The young band DIIV from Brooklyn New York, was representing … Brooklyn at Filter magazine’s Culture Collide festival, and they attacked their set with a calm fury, which, I am well aware of this, sounds like an oxymoron, but it's the best I can do to describe their impetuousness on stage, doubled by a quietude and detachment in the vocals. Talking about this detachment, it somehow reminded me of Nirvana, and it couldn’t be a coincidence since the band was originally named after the Nirvana song 'Dive'.
DIIV is in fact the solo project of Zachary Cole Smith, a guitarist of the band Beach Fossils – he had indeed a ‘Beach Fossils’ sticker on his guitar – and their sound had nevertheless little to do with the famous grunge band’s own sound – so why did I keep thinking about Kurt Cobain? Rather the music was oscillating between circular guitars, and even krautrock on at least one long song, with faded dreamy vocals alternating with fiery layered guitar-bass parts.
With his hair in the face, his ultra baggy pants and oversized shirt, Smith looked like a grunge resurrection and seemed to be a reluctant frontman, although he engaged himself numerous times into furious jumpy dances with his band mate and guitarist Andrew Bailey during the instrumental parts of the songs. It was actually a constant dynamic interaction, whereas bassist Devin Ruben Perez was contrasting by his total static attitude during the whole show. Smith even screamed a few times, but never went overboard, always keeping the vocals on the dreamy side and the guitars on the hypnotic side, like a sort of dream-surf music invented by a far less frantic Ty Segall.
But they were apparently drawing influences from all over the place, with some gracious and layered melodies and songs either short or very long, then turning into a dense psychedelia between dream and druggy reality. Their set was relatively short, as it was the case for almost all the bands playing at the festival, but they managed to do a Nirvana’s cover – that I didn’t recognize. Their set seemed to be like a long song with little breaks, stretching into different territories, and that’s why their music is quite hard to pigeon hole,… Dream pop? Psychedelia? Krautrock? Shoegaze? Certainly a little bit of all this and more, plus Kurt Cobain’s shadow in Zachary Cole Smith’s peroxide blonde hair.
