- Lyon is widely considered the food capital of France, or even Europe. Its bouchons—tiny, modest eateries—are full of people tucking into Lyonnaise dishes, a good number of which involve imaginative uses of pigs' entrails. These recipes, passed down through generations, are a source of local pride. Much like the city's cuisine, its electronic music festival, Nuits Sonores, relies on a few key ingredients. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, it happens in direct collaboration with local authorities. (Gérard Collomb, Lyon's mayor since 2001, was influential in getting it off the ground.) Second, it uses different venues each year, which keeps things fresh. And it takes advantage of the annual Ascension Day holiday, allowing it to stretch out for four or five days. Add routinely quality programming and an up-for-it crowd, and you can understand why Nuits Sonores is one of Europe's best electronic music festivals.
This year the action centered on the Hotel De Region and the nearby Ancien Marché De Gros, a gritty, industrial-looking area with three halls primed for festival use. Next-door was Maison De La Confluence, which hosted a string of free parties, while down by the Saône, La Sucrière hosted official daytime events. Ancien Marché De Gros hosted several back-to-back sets on the first night. They took place in Hall 2, a rectangular space with a huge, 50-metre wide canvas that projected sweeping, wide-angle clips of natural settings—African plains, tropical forests, ice-capped mountain peaks. Axel Boman and Roman Flügel went back-to-back here, and they were an odd couple in more ways than one—Flügel the learned academic with a jacket and flecks of grey in his hair, Boman the cheeky student bouncing around behind the decks. Though it had some high points—"Rose Rouge," a rowdy response to "Late Night Jam"—their set never quite caught fire.
Up next, Motor City Drum Ensemble faced off with Laurent Garnier. Garnier is a staple at Nuits Sonores, and seeing him in a different context seemed to please older locals. They gave each other a bit of breathing space, mixing three tracks each at a time. The result was a smoother ride, with MCDE's high-tech jazz softening Garnier's balls-out rave tracks.
The stage at Maison De La Confluence championed Glaswegian music throughout the festival. Thursday's programme was the most enticing, thanks to Golden Teacher. The six-piece band, spawned from Glasgow's much-loved Green Door Studio, are kind of a throwback—their racy punk-funk has already invited comparisons to the usual cast of New York no-wave acts. Live, they're exhilarating. Combining two or sometimes three vocalists, with a frenzy of dancing, percussion and arpeggios, they had the audience stomping to their loose-yet-robotic beat. A DJ set from Optimo followed. This was an appropriate move, as JD Twitch's label has been instrumental in showing the world Golden Teacher's charms. Their selections were, of course, all over the shop—Special Request's remix of Tessela's "Hackney Parrot" pitched down to a gurgle, Jeff Mills' "The Bells," Prince's "Erotic City," unidentifiable afro-funk—yet as each track wove into the next it all made total sense. Over at La Sucrière, Nina Kraviz spun tough, acid-laced techno. And though they didn't pull much of a crowd, it was fun to see Finders Keepers founders Andy Votel and Doug Shipton work their way through a stack of weird 7-inches.
That night Nuits Sonores hosted Le Circuit—13 satellite events in clubs across the city, each charging just €3 entry. I went to Garage Citroën, a—you guessed it—former Citroën garage. Inside, Moritz Von Oswald sat in front of his laptop, working his way through an imperious selection of bumping house tunes. The atmosphere was raucous, but I had no idea that just a couple of hours before the crowd's fervor had spilled over into something more ugly. As Peter Van Hoesen later revealed on his Facebook page, his Sendai performance with Yves de May was cut short after they were subjected to an "open display of aggression and hostility" that saw water bottles thrown on stage and Van Hoesen hit in the head with a coin. The behavior is obviously unacceptable, and the festival needs to look more closely at its programming to avoid this kind of thing in the future—booking an experimental act in this slot was a poor move.
The following night the festival returned to Ancien Marché De Gros. The schedule kicked off with a live set of loping and at times surprisingly heavy hardware techno from local artist In Aeternam Vale, AKA Laurent Prot. I know Prot's work from a couple of excellent reissues on Minimal Wave—he's based in Lyon and was making proto-techno in the city as long ago as 1983. His presence was a timely reminder of the importance Nuits Sonores places on championing local talent. Hall 1 offered a smorgasbord of live acts—Oneohtrix Point Never, Fuck Buttons, Robert Hood. Though Fuck Buttons remain an excellent festival act, Hood was the highlight. He uses every sound—hats, snares, kick drums—as a weapon with which to batter the crowd into submission.
The most smiles I saw on Saturday afternoon were from the couple of hundred people gathered around the outdoor Esplanade stage at La Sucrière, where NTS regulars Bahamian Moor spun boogie records. Later, at Ancien Marché De Gros, Vakula Jedi-mixed his way through classic and exotic house records in Hall 3. Actress played live and seemed intent on clearing the floor, though most people stayed. In Hall 2, Efdemin was typically on-point with his selections, while Agoria, one of the festival's founders, played techy house to a rapt crowd. Rødhåd followed, and duly delivered the festival's most powerful DJ set.
A closing appearance by Kraftwerk on Sunday night was probably Nuits Sonores's biggest booking to date. I've seen their 3D show performed outdoors and the effect had been kind of lost, but inside Halle 1 their sound was booming and the visuals worked a treat. ("Radioactivity," reworked as a post-Fukushima protest song, drew the biggest response.)
The lineup for Nuits Sonores continues to be a hot topic among locals. They debate it like they're debating the health of their local football team—"is Garnier playing again?" Naturally, the organisers can't please everyone. But judging from the warm smiles and excited chatter in the air as the crowd filed out of Hall 1 one last time, it felt like they're pretty damn close.
Photo credits: Kevin Buy (crowd), Brice Robert
(Motor City Drum Ensemble & Laurent Garnier, smoking girls)