New Forms 2011

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  • Vancouver experimental music institution New Forms entered its 11th year with renewed confidence, after a tenth year marred by technical problems and the nagging feeling of disorganization. This time, though, the festival was set to take over the entire Waldorf Hotel for a three-day, four-room celebration of experimental music and art. In short, it felt like a real festival. With a lineup that emphasized local talent alongside more recognizable guests, the festival had an attractive mix of the promising unknown (or lesser-known) and surefire bets. With two floors of music, bars and dancing—and the hotel proper upstairs filled with artists exhibiting their wares—the weekend presented a lively, thriving art culture that bodes well for an ever-improving music and art scene in a city that too often struggles with restrictive venue and licensing laws. Friday started early with more experimental acts like Seekersinternational and Magneticring, but for this writer the first night was all about the restaurant's surprisingly spacious dance floor. Intriguing local duo Evy Jane—featuring the eponymous frontwoman's smoky voice over smart and suitably dark basswise beats—buttered up the crowd for SWEATSON KLANK (the L.A. producer formerly known as TAKE), who proceeded to unassumingly lay down what ended up being one of the best sets of the entire weekend. Energetically mixing his own colourful and synth-heavy hip-hop with like-minded producers from the entire bass spectrum, it was safe to say most who stumbled into the room during his set likely didn't leave the room until it was over. Irish producer Mike Slott closed the room with a formidable live set, rounding off a nicely hip-hop tinged night that also saw intriguing performances from promising names like Jeremy Ellis (who played a live set of tough, violent funk) and Toronto native and new Hemlock signee Nautiluss. Saturday was all about the bottom floor. The upstairs restaurant played host to a number of live acts, but the downstairs was split between alternately rapturous and challenging bass music in the cabaret, and a reliable night of house in the suitably sweaty basement hideaway space. Local sound design wizard Vincent Parker opened the cabaret with a blinding set of surprisingly dance floor-friendly stompers (culminating in a shower of what might be called post-junglist noise), putting headliner Shlohmo in a rather odd position. The L.A. producer pulled the audience back to the floor with raunchy hip-hop before delving into his grab-bag of bizarre instrumentals and refixes. Transitions were jerky or simply non-existent, and he memorably jammed his unofficial remix of Burial's "Shell of Light" into the middle of the set, suspending dancers in a twilight reverie nicely accented by visuals from Brainfeeder artist Strangeloop (yes, they even flew in people to do the visuals for the festival). Bristol DJ (and one-time Vancouver resident) Superisk played a palate-cleansing set of paradoxically heavy and melodic grime, not the sort of thing you usually get in the city and eaten up by a crowd eager for any kind of dubstep they could get. The house and techno contingent was well-served by the festival as well. Saturday night's BODY party in the Hideaway was the highlight for many who could be found lurking around the next day, featuring sets from Midwest mainstays Marcellus Pittman and Specter, who each played solo sets before a marathon back-to-back that went very, very late by Vancouver standards. Specter's more Detroit-influenced taste was a fascinatingly mechanical counterpoint to Pittman's warm and organic house sound, and the bits of the back-to-back I managed to catch fell in an agreeable medium between those two extremes. For Sunday's daytime parking lot party (appropriately in a rare bout of blazing heat), Cobblestone Jazz members Danuel Tate and Tyger Dhula stole the show with a rousing set of ropy, sanguine house, and Deadbeat closed the festival, melting his own glacial brand of dub techno into a smart mix of bass music and minimal as the sun set. As Deadbeat's ever-present cigarettes glowed in the growing darkness around him, it was hard not to see the weekend as a triumph, both for a now-veteran festival that has had its ups and downs and a city scene constantly dogged by all sorts of issues. It seemed like this year, New Forms went off without a hitch, and it was an inspiring weekend that said a lot both for the bright minds in Vancouver's underground music landscape and an increasingly receptive audience that paints a promising future for the city.
RA