The Line Noise guide to the electronic music of Primavera 2024
Primavera Sound kicks off next week, which means a whole load of work (largely in the form of interviews) for me. If you’re around, do come and see us in our Radio Primavera Sound studio, where we have interviews with some fascinating and very Line Noise-friendly artists.
Before that, though, here are my recommendations for electronic music at Primavera Sound, aligned into handy groups. (I have undoubtedly missed off brilliant electronic things, so do let me know in the comments.)
Classic groups
Are Justice a classic electronic music group? I think they might be, with 20 years of filth under their belts. And now Daft Punk are no longer around it feels as if the whole weight of French electronic music is hanging on Justice’s skinny shoulders.
Talking of weight, their live show (Thursday night - well, technically Friday morning - at 1.45am on the Estrella Damn) is set to be enormously heavy. They may have ditched the Marshall amps but, from reports of Coachella, their new live show is a gabber-influenced stomp. If they pump up the rave-addled Generator side of their admirably split personality, their show should be enormous.
Similarly Disclosure. It feels weird to call them classic - they’re still so young! - but their debut album Settle is now more than a decade old and the classic house / UK Garage sound they revived on it has eaten dance music whole, so it will be fascinating to see what they spit out the following night to Justice (Friday at 1.45am) on the same stage.
Joker has made nowhere near the mainstream impact of these two acts. But his purple sound was really important in nudging dubstep towards new, devolved directions in the mid 2000s and songs like Snake Eater still absolutely go off. Is there a classic dubstep revival? Skream and Benga doing shows together would suggest so. Let’s see what Joker makes of it, Thursday May 30 at 10.30pm at the Boiler Room / Cupra stage.
Big!
We all love weird, underground music and Primavera is very much here for that. But don’t you sometimes just want to dance, sing and shout in a huge, friendly crowd?
Well I do. And Peggy Gou - Thursday Night / Friday morning at 2.15 am on the Amazon Music stage - strikes me as the perfect place to do this. Peggy gets quite a lot of grief from dance music fans; but her musical selections are always bright, hook-laden and surprisingly left-field, a definite sweet spot for me.
For Sofia Kourtesis - playing just before Peggy Gou, at 1.10am Thursday night on the Cupra stage - I suspect Primavera Sound could be something of a coronation. Her debut album Mujeres is a fabulous piece of house music that really connected with people on an emotional level - as the best house music should - and this summer will probably be the first time that many people have had a chance to celebrate her success en masse. It could get very emotional.
Teki Latex, meanwhile, is filling the DJ Coco slot, closing the Cupra stage on Saturday night / Sunday morning, from 4.30am to 6am. If you’ve been to Primavera until the early hours, you know the importance of this slot; and French DJ Teki Latex, with his adventurous, eclectic and never overly serious styles, feels like the person to fill it. (Incidentally, he was also a member of TTC, one of my favourite French rap groups.)
New artists
Sometimes you want big and sometimes you want, well, not small exactly but new, intriguing and perhaps even unreliable. Barcelona rapper BB Trickz (Boiler Room, Thursday at 8pm) has only been around for about a year but she has proved a sensation with her eye-rolling sense of humour, surreal flow and general sense of not giving a toss. Locals will be flocking to see her.
I’m a big fan of US rap groups who borrow from UK sounds, so They Hate Change (Boiler Room, Friday night at 10pm) are perfect for me, with their grime-and jungle-inspired hip hop. I missed them at Primavera Weekender last year but they apparently blew the roof off.
I haven’t listened enough to Cairo producer 3PHAZ (Boiler Room, Friday at 1130pm). But what I have heard is both banging and fascinating, as he brings his melodically charged take on the Egyptian Mahraganat and Shaabi sound to the international club circuit.
Heavee plays right after 3PHAZ at the Boiler Room stage in what feels like inspired programming. 3PHAZ and Heavee make very different music; but Heavee’s sunshine take on footwork, tonally light and rhythmically heavy, has a similar feel, of experimentalism worn proudly but lightly.
The red hot new sound of “rock”
Neither Mount Kimbie (Friday night / Saturday morning, 2.05am, Pull and Bear) nor Yeule (Thursday night / Friday morning, 12.05am, Plenitude) are exactly new acts: Mount Kimbie have been around since 2008, when they (like Joker) helped to oversee dubstep’s transition into post dubstep, a horrible name but necessary to describe the genre’s shift into something altogether weirder and more looming. Yeule, meanwhile, reached their third album, with 2023’s Softscars.
In both cases, though, their newest albums showed the artists taking unexpected and very successful excursions into rock music from their electronic bases. Mount Kimbie’s The Sunset Violent marked the transition of Mount Kimbie from long-standing duo into a real live band, drawing inspiration from shoegaze, grunge and lo-fi indie pop.
Yeule’s Softscars draws on similar sources of inspiration, with a heavier emphasis on the US stars of 90s alternative music (think: Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Breeders). I saw Yeule live at the Primavera Weekender 2023 (pre Softscars) and was utterly surprised when they strapped on an electric guitar; but the result was fabulous.
Experimental
Few record labels have managed to tread the thin line between experimentalism and fun like Kode9’s Hyperdub. 2024 marks the label’s 20th anniversary celebration and they are bringing a mouth-watering line up to their Primavera Sound showcase, which takes place in the Warehouse x Dice from Thursday from 10pm to 5am, when Tim Reaper brings proceedings to a beat-smashing, jungle-rolling climax. (He starts at 3.25am, incidentally. Don’t miss him.)
The whole line up is incredible: Nazar live, DJ Haram, Aya live, Ikonika, Kode9 then Tim Reaper. And the Warehouse - yes, literally a car park but it somehow does and doesn’t feel like one (and it will be so full of dry ice you’ll never notice anyway) - is one of my favourite Primavera venues, especially for underground music. But if I had to choose one, I’d go for Kode9’s DJ set, following his absolutely wonderful Unsound appearance back to back with Tim Reaper, in which footwork smashed into jungle smashed into a very good time indeed.
VERY different in tone, but equally fascinating, is William Basinski performing Disintegration Loops (Thursday at 6.30 pm in the Auditori), a rare opportunity to see the US composer perform music from his classic Disintegration Loops series, which was completed at the time of the 9/11 attacks. You may cry; you will almost certainly feel better for it.
Latin club
As Isabelia Herrera pointed out in an excellent Pitchfork piece earlier this year, “Latin club” is a bizarre and frankly redundant term for club music coming from Latin America. At the same time, Herrera does acknowledge that the “Latin club” name “has been useful for some Latin American artists who are trying to make a living from touring, especially when working with European and American industry personnel who have little to no background on these styles”.
So, with a slightly heavy heart, I use it here to round up some of the Latin American electronic music talent playing Primavera.
I am perhaps most excited about the ridiculous back to back to back from Colombian label TraTraTrax that will see Verraco (whose Escándaloo EP was one of the best records of 2023) play with Bitter Babe and Miami’s Nick Léon. Of the three, I have only seen Léon DJ - a fantastically entertaining set at Sónar 2023 - but the idea of this six-handed musical playoff makes me very happy indeed. They close the Cupra stage on Friday night / Saturday morning, from 4am to 6am.
Latineo is a collective “created by queer migrants from Chile in Barcelona” who have apparently been putting on some of the best nights in the Catalan capital. (I say “apparently” because I don’t go out much. I should.) At Primavera, they are taking over the Boiler Room on the closing night, from 12.30am, to bring us SofTT, Amantra, M8NSE, and Safety Trance. To my shame, I only know one of these - Safety Trance, better known as Cardopusher - but I have a feeling this is going to be wild.
So, too, will be the Rio de Janeiro’s DJ Ramon Sucesso, who is playing Boiler Room on Thursday, at 8.30pm. This will, I believe, be his first set outside of Brazil, capping a year in which his profile has ballooned, thanks to his elastically frantic take on baile funk (or “funk”, as I believe Brazilians call it.) His DJ style, like his musical productions, is absolutely over the top, a whirl of stupid loops, bass and hard-hitting drums, that threatens to fall apart at any second but never quite does.
Reggaeton pioneer DJ Playero, on the other hand, has become a Primavera institution. But that is no excuse to skip a legend of Puerto Rican music. He plays on Saturday night / Sunday morning, from 4am to 6am on the Pull and Bear stage.
Intriguing
One of the best things about live music is you never really know what you’re going to get. But there are a few stand-out acts at Primavera Sound that I really don’t have a clue what they are going to be like.
For example, Mica Levi. They have done so much in their musical life, from composing the score to The Zone of Interest to making happy-go-lucky shoegaze with Good Sad Happy Bad that it is pretty much impossible to know what to expect fro their DJ set (Friday night / Saturday morning at 1.50am in the Warehouse x Dice). Other than it is likely to be excellent.
Similarly Jai Paul (Friday at 10.55pm on the Cupra stage). What the hell is the enigmatic, secretive and deeply talented Jai Paul going to be like live? If reports from Coachella 2023 are anything to go by, he will run quite faithful to his recorded work. Which would be excellent. But there is also definitely the possibility for all kinds of weirdness.
DJ Fart in the Club. Of course you want to see DJ Fart in the Club (Saturday night / Sunday morning at 1.45am in the Warehouse) even if you haven’t listened to them. When you find out they are an excellent DJ, capable of stitching together sets of day-glo techno, trance, Eurobeat and more, you’re going to be even happier.
And finally Ángeles, Víctor, Gloria & Javier (Thursday, 4.35pm in the Auditori) whose live set comes very highly recommended by someone within Primavera who I was speaking to recently. The four artists come from very different musical backgrounds - flamenco, jazz, electronic and pop - putting their collective heads together when asked by the FIAS 2022 festival to perform Federico García Lorca's Poemas del Cante Jondo. And it works like a dream of unexpected collaboration. Plus this is your ONLY chance to see them. PS 2024 is scheduled to be their last ever gig.
PS OBVIOUSLY there is also loads of rock music and other things I also want to see. See you down the front for Pulp!
Some listening
Cut me in half and I would bleed a rare combination of 2-step and cardigan indie. Nikki Nair’s Snake EP is, on the whole, a ferociously distorted beast. But on closing track, Catenate, he perfectly dissects the two sides of my soul, coming up with a surprisingly emotional slice of electronic pop, right when you don’t expect it. Next up: MJ Cole remixes Camera Obscura. I also reviewed the EP for Pitchfork.
Nina Emocional is a young producer from Madrid, who reminds me slightly or Line Noise favourite Asra3 in her deconstruction of modern pop sounds. On 4MOR HADA, taken from the new EP Música Linda, the voice flies around in tone, as if Nina is 20 people rather than one, buoyed along by a beautifully despondent piano melody and synth wash, like the saddest experimental pop you can imagine.
Guitars! Emotion! I’m not sure what’s up with me this week. Girl Ultra, aka Mexican artist Mariana de Miguel, brings the indie sleaze on blu, by being actually indie and kind of sleazy, rather than ripping off LCD Soundsystem. Or whatever. That means a shuffling, ultra 90s breakbeat and a guitar lines that sounds like it was taken off a Pavement B side, combined with a shining pop melody.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise - with DJ Holographic
My guest on Line Noise this week was Detroit’s utterly charming DJ Holographic. We spoke about liquid jungle, Detroit parties, country music, shadow work, astrology and so much more. Be warned, Leos (like myself): there’s not good news for out character.
I reviewed Beth Gibbons’ debut (yes it is. Stop arguing) album for Pitchfork. What a record. “These leftfield choices underscore the courageous and subtly unusual nature of Gibbons’ album, which hides its eccentricity behind her deathless voice and sympathetic lyrical insight. Lives Outgrown may have taken agonisingly long to arrive, but it bears the mark of more than a decade well spent, a singular talent reborn in surprisingly spiky glory.”
The Playlists
“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” Yeah, well forget you British-born American conductor Leopold Stokowski. I paint pictures on playlists. This one, with all the best new music from 2024; and this one with all the best new music of the last three years. Please do follow them.