Nuits Sonores 2014
Every festival needs a great lineup, but it helps to have a great story too, and Les Nuits Sonores has a doozy.
Once upon a time, not so long ago and under Conservative rule, Lyon suffered from a stifling curfew that meant no club opened later than 1AM, and any other enterprising parties risking a further few hours would often suffer a rather brutal shutdown at the hands of local police. After being voted into office, the new and Socialist mayor Gerard Collomb enjoyed a boozy night out that led him to being persuaded by enterprising local DJs to give a dance music festival a shot, hoping to reestablish the city’s credentials with young people locally and beyond.
Over a decade later, and Collomb remains comfortably in office, from which he can observe the vast success of his gamble. In 2013, Les Nuits Sonores welcomed over 100,000 attendees to it’s main four day event, associated conference and various city-wide events. Moreover, it feels like a good natured celebration of the city and it’s aspirations, lacking the corporate humdrum that belies similar festivals. DJs and politicians may not seems like natural bedfellows, and whilst it’s too late for Nick Clegg to garner a few votes by resurrecting London’s Bloc Festival, in this instance, the result is somewhat inspiring.
The second largest city in France, Lyon enjoys and endures a relationship with Paris seemingly not too dissimilar to that between Manchester and London in terms of living costs, opportunities and even an overpriced two hour train ride between the two. However, it has a distinctly Southern European feel in comparison, especially throughout it’s vast ‘Old Town’ and alongside two rivers, the Rhone and the Saone, that weave through the city. Once, it’s principal industry was silk; now, as one of the leading innovative cities in the world, it’s software and video games. Nuits Sonores is accompanied by the Futurelab conference of digital culture, a delegates discussion on such things for those bold enough to roll out of bed after a 6AM finish.
Nowadays located on the outskirts of the city centre, festivalgoers quickly become much accustomed to the vast, modernist ‘Le Confluence’ mall adjacent to the site. With a physical design almost taken straight out of ‘Her’, it’s a particularly impressive and slightly unnerving heart of the local regeneration; a shopping centre as lifestyle experience, where the restaurants generally fail to follow French cultural norms and artificial bird song is fed over a bridge traversing an industrial railway line that thunders through the middle. It’s strikingly popular, and completely at odds with the few thousand European teenagers losing their collective mind just a few thousand metres away.
Not that the city planners are anything but proud of Les Nuits Sonores. In fact, unsurprisingly, local leaders and officials are out in force for the first night of the festival to catch Darkside and ensure the hot food concession is well stocked for Crepe mix. When the only snag is hit – poor planning leads to a potentially dangerous crush of attendees arriving en masse – the situation feels less hairy in the knowledge that those in charge are around to keep things in check. Indeed, the entry system is quickly amended, and when Laurent Garnier loads in his USB a few hours later in front of thousands of partygoers and pockets of smiling officials, the hiccup quickly fades from memory.
Present and charismatic as ever for the first few days of the festival, Garnier remains France’s unofficial ambassador of techno, although ones suspects few would contest him being presented with an actual plaque. However, never known to rest on his laurels, Garnier (as he’s now simply and effectively billed), instead partook three hour marathon with the potentially odd pairing of Motor City Drum Ensemble. As one of the top 10 most charted artists in history on Resident Advisor, the Stuttgart native is a well established name in alternative dance music, but perhaps not as suited to a huge stage as his accompanying selector. Nonetheless, their two styles blended fairly seamlessly, with Garnier delivering some real big room show stoppers in the final hour whilst forfeiting little in the way of texture or variety.
Indeed, variety is perhaps one of the key selling points of Nuits Sonores. Whilst a very French blend of electro and techno provides the pulse of the festival, the programming is relentlessly forward thinking and has almost entirely shifted from the somewhat ear-bleeding electro house of the Ed Banger era that emerged out of Paris throughout the noughties. Lyon itself is a young and prosperous city, with a huge university population and a strong arts scene. By and large, the tens of thousands that flock to the festival each year remain credibly open minded, meaning the likes of Fuck Buttons and Jacques Greene pull no punches in front of vast audiences, whilst US indie rock acts such as Dum Dum Girls essentially find themselves warming up for a set of slow motion acid and techno from Daniel Avery, without the demographic in the room noticeably shifting at all.
By neatly dividing into ‘Night’ and ‘Day’ segments, much like it’s big Spanish cousin, Sonar, Les Nuits Sonore is also refreshingly determined to make it’s mostly electronic output more encompassing event for even those not inclined or legally able to get lost in the strobes until 5AM. No wonder teenage girls in Lyon rush with excitement to get to the front for Laurent Garnier; their younger brothers and sisters can be already be found bouncing around to the likes of Dixon and Wooden Shjips earlier in the day. In fact, for even younger sets of sensitive ears, there’s ‘Mini Sonores’, an annual Saturday dancefloor and arts event just for children and their parents, featuring art and DJ workshops, and soundtracked by techno and house just as pumping as anywhere else during the festival.
Each year, Nuits Sonores collaborates in part with another European city with similar cultural ambitions, and 2014’s event saw the honour fall on Glasgow. Involving themselves with some of the city’s foremost cultural institutions such as Glasgow Art School and, of course, Optimo, this exchange no doubt lead to ambitious dialogue in the city’s bars and conference rooms, but for most, it simply meant several brilliant afternoons drinking and dancing for free at Le Maison Du Confluence. Golden Teacher’s leftfield post-punk disco act, laced with a hint of cabaret, proved to be the biggest hit with the locals, whilst in the shade, ‘The Hall of Flowers’ cinema screened short films and music videos from the city.
The festival’s nightly segment takes place at the Ancien March De Gros, an abandoned industrial outlet that has yet to feel the brush and sheen of nearby redevelopment, affording it a unique and dystopian atmosphere that feels urban but distant. In contrast to festivals that throw thousands at making their tents and stages feel otherworldly or mysterious, the package here arrives surprisingly fully formed. Stage 1 is vast, tall and indebted to brutal amounts of exposed steel, whilst Stage 2 stretches on for hundreds of metres, it’s exterior lit with guiding neon, reminiscent of dodgems at a funfair. However, it’s Stage 3 that takes le biscuit in terms of sheer atmospherics. An ex-factory building that appears to have been literally ripped in half and ravaged by age, artists perform to compliment a background of smashed and damaged windows, the soft orange hew of the nearby remaining industry on the river creeping through. On the first night, hundreds of hooded disciples arrive at 3AM to catch an increasingly rare live set from Dutch synth wizard, Legowelt. As he rips through just a portion of his near endless back catalogue in studious form, it’s not hard to get the feeling he could easily be persuaded to play all night, given the perfect backdrop.
Throughout the event, surprisingly few fellow Brits are encountered, and in fact, those who are seem to be on stage, enjoying a rapturous response. Primavera and Sonar in Barcelona, as well as the ever expanding collection of Croatian events such as Unknown and Dimensions, have consciously captured the market across Europe, whereas Les Nuits Sonores remains something of a hidden gem; for all the available local beauty and a busy airport, Lyon’s characteristics however fail to include a beach, which might have something to do with it. In the meantime, and with the night events full to nearly bursting, from a fan’s perspective, it’s organisers remain ambitious in the right ways. Whilst Les Nuits Sonores is affectionately viewed by some in the city as something of a ‘hipster’ gathering, its bookers seem to have hit on a formula that doesn’t require a platform for any token ‘big name’. Tensnake, increasingly a commercial radio favourite, is perhaps the best known act, and whilst the likes of Nina Kraviz and Marcell Dettmann are hardly unknown entities or last seen on the cover of Wire, they’re crucially seen as tastemakers with integrity, and even some measure of mystery.
As for Dettmann, it is predictably he who does the most efficient job of tearing Les Nuits Sonores a new arsehole. Closing night one, he performs his atmospheric blend of dark techno with such precision and relentlessness, that if there weren’t a national holiday of rest already scheduled for the following day, it would be safe to assume one was immediately scheduled around twenty minutes into his set. Techno legend Robert Hood, perhaps best known of late for his Floorplan alias, plays a live show that pummels in a similar fashion, his ‘techno as gospel’ belief serving him well in such an epic space.
In a contrast that feels surprisingly blunt given the amount of straight-up house and techno scheduled into the lineup, there’s also a surprisingly pure ‘indie’ aesthetic represented at Nuits Sonores, and one that’s disappeared from many UK festivals, where guitar bands seem to languish in the wake of dance and pop, or thrive in more specialist quarters. No DJ or performer at the festival ever seems dispassionate enough to apply the trite ‘they’re just checking their email’ maxim, but on night two, it is refreshing to quite literally spend time amongst acts like ‘La Colonie De Vacances’.
A consortium of underground rock and noise acts from France, each jamming on an individual platform within the dilapidated surroundings of Stage 3, they quickly cause such shapes and body thrashing amongst the crowd, that even one half of TGNHT, Lunice, struggles to maintain the same intense energy an hour later. The likes of The Black Lips also get a look in on the scuzz, with lead singer Cole Alexander playing his finely tuned obnoxious American in Europe role with his tongue firmly in cheek, although on this occasion, cock firmly in pants.
Closing out the Sunday evening of the festival are Kraftwerk, long rumoured to be gracing the lineup, and allowed the full run of Ancien March Des Gros, because, well it’s bloody Kraftwerk isn’t it? And in 3D, too. The cross-demographic for the separately ticketed show is heartening, featuring the event’s main, young crowd looking exhausted but intrigued, to old punks and wispy bearded intellectual types, all contributing to a sense of palpable anticipation before the curtain drops to reveal one of popular music’s most enduring images, in their reluctant flesh. France of course has it’s own pioneering pair of men-machines, but as long as they’re off hobnobbing with Pharrell Williams, Kraftwerk’s classy live show reckons with all. After days of DJ sets spent wondering, “What’s this?” and dancing regardless, seeing Ralph Hutter gently mouth the lyrics to ‘The Model’ is a genuinely surreal, show-stopping moment.
For a group who, even after forty years, are still largely seen as reluctant and reclusive, Kraftwerk really bring the hits over two hours. Not a moment is wasted and each beautiful, spotless synth is accompanied by huge visuals utilising both archive footage and detailed, occasionally deliberately retro computer animation. The 3D effect is pleasingly subtle, if not redundant unless you’re perfectly head on with the stage, something that the capacity of the venue can’t quite manage for everyone. No matter; the huge bass reminds anyone in the vicinity that the likes of Aerodynamik were intended for discos as much as the archives, plus, everyone’s a winner with a take-home pair of Kraftwerk branded 3D glasses.