The Intonation Music Festival[1] was a blast, at least on the first day (which was all I caught). Four Tet, Broken Social Scene, Prefuse 73, and Tortoise, all in one day (and for only 15 clams!). The weather was scorchin, but the park had plenty of shade. Tortoise was by far the real religious experience of the day, but I should prolly save my thoughts on that for the Post-Rockers tribe.

For all my pedicel/post-glitch friends, I just wanted to say a few words about Four Tet's set, which was in its own right quite awesome and in some ways unexpected. Our boy Kieran has been working hard lately to throw off the dreaded "folktronica" label, as witness the rather heavier sound of his latest "Everything Ecstatic"[2]. Even that hadn't prepared me for the noise thrills involved in his live show. With a rig that included two laptops, he also took full advantage of some sort of live looper to mess things up and create some really insane sounds. The PA was turned up LOUD, too, man. All this came to a peak as he ran through "A joy" toward the end of the set, layering all sorts of fast-moving digi-electro bleeps and squeals into a wild skronk-fest that reminded me of nothing so much as John Coltrane's later, free-jazz works -- only hooked to a machine, and set to a slammin beat. It was kind of in contrast to Kieran's appearance, which was rather dorky in striped polo shirt, big nerdily unkempt hair, and short pants. He wound things up but not down, with a fine groovy run through "As Serious As Your Life" that had some very loose and creative re-slicing of its own. All in all, a much more aggressive set than I thought I was in for. Even given the one-man laptop performance, it had actually more of a 'live' feel than the two-drummer, bass, keys and turntable set from Prefuse that followed. I was really more in the mood for something more laidback and pretty -- but if I leave my expectations aside for a moment and take the show for what it was, I'd have to say one of the best examples of electronic music in performance that I've ever seen.


[1]:www.intonationmusicfest.com/site....html
[2]:www.fourtet.net/site/site.php