- Nuits Sonores was originally conceived as an antidote to Lyon's clubbing problem—as Ryan Keeling recounted in RA's feature on the festival last year, the city's nightlife was beleaguered by early curfews and police raids until the socialist mayor Gérard Collomb took office and struck a deal with local promoters. The idea was to create a festival that would be a shot in the arm to the city's nightlife, thereby making Lyon more appealing for students and other young people.
Hanging out at the festival more than a decade later, it's clear the plan has worked. Nuits Sonores feels like a gift to the city's 20-somethings: four days of DJs and live acts scattered across the city, mostly at ticketed events in two huge official venues, but also at various pop-up locations for free. By now it's a huge draw not just in Lyon but for people from all over France and other parts of Europe as well, luring in a total of 42,950 attendees (and more than 100,000 if you include the 30 or so related parties around the city). Though some serious contenders have popped up recently, Nuits Sonores is, all things considered, the best electronic music festival in France.
The programming is strong without being flashy. Aside from Carl Cox and national hero Laurent Garnier, there are few big name headliners: prime time slots at enormous stages go to artists like Lindstrøm and Todd Terje, who wouldn't normally get top billing at such a huge event. This is possible partly because of the laid back disposition of the crowd. One 20-year-old from Lyon, between bouts of losing his shit to Ben Klock, said few attendees are overly concerned about who's playing—they just come every year as a matter of tradition and are pretty much down for whatever.
That's probably more the case for local students than the people that travel to Nuits Sonores—not least the industry professionals in town for the conference—but it definitely rings true with the general vibe on the dance floor. Everyone seemed relaxed and open-minded, ready to let loose and take in whatever the festival had to offer. No one was overly judgmental of the DJs. And no one seemed to notice when, say, Andrés missed his set due to his records being stuck in customs, only to be replaced by The Hacker.
Incidentally, people like The Hacker seemed to understand this crowd better than many of the international acts. He blew the party up with big crowd-pleasers like "Inspector Norse" and "Blue Monday," just as Laurent Garnier had done earlier in the week with "The Man With The Red Face." For a crowd of university students on a long weekend, that sort of thing is always going to hit the spot.
But there was also no shortage of artsier fare. At the same moment one crowd was throwing its hands in the air for Garnier, another was doing spastic, lurching dances for Diamond Version, who played in the dark at the RBMA stage. They were one of the week's highlights for me, along with Charanjit Singh, the fascinating Bollywood soundtrack composer who made an acid record years before acid existed, and who Caribou booked for his own specially curated stage on the Saturday night.
Most of the DJs seemed unperturbed by the pressures that usually come with playing for a big festival crowd. Klockworks had a showcase during the day at the RA stage, a sprawling indoor space that feels like the concourse of an old train station. The room was bright all day thanks to an enormous skylight, but Klock and DVS1 still played as dark and heavy as ever, and everyone grooved along happily. Faced with the festival's biggest crowd, Prins Thomas lost himself a bit—bangers like "Positive Education" seemed too far out of character—but Motor City Drum Ensemble stayed impressively true to himself, wrapping up the final set of the festival with the same disco tracks he'd probably play at a house party.
Past RA reviewers said they never saw a single stand-out act at Nuits Sonores, which makes sense given the level-playing-field style of the program. But for me there was a stand-out, and to my own surprise it was Disclosure. I'd wandered over to see them mostly out of curiosity—and because of the vacuum effect they'd had on Mathew Jonson's live set. Granted, this was a pretty ideal time to see them—an infinitely huge room with thousands of amped up French kids—and granted, some parts of the act were kind of bullshit—with just bass guitar and drum pads onstage, a good chunk of it was obviously pre-recorded. Still, it looked and sounded absolutely great. The beats felt warm and punchy even in a cavernous space, and their new video component (which apparently debuted that night) was dazzling. These guys are, unsurprisingly, perfectly tailored for the big stage. They even had a bit of stadium rock banter: "This next song is called 'Control'..." (crowd cheers).
If I had one complaint about Nuits Sonores, it's that I wish I had a better handle on what was happening outside of the main venues. There were dozens of parties all week, many of them free and in amazing locations across the city, but it was hard to figure out where and when they were happening. On my way to the day venue one afternoon, I heard Nail's "Til The Feeling's Gone" echoing across the Rhone. After following the sound for a few minutes I discovered a raucous party at the end of a leafy dead-end street where Seuil (who wasn't listed on the main program) was DJing. Someone told me that on the Wednesday afternoon, Recondite had played for the biggest crowd of his life at a similar event. It would have been nice to spend more of the week at this kind of thing. But even that quibble points to how good Nuits Sonores is: there's so much great stuff going on, the only problem is staying on top of it all.