Buku Music Project - NOLA - March 17-18 2012

Avicii has a huge song this year called Levels. I didn't like it at first, but it's so damn simple and catchy. I'll be sure to catch SBTKRT!

Back in my hotel room after day one. Here are some jumbled impressions with possibly incorrect facts about songs played and whatnot while I wait for my pizzas to show up.

The venue is mardi gras world which is about 1.5 miles from the French quarter. I'm staying at the Sheraton on canal so I walked. Getting into the venue was easy, no big lines or anything. The setup was well thought out. One big stage outside and one stage inside a large room. It's easy to walk back and forth between the stages. Plenty of portolets. The food and drinks were very reasonable for a festival: $4-5 beers, water and red bull $3. They did a good job with the food, bringing in people from local restaraunts instead of your standard burgers n shit fare. So there were crepes, BBQ, poboys, fish tacos, even fresh juice. My dinner was an apple carrot ginger juice, since I had a late lunch at Johnny's po boys, a big oyster poboy with red beans and rice on the side. The sound was good at both stages, maybe too bassy on the inside stage though. I was glad I brought my earplugs, it was loud.

The first acts I caught were Gramatik outside and Yelle inside. I wasn't really impressed with either. I thought Gramatik would be more pretty lightsish, instead he is that really "busy" type of electro dub step I don't really like. No room for the synth to breathe, kind of hard for me to dance to. Yelle DJs was pretty weak, felt disorganized. Rockie Fresh was a rapper who came on after Yelle. It was weird, I think his DJ was just playing his album while Rockie rapped over his own vocals on the album. Like when I used to sing master p lyrics in the car on the way to high school when I played the cd.

So the first three acts I saw were stinkers, but then came Avicii in the 7:30 slot. He was the headliner, but booked earlier per his request. I think he was leaving for south america the next day. Really incredible set! Came right out with the Etta James and the Levels button, the crowd went apepoop. The set also included Fade Into Darkness, Save the World, and that song that uses the RHCP other side sample. This set had the best communal experience I had all night. Very high energy.

Next was Holy Fuck. I saw these guys a couple years ago, and they were good then, but are even better now. They are a band, but play very unique sounding electronic music. No laptops though, there are drums, a bass, sometimes a guitar, and a slew of keyboards and knobs and this weird thing they feed film through. They don't sing, but use microphones with effects to make weird vocal noises. The crowd loved it, I loved it.

some friends of mine who went said some of the same things you did. some direct comments were "Aviici was good, but not OMG good. Wiz was fucking awesome, and Diplo KILLED IT!"

i wanted to go with them so bad, but with all the festivals i'm trying to do this summer, it just wasn't financially feasible for such a short fest. glad it's been a good experience, though!