In the 2nd annual LA Weekly Detour Music Festival presented by Goldenvoice, masterminds behind the legendary Coachella Music + Arts Festival, thousands of West Coasters took over the streets surrounding City Hall on Saturday, October 6th turning the area in a powerful dance scene. Similar to Coachella, Detour tends to attract an indie, alternative, dance crowd who are attracted not only to the line-up of course, but also the installations, booths, and atmosphere that make a festival like this unique.
In its sophomore year, headliners such as Bloc Party, Justice, Perry Farrell’s (ultraloaded) Satellite Party, and Kinky transformed the 4 corners of gritty downtown LA into a massive block party. What’s unique is that the city actually shuts down for this event, bringing in people who may never venture into the heart of the City of Angeles, for a celebration of what’s turning out to be a very cool new scene. As part of the revitalization of downtown Los Angeles, more events, art galleries, and even fashion events (such as the BoxEight LA Fashion Week) are being hosted in downtown LA, and like the DUMBO area of Brooklyn, it’s attracting a seriously hipster crowd (see LA Fashion story).
Detour Festival this time had an interesting line-up that leaned towards a music set you’d see at the Sahara dance tent at Coachella. With dance scenes in the City Plaza simply going off to beats from Kavinsky, DJ Paul V., Busy P, DJ Medhi, and Sebastian, then later on the mainstages, Justice out of Paris, and Bloc Party from London, you’d think we’d stepped into Sonar in Barcelona. Only this was Los Angeles. Which is why it totally made sense to have Kinky from Mexico who had one of the best sets of the day—and yes we caught most every act. The irony of Kinky other than the fact that they’re “legal immigrant aliens playing at City Hall” as the lead singer and trumpet player announced, is that they play a combination of dance-floor music, Latin grooves, and guitar rock electronica, not to mention accordion. They’re also much more interesting to look at than Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay from Justice, but of course their set did have an amazing effect as the crowd erupted into synchronized up-and-down dance moves. Clearly, people were there for there for the Paris duo’s beats rather than watching two dudes on computers.
Performers such as Satellite Party had everyone singing “ultra-loaded satellite-parrrtay” that reverberated off the walls of City Hall, not to mention Perry’s commentary on starting a revolution before kicking into a new-school Jane’s Addiction version of “Jane Says.” The old-school, organ-heavy reggae and rock of The Aggrolites had a mixed crowd of people interested in looking for a show, as did The Cool Kids out of Detroit and their rap performance. Representation from Sweden was clear with bands such as Teddybears, Shout Out Louds, and Johnossi, but there was definitely an LA-SF-based representation with Autolux out of Silverlake,Scissors for Lefty from San Francisco, Celebrity Skin from Hollywood, The Aggrolites, Moving Units, Comedians of Comedy, and Satellite Party all from Los Angeles.
Vendor booths rounded out the atmosphere, as well as The Do Lab’slarge-scale installations; Seventh Letter, the art collective of LA graf legends Retna, Saber, and Revo and their video installation on the façade of the Cal Trans building; and Jerico Woggon who used painted polka dots and thin wood sticks with color to compose a massive canvas on hundreds of feet of chain link fencing.
Having an outdoor music festival in the middle of a city is always a cool experience, but in the case of Los Angeles, with music and light shows bouncing off of the white walls of City Hall in an area mixed with the modernity of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and old buildings like the LA Times, the twinkling lights of the Hollywood Hills in the background, and of course police helicopters circling above, it was even more unique. Because for one day, downtown Los Angeleshad forgotten about its problems, and had turned into a giant ultraloaded satellite dance bloc party.
