Dissonanze 2009

⁩Rome is a city of extremes. When I come here, I have to choose: right/left, Roma/Lazio, coatto/fighetto. This weekend there's Italy's biggest electronic music festival at the Palazzo dei Congressi in EUR, and the State Police celebration in Piazza del Popolo. This weekend I chose Dissonanze.

Day I

The coolest thing about Dissonanze is the location. The white, fascist-leaning grandeur of the Palazzo dei Congressi, among the wide boulevards of EUR, gets bathed in a fluorescent pink straight out of the best club-culture tradition, the oversized rooms inside reveal unexpectedly good acoustics, and the terrace, with its neoclassical benches facing the stage, offers an unusual slice of Roman sky. This year, though, there's also the Ara Pacis, an even cooler spot now that it's become a sort of architectural matryoshka doll. Sure, a much smaller place, too small really: but the organizers play the marketing card well with the magic word of every self-respecting metropolis: exclusive. The pre-party cocktail with DJ set and installations on the Ara Pacis terrace is, in fact, invite-only. But who actually has these invites? The entrances are separate, but the only line is for press accreditation. Once inside, I find a fashion-capital fauna: hipsters dressed by rubber stamp (Ray-Ban Wayfarers, skinny jeans, All Stars, tight t-shirt, jacket), girls dolled up to the nines with a Sex & The City shoe collection, subjects of indeterminate age, with beards and glasses à la Jarvis Cocker (crudely dubbed “the Ray-Ban Arisas”), and everyone knows everyone. They talk to each other as if they'd already seen one another the night before. The only ones not talking to anyone are the handful with artist passes, wandering around alienated with earbuds in. Indeed, the music is questionable: Fergus Purcell, aka Fergadelic, a lanky guy with a hippy air who's famous for his graphics lifted from street art, spins a playlist worthy of the worst 80s dive bar: from Duran Duran to C'est La Ouate, before strumming along on a metallophone during Bruce Springsteen tracks. Of installations and visuals there's not a trace: the projector is there but it's off. Needing a bit of art, I go and look at the actual Ara Pacis, sealed in its aquarium of silence, while a few yards away traffic floods the Lungotevere. I admire the exterior friezes, and think the location is as beautiful as it is fitting: the Ara depicts, albeit dressed differently, the same familiares, augures and sacerdotes now chatting on the terrace.

The festival crowd, deo gratias, is far more varied. Sure, putting Timo Maas and Magda on the lineup drew a bunch of afterhours Vikings with drug issues, but until 1am the main hall is thoroughly enjoyable: Moderat, the three-headed beast born from the fusion of contemporary electronic monsters Apparat and Modeselektor, immediately delivers an out-of-the-ordinary set. At first the sound leans more Apparat, complete with electric bass played live by the man himself, then in the second half the acid, jittery sounds of Modeselektor start creeping in, giving me the festival's only true electro moment.

Next comes Kenny Larkin's hyper-minimal set, pure 4/4 techno with no frills and no pauses, but by now the hall has filled up and, even though the Flying Lotus feat. Samyam set on the terrace drew a bit of a crowd, everyone is waiting for Timo Maas. Blond, star DJ, Finnish, at the center of the global techno-house scene for 15 years, he knows his Vikings, and keeps them on a packed dancefloor for two hours with nothing but the strength of his fingers. Some turn up their noses: it's commercial, out of step with Dissonanze's avant-garde spirit, given that last year the main hall hosted Model 500, Juan Atkins and Cobblestone Jazz.

Meanwhile, though, those who stayed seated in the main hall had already enjoyed Mokadelic's splendid performance: a homegrown group playing ambient, vaguely shoegaze post-rock, accompanied by gorgeous visuals themed around flight, speed, and the fascinating mystery of Earth's gravity. Next up is the first and, so far, only Italian date for Telepathe, the Brooklyn indie-techno duo behind one of this year's most original debut albums. Too bad that, live, the impact of a brilliant track like “So Fine” is considerably diminished: partly because there's barely anyone around, partly because they're inexperienced, partly because the vocals sit too low against the drum machine, and partly because they simply can't sing. True experimental electronic music, in any case, is yet to come.

AtomTM shows up in a tie, dead serious, dark glasses. I watch in real time as he cross-fades his samples thanks to computer-world-style visuals, and I feast on his dramatic minimal techno, punctuated by surreal chirping moments, while the screen shows him on vacation in Malta. I'm pleasantly surprised by the Aula's sound system, absolutely flawless, but I still haven't heard anything yet: Byetone's performance has such low-end sounds that I feel the techno through my stomach, while the minimal visuals trigger epileptic fits in the room. And while there's no one left on the terrace and Timo Maas hands the Viking baton to Magda, I stick with Signal (that is, Alva Noto + Byetone + Komet) until the end, until I can no longer see or hear straight.

Day II

Here I am again among the Minis and the Ferrarelle girls, taking a second look at the Ara Pacis. The white wine is free but it's terrible. I don't think I'm the only one shocked by the shabbiness of this pre-festival, since today there are far fewer people, and almost no artists. Poor Professor Genius, relegated to the console without even a projector anymore, offers up an ambient accompaniment so drowned out by the chatter of the various familiares that it soon turns into something with a more aggressive kick drum, though still far from the Italo disco I was expecting from him. I yawn, and head off to the EUR.

The terrace, there's nothing to be done, just isn't taking off. The sound system is undersized for the space, the DJ is distant from the crowd, the music far too samey. Only Buraka Som Sistema, with their show built on global afro-techno and MC attitude, manage to get a few backsides moving before the stairs close for the night. Tonight it's the main hall that satisfies me, with a thoroughly fired-up Lindstrøm dropping wonderfully melodic house, even sampling Take That's "Everything Changes".

Today's big name is Laurent Garnier (since Sebastien Tellier, considered all but certain this year, pulled out). He turns up with 3 assistants plus a trumpet and a trombone, and anyone who's heard his latest album knows why. A little dictator, chin held high behind the console, he directs the others with his hands and plays his own music, "Horny Monster Mix" in name and in fact. As soon as the first whistle comes from some Viking who survived the night before, he grabs the microphone and says: "I know you don't know this music, but I couldn't care less. Listen to it, and maybe you'll like it. Maybe."

Critical Mass is supposed to give us some deep house, but the set is very contemplative, full of long suspended moments. The end result is an annoying back-and-forth of Vikings who throw themselves into dancing whenever the kick drum kicks in, then drift back to the bar the moment it stops (the kick drum being clearly the only reason they paid 36 euros), stopping everyone else from dancing in peace.

The Aula, on the other hand, is packed from 11pm for Bat For Lashes, Parlophone's new star, on her second album. Commonly described as a cross between Bjork, Tori Amos, Kate Bush and Cat Power, live she reveals a personality and a talent that go well beyond those flattering comparisons. She climbs onto her stage (decorated with dolls, candles and deer heads) wrapped in a fantastic black-and-white optical-print bodysuit, and immediately makes clear that the voice on record is entirely real. Backed by a band as skilled as she is (the drummer and bassist are outstanding musicians as well as backing vocalists), she rolls out the best tracks from the new album without shying away from the keyboard, and doesn't hold back on an intense "What's a Girl To Do" (from the previous "Fur And Gold"). The applause, deservedly, is thunderous.

Micachu & The Shapes cool the crowd down quite a bit: their noise/folk, sung in a saccharine, chocolate-box voice, feels far too disjointed, but I revise my opinion immediately as soon as Peter Christopherson takes the stage. The man in question, who looks like an aged Peter Gabriel with an extra 40 kilos, a longtime member of Throbbing Gristle and of the now-disbanded Coil (and indeed a good half of the crowd is made up of nostalgic fans dressed in black), appears in a leopard-print dressing gown and, laptop in hand, produces the lowest grade of ambient while giving a detailed commentary on the visuals: "This is what you find on secondhand mobile phones in Thailand." In order: an amateur video of a human decapitation (prompting people to walk out of the room), two teenagers having sex, half-naked Thai kids as amateur tsunami footage scrolls past. He holds a kind of mobile phone and performs the whole thing by writhing around in his seat.

While I wonder whether this counts as Art, Salem take the stage. She, an unflattering stand-in for Debbie Harry who looks like she was picked up off Via Colombo on the way to the EUR, stands in front of a keyboard but doesn't play it, limiting herself to half-heartedly smoking a cigarette. He, standing still behind the microphone, makes no sound but smokes and drinks spirits straight from the bottle. The third one, his face hidden behind his hair, fiddles motionlessly, sampling a woman's sobs, while in the background we see amateur footage of wild nights out in cars in some run-down American suburb. Politely getting up, I cling to faint hopes for the next, completely unknown artist, when a guy comes up to me: "How are you doing on the freedom front?" I'm about to leave for good when, after blowing the connection twice, Actress samples Kraftwerk and proves that his violent techno deserved the main hall far more than the Aula Magna, where meanwhile a dozen people lie asleep in the seats.

Although true to the motto "never stop discovering", Dissonanze seems to be going through something of an identity crisis, torn between becoming a pure clubbing festival or keeping close ties with the frontiers of contemporary electronic music — that is, with a genre closer to art than entertainment, and therefore of limited popularity (and little appeal to sponsors). If the middle-ground options, like the Terrace programme, are to be ruled out, the model clearly remains Sonar in Barcelona, which indeed has a similar line-up this year (though decidedly richer). On the freedom front, at least, things are looking good.

Scores:

Line-up: 7

Organisation: 3 (at two the box office shuts up shop and leaves; I ask security who's in charge, and everyone tells me "no idea"; but above all, there isn't a single bloody coat check. Justification: "Well, last year it was June and it was hot.")

Location: 8

Acoustics: 8

Pre-party night: 3

Ride the wave of great music

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