Day for Night 2017 (Dec 16-17)

Pretty lights was actually sick wtf.

Yeah. You won’t see that again. He lives much of the time in NOLA so we see him a lot. This follow the frequency set was about as abstract and high risk of a show he could have put on. It was as off as the analog future set in 2016 at Joy 3am. Damn. Little if any structure and just follow the trip I guess. Crazy day all around. Lots to post. Peace all

So what's the word on that NIN secret make up show huh huh??

Wut? I'm back at my airbnb which has been really weird. I'm Def booking clubQ next year.

I lost y’all at Jamie set. Pleasure meeting everyone!

All you mofos seeing Jamie xx right now. The FOMO is real.

Phone died by 3pm and my cable didn't worn to my backup charger. That storm through NIN was amazing. Yellow stage is one of my favorite environment to just to get lost in with everyone surrounding it.

About to go back to sleep but, here was my day. I got there about 12:20 and they hadn’t started letting people in yet. After about 15 minutes they finally opened the door. We were going to that robot exhibit early but it wasn’t open yet. And they didn’t open upstairs until 2, so we just said fuck it. I got some food and went to True American. They were a 6 piece rock band from L.A. featuring 3 guitars, bass, drums and a backup singer. They were fairly decent. I went to some of Deep Cuts which was pretty cool band playing different types of music with more of a jazz and Latin edge. I then went to of Montreal. They reminded me of the Flaming Lips if they were a bit more 80s sounding and more pop. It was a freak show which a lot of the crowd was appreciating. I thought the visuals and screen work were really good, and the music was decent enough.

Next I went to Princess Nokia. She opened up with Tomboy and proceeded to turn that set into a celebration of womanhood. She mostly ignored the guys in the crowd, though after crowd surfing, she passed me by at VIP rail and saw me giving her the power fist so she gave me one back. My daughter is a giant fan, and she loved the set. I’m glad to have seen it too.

I then walked by and listened to about 15 minutes of Faten Kanaan on keyboards. It was haunting and very beautiful. Better than I guessed, so I stayed there until the end. Then I went to Lil B. I had seen him before, so I knew it would be fairly good. He paid tribute to most everyone who is someone on the Houston rap scene. An abbreviated Suck My Dick Hoe was the highlight of the set for me. Based God was in a good mood and worked very hard on stage. The 3 Dallas trolls on the Houston crowd was funny. He eventually threw the crowd his sunglasses.

I had hoped to catch some of Pussy Riot and luckily I got across the festival in time to see 20 or so minutes. Set was wild and way way better than I would have guessed. Highlight for me was Make America Great Again. They were literally going insane, and the sound was surprisingly good. Crowd was very into this set with a lot of people walking away at the end talking about how great it was. Yeah, that was a big surprise. If anyone has the chance to catch them at a festival set, I’d recommend going to see them. Anarchist, anti-bullshit punk rock themes and messages. I had about 20 minutes to kill, so I walked back inside to hear some of Demdike Stare. Sound quality was great, and it was loud. Very cool and kind of industrial but it still had melodic parts.

Next I went to Pretty Lights. It was just Derek up there and he played live electronic with his synthesizer. I couldn’t help thinking what a high risk set that was. But if you are going to take a chance, Day for Night is the right festival to do it. Even though I’ve see him a ton of times and watch most of his shows anyway because he streams them, I hadn’t really seen him play anything like this before. Luckily crowd was still into it even if it didn’t include your favorite PL songs or covers. It was unstructured, and very forward of a set chasing a sound and frequency. It doesn’t rate anywhere near any of my favorite PL shows yet it was really bad ass. Props out to him for taking that chance and to the crowd for staying with it. He didn’t really give the crowd anything remotely PL until the final song.

Then I went to Forest Swords. Because they moved all the outside sets up to try to beat the rain, I was now going to be able to watch the whole set. Music was very beautiful and featured the main guy along with a bass player. I dug the fuck out of this. I went over and payed respects to James Blake for about 10 minutes. Production sounded great even though I’m not a big fan of his music. So I was glad to be able to get over there.

Next stop was Laurie Anderson. This was my top show going in. I had watched a recent show, and I was sure she was going to do what amounted to chamber music. I was fine with that. Instead she mostly told stories and worked in some synthesizer, violin and sound backing for the stories. She only played about 3 songs total but I stayed the entire set. She earned my respect 3 decades ago, so I was going to take whatever she was giving. She’s a genius and excellent communicator.

Next up was Nine Inch Nails. I was pretty excited to see this. It poured a bit, and I was fairly soaked. It wasn’t really loud enough considering, but it sounded great. About 9:15 I walked across the whole red stage crowd to go take a leak. As I got out of the portolet, it was raining even harder, so I ended up going right up those stairs by the yellow stage and figured I would go upstairs and roam some of the art exhibits. I did that for about 20 minutes and was like shit, I forgot Lanois and Snares was on. That was a Top 3 set for me coming into the weekend. But once they changed the schedule it was fully conflicted by NiN. So I blew it off mentally and just forgot about it. Luckily I was walking toward the Blue Stage and heard it and was like oh fuck, I need to be at this. So I was fortunate and got 20 minutes of that. The music was incredible.

We went over to see Bjarki but there was some kind of issue. So after waiting 15 minutes or so, I left to go back to the blue stage for Jlin. She is a beats artist, and while her studio shit is okay, it sounded much better and more energetic live. She interwove a lot of percussion into everything as that’s what she does. Set was better than I would have guessed. Finally I went to see G Jones. I knew I’d work in some times to walk back and forth to Jamie xx. I’ve seen G Jones a few times before, and he’s one of my favorite up and coming producers, but I found the set lacking. It had lots of good parts, and if you were within the yellow stage’s encircling screens, the sound quality was great. But I was a bit disappointed. He did get in an Aphex Twin tribute, and that was cool. I walked over to Jamie and he was just playing some house shit at the time, so I only stayed a few minutes and walked back to G Jones. I stayed there to the end and walked over to catch the last 10-15 minutes of Jamie which was really great. Finally we walked outside and couldnt hail a ride so we ended up walking across town back to the condo. It was about 25 blocks but other than hurting my feet, I was fine with it.

Really great day, and the crowds got to be pretty substantial late in the evening. I was very glad to see so many people turn out, because I don’t want Day for Night to fail due to apathy. It’s just too fucking cool to not be appreciated. Regardless of discounts or whatever they got people in there. I think once almost anyone with an open mind goes to D4N, they would appreciate it. I had a blast, stayed mostly between buzzed and fucked up all day, but never got out of hand. One supervisor banned me from VIP (I got comped plus) but she said I couldn’t go in after I left to throw out some trash. A lady with a “God Mode” laniard came over as I was explaining to her that the Plus was access to VIP without free alcohol, That was the point. God Mode pulled me back in and apologized stating that it was the intent but someone fucked up the color coded poster. The supervisor reminded me of a female John Candy from Vacation. “Uh, no one informed this office...”. Haha. I wasn’t being a dick about it, and it turned out that we got free booze anyway so I tipped the fuck out of the bartenders all night. I’m going to get another hour of sleep then I’m rolling over there and planning to try all the food I intended to eat yesterday. Haha. Feet hurt, but I can’t wait!

That was a really really great festival day. Super pleased with all my choices. Highlights were Venetian Snares x Lanois, Bjarki, Roni Size, and Lil B.

D4N improved everything this year. Crowd flow, sound at stages, everything is better. Like Rothric said it's like they read inforoo and implemented all the changes we suggested.

Yeah, to that point everything was better except visually the red stage not being in front of downtown. Crowd flow was great. The yellow stage is cool and it was perfect they opened those doors this year to the back bathrooms. The one laser web thing was pretty cool too. People were just sitting under it, I don't think there was a square inch of floor available.

Sound was mostly good but you could move around and get different effects. You have to be in that circular zone at the yellow stage to get the right volume. And if you stand in front of the ground speakers pumping bass to the front right of the red stage, you can feel it. I didn't like that the Blue stage was tucked back in that alcove and would have preferred to see it backing up to something because there are already limited sight lines with the support columns. Food is in 3 different areas, and I never had to wait to get to a bathroom or public bar. Looking forward to getting motivated as first drink is going down to kill the hangover. Gotta go run through my schedule again.

I'll be the dissenter and say we thought the sound came off really weak three different times in our fest path-plan yesterday.

1st - Walking up to Cardi B, we could barely make out what she was saying until we got to the soundbooth - the music was very low, especially for a hip hop show, and the crowd seemed not very hyped to match it.

2nd - inside for Laurie Anderson. We were two-person row from the rail, so we heard great. But as we left halfway through to get a good spot for NIN, the sound got significantly weaker each yard away. The walking traffic/crowd noise was stronger than her just past the sound booth, drowning her out. You'd figure they'd want to draw more people to the stage by turning it up to 11, yeah?

3rd - NIN. We were dead center about 25 yards back from stage. It went hard, but I was expecting to be blown away by the bass from that standpoint. I'm guessing the city has them on a strict decibel-level limit?

Not to give a small smear on the fest - yesterday still confirmed it's my all-time favorite. I'm already hyped up for 2018 - I'll be jumping on that pre-sale as soon as I see it.

Just some screens with soulwax images and their mix on loop. Not really a place to spend much time tbh

They have some random buffer music though that’ can be unexpected. It’s more of a night thing, but it is pretty cool. We watched a great keyboardist up on the Heiniken area and noticed they routinely put people up there after red stage sets. Lots of the rest of the fest bumper music is great. They played some Minutemen yesterday, so I was happy about that. Also the blue stage has great progressive phrases every now and then. From Fuck Trump to random facts or shoutouts to the artists. I don’t want today to be the last day.

KHOU estimated 20,000 last night. That’s fucking great.
www.khou.com/mobile/article/entertainment/despite-storms-20k-music-fans-enjoy-day-for-night-festival/285-499936139