- Sors de ce corps! Get out of this body! This call for disembodiment summed up the spirit of the festival taking place at La Gaîté Lyrique, a venue with a growing reputation in Paris's digital arts world. In addition to robotic installations and a multimedia programme, there was a main show on Saturday night featuring live sets from Emptyset, Roly Porter and Bleed Turquoise. The venue's top-tier visuals, which include an impressive system of adjustable wall screens for 360 performances, promised the chance for some out-of-body experiences.
La Gaîté's black hall was the perfect place to try. The space, nestled away inside a grand Second Empire building, is huge and modern, and live electronic gigs have gone down well there in the past, most notably Chloé and Voices From The Lake. The venue also appeals to a different kind of partygoer, those more into dancing in baroque, high-ceilinged bars to music inspired by Autechre or Aphex Twin than queuing to get into overpacked nightclubs. This meant a good crowd turned up for Saturday's show.
Bristol-based duo Emptyset have a history of collaborating with visual artists, from Joanie Lemercier to Marcel Weber. The latter, better known as MFO, had a hand in all three performances at La Gaîté, and though it's a shame he wasn't able to make more use of the technology, the sets were still entertaining. For Bleed Turquoise, Weber's project with Emptyset's James Ginzburg, the visuals overwhelmed the giant screen behind the stage. The psychedelic digital emulsions, reminiscent of the techniques used by The Joshua Light Show, filled the space along with dissonant electronic tones that evoked Tuxedoom, New Order and 808 State. For Roly Porter, the focus was on darker and more ambient sounds, with perpetually shifting cloudscapes combined with lightning, strobe lights and a smoke machine.
"Make more noise!" shouted someone from the crowd, a sign of the heavy atmosphere that was brewing. It was time for Emptyset, who, without reaching a complete climax, delivered the most explosive set of the night, smashing together crawling industrial sine waves and glitchy techno beats. The visuals were more pulsating, with live analogue imagery processed by frequent collaborator Sam Williams in a choreography of interweaving lines. Hectic definitely, but it was all a bit too brief to really get people moving. As for that out-of-body experience, the search continues.
Photo credit /
Quentin Chevrier