On Saturday Day 1, Dirty Ghosts kicked things off with pre and post punk scuzz from their album Metal Moon followed by K-Flay accompanied by live drumming bringing beats and rhyme twisting on the Tunnel Stage.
Few things could ready us for an invigorating performance from The Coup as a live band lead by the mighty Boots Riley along with Silk E. Their performance carried along the power from decades of making populous statements against fascist and/or indifferent establishments, anouncing; “We're chopping heads off here!” before going into their new cut, “The Guillotine”, followed by Silk E performing some solo soul stylings of sung, “can't turn a ho into a housewife” wisdom while spitting some preach.
Grimes brought some dark moods with veiled players and performers and pleased the crowd hits from Visions like “Oblivion”, “Genesis” and other assorted candy. Then we had Matthew Dear rocking a great tambourine to his big atmospheric synths, followed by Toro y Moi who brought afternoon sun, 80s soul inflections as we resisted the urge to yell out requests from his Les Sins side.
Public Enemy got downright militaristic, as things seemed to get heated in the minutes leading up to the performance backstage. After crashing events behind the scenes to get a few sound bites, I noticed the tell-tale Public Enemy hoodies, the men in suits, fatigues; all we knew was we had to get close. In a show of fists for “all the true hip-hop lovers out there”, the event began like a military processional followed by non other than Chuck D and Flava Flav to bring 25 years of “Fight the Power” to the little landfill island in the Bay.
The beats were kept eclective and moving from Araabmuzik, before Porter Robinson blew up a rave of lights and techno thumps from the Bridge Stage. Tycho brought the mood back to a a romantic city-side sunset type of ambiance before The Presets brought us Aussie folk tales backed by big, glittering electronic keyboard sequencing. SBTRKT kept things grooving at the Tunnel Stage before the night's headliner Girl Talk took our favorite, and maybe not so favorite pop jams for one gigantic mashup to top off a sunny San Francisco day in Fall.
