Several random factors added to me ending up at the le guess who festival in utrecht, holland last weekend. I was freelancing in Amsterdam and we where planning to hit a party there when my friend got a call from his pal saying that the venue next to him had The Field, Bibio and Dorian Concept lined up that night! As im a long fan of the Field and i hold Bibios Ambivalence Avenue as one of 2009:s absolute best releases.
—I wasn’t aware of Dorian Concepts music at the time. Heard the name floating around however and it was quite the surprise. His sound can best be described as midi juggling of chip and electro based tunes. All in all too noisy and random for me and he had a tough time with the crowd as he got on just as the venue opened. But, the dutch being dutch, things picked up rather fast and he dropped some serious tunes towards the end of his set.
Dorian Concept, taken in the probably only moment he was relatively still.
Someone placed a fake turd on the floor. Massive excitement ensued and a definitive safe perimeter with that.
Next up was Bibio. His tunes are mainly quite ambient and put together with classic drone derived ambient mixed with sampled soul vocals and instrumentals. This live set he played was rather different from that sound. I could only remotely recognize his tunes under all the layers of beats he added. Very much like hearing Deadlus doing his stuff live. It wasn’t what i hoped for or expected for that matter but an all together solid performance in its own sense. Crowd was extremely appreciative =)
Bibio on the decks. Or whatever he used, the angle never permitted me to see the setup.
As a long time fan of The Field i really looked forward to see this live. In many ways they are one of the few acts that makes a worthy replacement of Underworld and their thick repetitive, rythm-driven, wall of sound type of techno. I never knew much about the act it self but they brought 4 people on stage. One base player, a drummer, a vocalist and a what i assume to be the composer on the keyboards and samplers.
The sound did not really work well at first starting of with what i think was the field and the ice. The addition of a live drummer and a base player really changed the whole concept around a bit. It took a while for the sound engineer to fix the base and the vocals sounded horrible. Generally i was pretty disappointed with the whole set but the drummer came around and made the whole show by himself. He took great pride in doing so too but its hard to overstate his part in all this. Pretty hard work keeping that intense tribal rhythm through.
But anyhow, the crowd gave them a great reception and the venue was filled to the brink at that time.
The Field during the end of the set.
Crowd Excitment and the Le guess who logo hovering.