It was like spending eight hours at a concert waiting for the opening band to go on.
In the past four years I’ve been to my fair share of raves in search of teenage (well, 20 something) kicks and for the most part have gotten them, but eight hours at Electric Zoo on Saturday afternoon to evening were enough to make me wonder if the kids were being hyped. I caught three full sets and umpteen bits and pieces and took in the rave ambiance in the bright light of days. The sets ran the gamut and the light of day Zoo was like Maggie May: ” The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age”. When the music is right, you forget everything else, and when it isn’t, you don’t.
David Guetta superstar performed a lazy greatest hits package but it wasn’t unpleasant. Hardwell was the most boring DJ I have seen in years. Both of them played Icona Pop’s “I Love It”. And Araabmuzik created beats on the spots that were easily the best of the day, and, indeed, were much more thrilling to his way to pitter pattering For Professional Use Only, a depressingly mediocre performance by a major DJ.
In 2013 the EDM scene is more and more like those sad creatures who wander the earth with “You don’t have to be crazy to work here but it helps” coffee mugs. I arrived at Randall’s Island around two and began placing the fans into neat little cubbyholes of sad bastard. Bulimic babes with incredible figures and bunny ears round their head, tattooed rough trade boys, all six packs and tats and boys own clubs in Bermuda shorts. The sweet girl slumming, the Molly adherent in her tee and glazed eyes, those who sorta came to dance and those who really came to dance.It was like your least interesting Halloween Parade come to life and I have never been so bored looking down women’s tops in my life. It was about as shocking as Miley Cyrus. And about as interesting.
Just like so many of the performers. Bro Safari, Noisea, Justin Martin Vs Eat Everything, Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike, RL Grimes, Sander Van Dooren, Gazzette -all these people should be opening for support bands at T5. There were stages for dubstep and stages for deep house and while I admit that I spent most of my time in the mainstream mainstage, what I sampled of both didn’t move me much. It would take better ears than mine to find anything but the biggest firebrands fun and there is a level of tedium here that is really quite alarming even if what you get off on is beats and bass. Gazette played “Get Lucky” for fucks sake. The same way every third girl wore a “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” tee shirt, the same way to even a somewhat experienced pair of ears like mine, in the end it all pounds down on the bass and beats. Sometimes the tracks are widened and sometimes the tracks are fattened, but moving from one stage to another it because a strange seamless collection of eat your beats.
The following day, Sunday, Electric Zoo posted this announcement: “The founders of Electric Zoo send our deepest condolences to the families of the two people who passed away this weekend. Because there is nothing more important to us than our patrons, we have decided in consultation with the New York City Parks Department that there will be no show today.” We reported it here and still I don’t feel the drug culture was remotely out of control. Nobody passed out, nobody puking, no public sex, no fights. If anything the entire scene was too sedate, vanilla in the extreme. Obviously dance culture includes drug abuse, so did punk (amphetamines), disco (cocaine). swing was fueled by (illegal) alcohol consumption and the hippies graduated from weed to heroin pretty damn fast (thank you, Vietnam). So yes, ectsasy and dance, we got it. But not enough to cancel Sunday’s performances
So, it is about a community of extroverts and music music music, even on the stages themselves the music is constant. The entire day became one long bass and drums set up with the occasional surprise up their sleeves. Sander mixed in Blur’s “Girls And Boys” and closed out with a “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)”, RL Grimes was all bass all the times and almost made my knees buckle.
But in the end there was no saving the tedium for a non dancer. Hardwell, the Dutch former wunderkind, was just a drag for all his feed me beats aesthetics, he was remixing hits for the most parts. The “I Love It” he fed us was exactly exactly what you knew it was. Overlayed drums over the chorus before he went into a bass driven override. The “Pursuit Of Happiness” was terrible, Steve Aoki had the last word here years ago. And “Californication” well, a good idea not very well communicated.
Araabmusik’s beats were fresh as a daisy and the packed out “Fool’s Gold lubhouse” responded in kind, especially on the best moment of the entire day, a terrific mix of Flux Pavillion’s “I Can’t Stop”.
Meanwhile, the Electric Zoo were becoming more and more schitzoid. The General Admission crowd were bridge and tunnel guidos, the VIP tenants 30 something table service hot shots, and they were all crowded over for David Guetta’s surprisingly early 8pm show. If it had been a 10pm show I’d have left much earlier I was so bored.
And Guetta didn’t disappoint. A new song, was that Dizzy Rascal? Tinie Tempeh? Some English sounding rapper, singing “Rave Hard Play Hard Work Hard” . It says here Neyo but it doesn’t sound like him. It was really good and hasn’t been officially released yet. “Eat Sleep Rave Repeat” is every single thing a pure house cut should be. And “Don’t let the bass getcha” is another Guetta catechism. And between them he worked greatest hits like “Memories” (Kid Cudi AGAIN??) , “Titanium” and “Without You”. I have no idea why David chose to play “I Love It” but if that was obvious Passenger’s “Let Her Go” was a pleasant surprise.
So nothing special, agreed and maybe it is time for Guetta to get a live band behind him and play Arenas. He was the only person this entire day who felt like a main act. Like somebody you’d come to see and nit see to wait before someone you came to see.
The thing about dance is that it is a skeletal sound with no real use except to be moved to and that it does, but it has evolved so much from 1970s New York disco to 1980s Chicago House, to the 1990s Industrial beats scene that it seemed ready to make a creative leap; the mix and match with hip hop felt like a brave new future. This isn’t all about the death of dance culture, if Swedish House Mafia or Armin van Buuren or even New World Punx had performed the entire night might have taken off. So maybe it was just a weak line up. Still, there is something really tired about Dance right this minute, it hasn’t evolved as fast as it should and maybe its moment to enter the mainstream is passing it by. When Daft Punk claimed EDM was in bad shape earlier this year I scoffed at the thought. But they might be right, you know. It is time to move beyond wake and bass.
Hardwell: C-
Araabmusik – B+
David Guetta: B
Electric Zoo Saturday: C-