NGYOFACE just hit us up with his pictures from our One Year Anniversary party from this past weekend, featuring our furry French friend DATA!  This was a super special show for us as DatA was actually the first artist we had ever brought to Edmonton, and of course that show last year was also held at The Pawn Shop!

Thanks for coming out and drinking the obligatory champagne with us and sporting Easy Love swag!  The parties are only going to get crazier from here on out and so we look forward to partying with you for many years to come!

P.S. Look forward to a show announcement tomorrow!!

Big ups to NGYOFACE for shooting these killer pics of another sold out show at The Pawn Shop!

Catch NGYOFACE alongside Chant Media who’ll be on photo/video duty once more tonight at our one-year anniversary with DatA!  Easy Love’s DJ Tron, Optimixx Prime and Miyuru Fernando will be playing some very special sets so don’t miss out!

Just a quick update, you can check out our official photos from this past Friday’s show with LAZRTAG on Facebook or click here for our public album.

Much thanks to NGYOFACE.com for taking care of photo duties, you’ll definitely be seeing those stickers at any show worth going to!  On that note, tomorrow night in fact is the official launch party for NGYOFACE.com.  It’s FREE and on the bill are our friends WARRIOR MUSIC of Tokyoh Records, DJ/designer/blogger extraordinaire STEREOBAIT, and of course our own MIYURU FERNANDO!  It’s sure to be a banger with FREE T-SHIRTS and PURPLE DRANK being served at the bar all night long!  Check out the poster below and click here for the official Facebook event page.

See everyone this weekend, and much love to everyone traveling to Shambhala - drive safe!

Day 3 of Coachella was absolutely insane. De La Soul played a fantastic old-school hip-hop set in the early afternoon, and Club 75 (a dj supergroup consisting of Busy P, DJ Mehdi, Zdar and Boombass of Cassius, and Xavier de Rosnay of Justice) played an obliterating 90-minute set in the Sahara. I caught the last song of Sigur Ros’ Frontman Jonsi’s set, chilled and listened to Spoon and Phoenix (both of whom were fantastic), and then hit up the Gobi-closer Little Boots, who played one of the best sets of the weekend with a spectacular laser show (video below).

Then I saw the Sahara tent-closer, minimal techno overlord Richie Hawtin as Plastikman Live. The visuals were epic, with Hawtin playing behind a massive cylindrical curtain which flashed (pictures and videos below). Overall I found his set lacked energy, and I know I know its minimal but I’ve always found Richie’s minimal dj sets have held up the energy, and I expected the Live show to bring an increase in intensity that would keep the energy up. This did not occur, instead Hawtin brought in deep acid techno that petered out into minimal nothingness, with spans of up to four or five minutes in length without picking up an actual beat at all. The final act in the dance tent at Coachella played to a crowd that did not dance.

Gorillaz closed out the night on the main stage. Their show was apparently cut down to size due to a few guest artists that were stranded in Europe due to the Icelandic volcano eruption which shut down airports, including Mos Def (Vocals on Stylo, Sweepstakes), Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays (Vocals on Dare, “It’s Dare!”), and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. So they didn’t close out the show with Dare as planned, and they didn’t play Sweepstakes, and they had another rapper fill in for Mos Def on Stylo. And they played recordings of the guest vocalists’ lyrics on a few songs, because Snoop Dogg (Welcome To the World of the Plastic Beach) and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien (Clint Eastwood) couldn’t make it.

But did we really expect Snoop Dogg to show up? hahaha maybe if we got reallly lucky, but I feel we were pretty lucky as is. Gorillaz creator Damon Albarn (of Blur) played a hand-piano, waved a big flag around, and sang through a collection of almost all of Gorillaz’ best songs new and old, and the set showcased the animations of Gorillaz’ co-creator Jamie Hewlett on a massive video screen. Damon had two former members of the Clash playing with him (Mick Jones on Guitar and Paul Simonon on Bass). The show included guest performances by Little Dragon (Empire Ants and To Binge), De La Soul (Feel Good Inc. and Superfast Jellyfish) and Bobby Womack (Stylo, Cloud of Unknowing). And Glitter Freeze was Intense. Overall I thought they were fantastic.

-Optimixx Prime

Photos (click the little speech bubble on the bottom left to activate captions)

Little Boots “Stuck On Repeat” Coachella 2010

Little Boots “Remedy” Coachella 2010

Plastikman - Intro - Coachella 2010

Plastikman - Coachella 2010

DJ Tron’s best show of the weekend: 2ManyDJ’s

Runners’ up: Little Boots, La Roux, LCD Soundsystem, Muse, Aeroplane, Wolfgang Gartner

Optimixx Prime’s best show of the weekend: Fever Ray

Runners’ up: 2ManyDJ’s, Hot Chip, Aeroplane, Club 75, Little Boots, La Roux, The XX, LCD Soundsystem

Mosted Played Songs in the Sahara: Justice - Phantom Pt. II (Soulwax Remix), Mr. Oizo - Positif, Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix), Boris Dlugosh - Bangkok

For me, Day Two of Coachella essentially started with Dirty South in the Sahara (Dance Tent), who played a killer set consisting of fairly commercial yet altogether excellent house. We then chilled to the sounds of The XX (I am now a very big fan) before getting crazy for Hot Chip. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of these shows that turned out as we were not super close (for Hot Chip we were really close actually but the lighting/smoke situation was an issue). My little brother saw Classixx (a surprise addition) in the Heineken chill-out tent and gave me a photo to share.

After Hot Chip was Muse, whose lasers and lighting were the most “intense” I’ve seen in my life. Then to the Do Lab for a surprise set by ESKMO! which was super fun, then to the Sahara where we saw another surprise set, this time by South African dance-rap fusion group Die Antwoord.

The cream of Saturday for me was definitely 2manydj’s, who closed out the Sahara tent while Tiesto played on the Main Stage. We got super close for the reported DVDJ Live set, as I am a Massive Soulwax fan (their live show… check out the Part Of the Weekend Never Dies DVD if you haven’t!). Soulwax’ Dewaele brothers (Stephen and David) did not disappoint with their 2manydj’s set, which started with Stephen walking out on an empty stage in front of the RADIO SOULWAX banner with a handheld radio, tuning in to a radio show on the sound system, certainly in reference to David Byrne of Talking Heads (check out their live DVD too hehe). It turns out Stephen is tuning us in to his brother who is DJing on a portable table behind the banner, and who continues to mix as a crew roll the DJ table out onto the stage and begin hooking up cables to feed the lighting on the table. Stephen joins David behind the decks, and once the crew is done their work, the lights go out and the lightshow begins with 2manydj’s mixing DVD’s they’ve created which showcase album art for the current song, which is animated and dances along with the beat, and with special animations during mixing. They played a lot of Soulwax remixes (I remember hearing their MGMT, Justice, 808 State Vs. Human Resource, Late of the Pier, and The Chemical Brothers remixes) mixed with pop and rock songs that were almost all 2manydj’s edits or remixes with booming basslines and technical loops. They closed with Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”.

-Optimixx Prime

Photos (click the little speech bubble on the bottom left to activate captions)

2manydj’s Videos

The first day of the Coachella festival started with some fantastic hip-hop in the form of D.C.’s Wale, followed by a nu-disco inferno ignited by Belgian due Aeroplane (one of the best sets of the weekend for me). Saw some of Proxy and some of Yeasayer who were playing at the same time :-/ both were super good. Then Wolfgang Gartner absolutely obliterated the Sahara tent, leaving little left but rubble so we checked out some live bands in the form of La Roux (most packed crowd of the weekend, she played a robust dance cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb”) and LCD Soundsystem (who only played 2 or 3 new songs and relied heavily on older material), both of whom killed.

After LCD, while most of my friends either stuck around at the main stage for Jay-Z (who was reportedly fantastic) or headed to the Sahara tent for Deadmau5 (whom I was able to catch the tail end of), I moved quickly towards the Mojave tent for Fever Ray. I am a massive Knife fan, and the rare opportunity to see Fever Ray, the solo project of The Knife vocalist and frontwoman Karin Dreijer Andersson, was something I had been looking forward to for a long time.

Fever Ray did not disappoint, and in fact was better than I could have imagined. To be honest, while I enjoy the new Fever Ray material, it is true that it does not live up to the work of The Knife in my mind; the chief reason being that for Fever Ray, Karin left the bouncy dance rhythms of The Knife behind for gloomier, more somber tunes that, while beautiful, certainly do not carry the energy of “Hearbeats” for example.

The Fever Ray show maintained the gloomy mood of the album, with an eccentric laser show, deep dark shadows and fog leaving the masked, fourpiece band (and Karin) shrouded in mystery, a series of elevated lamps that would flash in tune to the beat, and Karin herself shrouded in a massive tribal headdress that gave the illusion of some wild beast. But I did not at all expect the energy, and sheer power, of that show. There are a few bands that are capable of transforming chill tunes on record into the most intense dance party live; Hot Chip has always stood out in my mind, and I will now add Fever Ray to that classification. If I never get a chance to see The Knife, I will be perfectly satisfied having experienced Fever Ray, they brought as much energy if not more than I would expect from The Knife.

Then afterwards I headed to the Sahara to catch the end of Deadmau5’ set, which was very epic (see photos).

-Optimixx Prime

Photos (click the little speech bubble on the bottom left to activate captions)

I have a bit of Deadmau5 video, but posting it feels useless seeing as how all of the official video taken from the sound booth and paired with the high-quality soundboard recording has been leaked to YouTube. I’ve posted a couple of the cooler official video clips below, just copy and paste the name of the video into YouTube’s “search” bar and change the PART number to find the rest of these clips :-)