that she then tossed into the crowd before throwing herself to surf in it.
Their experimental, new-wave style of electronic music was particularly good during their performance of “Xxzxcuzx Me,” with the image of Kath pounding demonically on his synth while Glass jumped around the stage like a raging lunatic you didn’t want to stare directly at. Crystal Castles is uniquely aggressive, confrontational, and stylish to the point of viewer anxiety: and certainly isn’t for the faint at heart.
Commodore Ballroom
May 29, 2009
DJ extraordinaire Ryan Raddon, aka Kaskade, knows how to make people dance. The Chicago-born DJ/ producer for Ultra Records vamped up his newest full-length album The Grand, also playing a full and varied set-list touching on his entire six-album discography. In collaboration with Deadmau5, Kaskade showed an unmatched lust for life with the song “Move for Me,” which hit number one on the Billboard Dance Chart and stayed there for two weeks. Silver tinsel confetti streamed from the stage during “Devil On My Shoulder,” topping up the excitement of the well-sweaty dance floor.
Kaskade tears it up like a strobelite obsession
A godlike moment
Raddon’s style is cultivated, seasoned, and smoother than velvet. Most DJs sound great on vinyl but when push comes to shove, the live set can be difficult to deliver with the same finesse. Kaskade spins out some of the fattest, electrifying mixes, but his masterful technique of the turntables makes it seem easy through his laid-back, unaffected, and coy style. While the Commodore was built in the 1920s and is considered a testament to old-school Vancouver history, it was decked out with huge screens playing choppy-styled stills of human outlines doing mundane things, the lights and bass lines throbbing to his deep house anthems. With Kaskade smiling, spinning between the screens, it made the whole universe seem a little less unmerciful and gave it a little more meaning.
Chris Taylor, lord of thine Rickenbacker
Grizzly Bear
Commodore Ballroom
May 26 2009
Grizzly Bear: "can't you feel the knife?"
Try to imagine the cool hipness of the early Walkmen sound, combined with the ethereal sounds and lyrical verbosity of Broken Social Scene, finishing with the power to hypnotize. The Brooklyn-based quartet consisting of singer Ed Droste, the aptly-named drummer Christopher Bear, guitarist Daniel Rossen and the versatile woodwind/bassist Chris Taylor released their third album, Veckatimest on the night of the show. As you could imagine, their sound has evolved tremendously. Their debut Horn of Plenty, had their trademark layering of sounds, but only showed their atmospheric-building talents at their infancy. Since 2004, their power of transcendence has matured in all the best ways, as one can tell in songs such as “The Knife.”
Veckatimest takes these powers to capture psychedelic bliss, but with a slight acoustic roughness and a touch of heartfelt nostalgia for a warmer generation.
It was that magical time of the year again, and luckily for us, this year’s Juno Awards were celebrated in Vancouver city.
JunoFest, a two-day music extravaganza, hosted over 100 bands at 19 venues across town, from dodgy little holes in the wall to bigger places and bigger capacity. It featured national and local talents from all over to perform a myriad of styles ranging from country, lo-fi indie pop, electronica, and even some metal.
On Saturday, I went out to the Biltmore cabaret to check out Hannah Georgas and Jon-Rae Fletcher, two very promising Vancouver musicians who know how to get the crowd excited.
Hannah Georgas’ music is delightful. Her sound is quirky, indie-folk based but also has a great rock twang to it as well. She was recently featured by CBC Radio 3‘s Breaking New Sound, where she was described as “whimsical and yet extremely serious.” While her voice is soft and brings to mind the shyness of Emily Haines, her determination and fiery look to dominate the folk pop indie scene is dangerous.
Jon-Rae Fletcher came on right after, and entreated the crowd to a more country-styled kind of folk. Raised in rural Alberta, Fletcher’s voice is eerily haunting and lonely sounding, much like the cold vastness of his home.
Enjoy the slideshow, we wish you could’ve been there…