Festival Nuits Sonores in Lyon; a Nurse With Wound performance
Note before reading: I am sorry, I was not accredited, so I was unable to take any pictures for you, guyz. This is just an article to share my thoughts with you on this event.
We had the occasion to attend Nurse With Wound concert at Les Nuits Sonores, a festival around electronic musics, occuring each year in Lyon, and organised by an association called Arty Farty. You can have tichets for days (3:30 to 9:30 PM) for 3 stages at Les Subsistances, or for nights (9:30 PM to 5:30 AM) at some old factories (Anciennes Usines Brossettes) in the 7th district of Lyon.
The Subsistances were really a nice surrounding to discover:
Most of the artists are DJ, that might be really famous, but we don't really know any of this scene.
Anyway, Nurse With Wound was programmed at the end of the afternoon, a bit aside from the rest of the festival (a stage finaced by redbull at Les Subsistances), with to more bands, the Lumerians (USA rock band of good facture, with some vintage accents) and KXP (a electro/metal band from Finalnd, which was really disappointing). Nurse With Wound played a single pice of 45 minutes, very audible (contrary to a lot of their bruitist stuff) interesting at the beginning but a bit boring at the end...
Picture stollen from Last FM, but the atmosphere was really closed to that:
You can watch the integrality of the concert here on Youtube:
Click to viewI love intellectual stuff, but honestly: what was the need to be 5 on stage to make this? What is sampled and what is made live? Why did we heard some saxophone while the saxophonist was changing is instrument? What was the use of the guitar just to make noise and not music? While Steven Stapelton is god at playing it for real! ;)
Some accointances we were talking with said it was a bit too intellectual for us (for me?!), but hey, dude! We are already snob enough to pay 19€ to see that on stage! And we were not so much people in front of the stage...
Anyway, the experience was cool: I was curious to attend a Nuits Sonores, since it seems to be THE event of the city we now live in. Moreover because I was unable to attend another event a few days before (Kollectiv Sturmstrass live on a boat the week before, perhaps one of the only openly-stampled electronic projet that I like)...
There is also an interesting forum, organised by a think tank called European Lab, on the cultural industries. Some conferences are organised during 3 days, inside the Hotel de Ville. The introductive round table was made by Joshka Fisher, the former German ministre for Culture. The place to be if you are working in the artistic/cultural area!
Picture shamelessly stollen on internet
Some free "sonore appetizer" are organised in the city, each day in a diffrent place of the city.
Wesnesday, it looked like that:
Anyway, musically, I did not really discovered anything I really felt for: I guess it is not our cup of tea. Some things are better than some other, but I can't say, I discovered something musically speaking: I mean, most of the time, the guyz are just DJ, reagencing nicely the music written by others: I can't deny they have the ability to build an atmosphere, but they are not "playing music" in the sense I understand it.
Most of the people who were attending the concerts did not seem really passionate by music: they just take it as a nice moment to chill with friends, having a drink while listening to some cool sounds. Dancing seems also very very important: if you don't dance, then the sound is not good enough for you. I don't why, but this is a bit too demonstative for me, I mean, people were not only dancing (which is totaly understandable if you really are into something), they were dancing to be seen, dancing while looking at each other... It's strange how the atmosphere is different from the concerts we use to attend.
But, this is just my little rambling! In fact, I was curious and I am thankful to be able to discover new things, whitout having to make some kilometres and kilometres by car! I guess it is quite a big event if you are into the Electro scene: I would totaly be open to some recommendation of good bands in the universe I barely don't know.