{"id":1415210,"date":"2023-11-15T17:38:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T14:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1415210"},"modified":"2023-11-15T17:38:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T14:38:05","slug":"5-highlights-from-pitchfork-london-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1415210","title":{"rendered":"5 Highlights From Pitchfork London 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Festival Report<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

5 Highlights From Pitchfork London 2023<\/h1>\n
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Weyes Blood, Fly Anakin, Ryoji Ikeda, and more.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Tara Joshi<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Fly Anakin (Photo by Sam Huddleston)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In its third iteration, Pitchfork Festival London was bigger than ever, taking place across 15 venues around the city, from sticky-floored bars to elegant churches and prestigious old theaters. The realities of the current political moment hung in the air, which many artists addressed during their shows: MIKE shouting \u201cFree Congo, free Sudan, free Palestine!\u201d; M(h)aol imploring people to donate what they could; Yaeji thanking people for making time to see her set during of a weekend of protests. Across six days, the genre-spanning festival demonstrated music\u2019s ability to offer a kind of connective tissue through hard times. Here are some of the highlights.<\/p>\n

Ryoji Ikeda – Barbican Centre, Wednesday, November 8<\/h2>\n

At times, Japanese glitch pioneer Ryoji Ikeda\u2019s set felt viscerally violent. Fittingly taking place within the brutalist architecture of the Barbican, it began with a tinnitus-like piercing ring that crescendoed into white noise, all backed by sharp black and white pixels scattering behind Ikeda like TV static. An audiovisual performance based on his 2022 album, Ultratronics,<\/em> the show moved between an industrial sound and something texturally warmer, at times ambient and others more club-facing. The visuals\u2014data sets wrought into maps, streams of digits flooding the screen, a saturation of orange explosions\u2014added to the sense of apocalyptic digital abrasion.<\/p>\n

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\"Fly<\/span><\/div>\n
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Fly Anakin<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo by Sam Huddleston<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Fly Anakin – EartH Hall, Thursday, November 9<\/h2>\n

The current school of U.S. underground rap might seem at odds with energetic live performance: These are artists reveling in smudged, stoner-y production and intricate, introspective flows, not the sort of hefty hooks and beats you associate with a raucous crowd. Virginia rapper Fly Anakin\u2019s set challenged this notion. Between songs, he did tequila shots and even attempted to see how many push-ups he could do in a row (36, if you\u2019re wondering). As the quickfire bars of \u201cSean Price\u201d flowed out of him immediately after that exercise, he began to laugh at his own vocal control: \u201cI had to hold my breath like a motherfucker! The lung capacity!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Maol\"<\/span><\/div>\n
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M(h)aol<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo by Sam Huddleston<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

M(h)aol – Roundhouse Studio, Friday, November 10<\/h2>\n

The rising Dublin band M(h)aol are a testament to the vitality of Ireland\u2019s current post-punk scene. Their set was thrilling, characterized by easy camaraderie between the four members and their audience. They opened with \u201cLaundries,\u201d a sublimely horrifying track about the infamously abusive womens\u2019 institutions known as the Magdalene Laundries, with lines like, \u201cThe stain\u2005of our secrets\/The stain of those days,\u201d set to taut basslines and sawlike electronics. Their howled vocals, throbbing percussion, and simplistic-bordering-on-absurd lyrics (see: \u201cDogs, dogs, dogs, dogs\/Dogs are full-time job!,\u201d about drummer Constance Keane\u2019s now-departed canine) were all reminiscent of their peers Gilla Band. But there is a decidedly more melodic, haunting side to M(h)aol, most notably in their performance of Irish folk song \u201c\u00d3r\u00f3 S\u00e9 do Bheatha ‘Bhaile,\u201d with bassist Zoe Greenway using a bow to turn her instrument into something menacing and spectral.<\/p>\n

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\"Youth<\/span><\/div>\n
Photo by Matt Lief Anderson<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Youth Lagoon – EartH Theatre, Sunday, November 12<\/h2>\n

There is an almost liturgic solemnity to Trevor Powers\u2019 recent music as Youth Lagoon. His set was heavy with tracks from his latest album, Heaven Is a Junkyard,<\/em> which contends with the pain and loneliness of chronic illness while also embracing the possibility for beauty within it. At times, the singer-songwriter would step out from behind his keyboard and away from his band, kneeling in front of the crowd His meek but transcendent voice curved and quivered on the funereal crescendo of tracks like \u201cThe Sling,\u201d sounding like he was singing from within an empty swimming pool: alone, but yearning for connection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Weyes<\/span><\/div>\n
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Weyes Blood<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo by Kimberley Ross<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Weyes Blood – Eventim Apollo, Monday, November 13<\/h2>\n

\u201cI\u2019m on five different drugs right now,\u201d Natalie Mering confessed mid-way through her performance, before adding: \u201cOver-the-counter ones.\u201d The singer-songwriter behind Weyes Blood was suffering from a cold\u2014though, from the commanding power of her voice and the way she swayed around stage in her glittering cape, illness did not appear to be holding her back. Though Mering mentioned she had been losing her voice the previous day, it seemed that her recovery method of meds, \u201ca Sunday Roast, and a scotch\u201d (the latter two met with a huge cheer from the audience of Brits) had done the trick: her vocal poured over the crowd like liquid gold through an era-spanning set including \u201cDiary,\u201d \u201cAndromeda,\u201d and \u201cHearts Aglow.\u201d Lovers were making out, teenage daughters were dancing arm in arm with their mothers. It was a reminder of the interconnectedness of the human condition, and the beauty to be found in standing together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/features\/festival-report\/5-highlights-from-pitchfork-london-2023\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Festival Report 5 Highlights From Pitchfork London 2023 Weyes Blood, Fly Anakin, Ryoji Ikeda, and more. By Tara Joshi November 15, 2023 Fly Anakin (Photo by Sam Huddleston) In its third iteration, Pitchfork Festival London was bigger than ever, taking place across 15 venues around the city, from sticky-floored bars to elegant churches and prestigious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1415210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1415210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1415210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1415210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1415210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}