Big Beautiful Block Party makes loud, sweaty debut
He summarized the scene in song, his soft-scrubbed voice floating on the night air like the clouds on the massive video screen behind him.
“I dance with you back-to-back / In the black/ With loud music on,” sang Marc Gilfry, frontman for Los Angeles electro-pop duo Neil Frances during a set-opening “Like A Dream,” encapsulating the moment over robust, burbling bass lines and splashes of funk guitar.
Fifty minutes later, at the conclusion of his band’s performance, he surveyed the crowd of thousands before him, his spirits as bright as his bleach-blonde hair.
“What a party!” he beamed.
A Big Beautiful Block Party, to be more precise.
On Friday, this new off-shoot of the Life is Beautiful festival, which is taking the year off with plans to return in the future, debuted in a large lot adjacent to The Plaza parking garage.
The vibe: no to the frills; yes to lots of boogieing on concrete.
While its parent festival engulfed 18-blocks downtown with a mix of art, food, silent discos, flaming Skeeball machines and other attractions, the Block Party’s a more stripped-down, dance music-centered experience.
Aside from a chill-out area with glowing, 15-foot-tall pillars topped with disco balls and a vendor’s village where various liquor sponsors hawked tequila out of VW buses and hosted games of booze pong, this one was all about the music, performed on two stages right next to each other with no overlapping sets.
The line-up offered a mix of DJ-producer and live band performances, the heat of the day lacquering early birds in sweat during Spanish DJ John Talabot’s equally transportive and concussive house music set, complete with some old school scratching and cinder-block-chunky beats that registered in your sternum.
He was followed by LP Giobbi, where the classically-trained jazz pianist took to a keyboard on stage from time-to-time to underscore her propulsive, percussive dance music with piano lines. Her set was like the waterfalls featured in her visual display, washing over you with a mix of beauty and force.
Closing the night was a DJ set from Jamie XX, also a member of British indie rockers The XX, who delved heavily into his new record “In Waves.” Album highlight “Treat Each Other Right” set an exuberant tone with its sped-up female vocals and feel-good boosterism as Friday night turned into Saturday morning.
And then there was James Blake who came with a mix of both electronic dance music and live instrumentation, flanked by a drummer and a guitarist, often singing with his eyes closed, his lilting voice penetrating a dense wall of sound like flashes of lighting illuminating dark, overcast skies.
Really, though, the evening belonged to Parisian duo Justice, whose maximalist electro is to electronic dance music what a monster truck is to a Toyota Corolla. This was beefed-up disco best served with a neck brace, backed by a billion-watt (or so it seemed) light show that’ll have us seeing spots for a fortnight.
Their 75-minute performance was breathlessly delivered and ecstatically received, an expulsion of energy on par with the splitting of an atom.
There was a time when rockers viewed the disco crowd as mortal enemies, viewing the music with enough disdain to implode records at major league baseball ballparks.
Justice is what happens, though, when those disco kids become the rockers.
Fifteen minutes into their set on Friday, a train roared by on the tracks just next to the festival grounds.
It was hard to tell what packed more locomotive thrust, the box cars bustling by or the two French dudes on stage.
On Saturday, the fest hit its first snag when Toro Y Moi’s performance was delayed for nearly an hour due to technical difficulties. He eventually took the stage and performed with just a guitar for 10 minutes or so. “I feel like Ed Sheeran,” he quipped, later offering to DJ at a local club to make amends.
Next came an abundance of funk, first with Thundercat’s bass-driven repertoire, which alternated between full-on jazz freak-outs, his fingers racing up and down the fretboard of his bass as if jet-powered, and feline-influenced R&B.
“Shout out to being an orange cat,” he said after “The Orange Cat’s Special Time Outdoors.” “You’d think I’d writing these songs about girls. Nope.”
And then there was British neo-soul troupe Jungle, who merged Bee Gees-style multi-part harmonies, doo-wop undertones, a touch of garage and a little jazz flute into an equally sensual and incendiary set.
The night — and the fest itself — culminated with the raw-lunged howl of LCD Soundsystem, whose explosive showing was the musical equivalent of introducing a lit match to some kerosene. With frontman James Murphy working himself into a lather on the mic, the band brought a punk rock snarl to the dancefloor, guitars and analog synth roaring in unison.
It was a command performance that knocked onlookers on their heels.
“You wanted it tough. But is it ever tough enough?” Murphy wondered in song during “You Wanted a Hit.”
“No, nothing’s ever tough enough,” he added knowingly. “Until we hit the road.”
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram.