6 Acts You Don't Want To Miss At Spring Awakening This Weekend
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 8, 2016 6:10PM
Do Division kicked off the official star to street festival season last weekend, and this coming weekend Spring Awakening does the same for major music festival season. We’ve rounded up six acts we don’t think you should miss (with one hard decision to make on Sunday) that aren’t the biggest names on the bill, but might provide the biggest surprises, or most satisfying sets.
Jamie xx, photo by Flavien Prioreau
Jaime xx - Friday on the Electronic Stage at 7:30 p.m.
Jamie xx should be a lovely way to kick off the weekend. Over the past decade he’s released music under both his own name and as part of The xx, but it wasn’t until last year that he finally released his proper solo debut, the sublime In Colour. xx’s music often sneaks up on you, often his songs start as initial mellow vibes that build into deeply thrumming baselines and infectious beats. If you want to kick off the weekend with some smart dance music that's primal enough to stimulate both your brain and your hips, then Jamie xx is your man.
Porn And Chicken - Saturday on the Electronic Stage at 3:30 p.m.
One of the longer running underground Chicago dance parties to still embrace exces—until it threatens to spill over and drown everyone in the room—is Porn And Chicken. The collective is making an outdoor sojourn for a midday Spring Awakening set, and did we mention that it also puts on one of our favorite weekly events in Chicago? Sometimes these folks offend, and sometimes their visual accompaniment makes us feel un-hip and out of the clubkid loop, but their sets are always great fun. This should be a nice pick-me-up for everyone at the roughly halfway point of Spring Awakening.
Light.Em.Up. Sunday on the Electronic Stage at 2:30 p.m.
This local duo is made up of PHNM and Zebo, two DJs who already spin potent sets when they perform solo. As Light.Em.Up. they pool their talents to create performances that are outsized and bring crowd participation to a ridiculous new level. And we mean “crowd participation” in the literal sense, since any time you hear either DJ yell, “Light ‘em up!” the crowd can use an app the team created (in both iOS and Android version) to help decide the direction of the set. This works because both PHNM and Zebo are incredibly quick to react and seamlessly incorporate unexpected musical directions. So you, and they, never know exactly what to expect at a Light.Em.Up. show!
Madeon, photo courtesy Columbia Records
Madeon - Sunday on the Electronic Stage at 5:45 p.m.
While everyone still waits to see if Daft Punk will ever tour again, this young French DJ does an excellent job of filling in the void they’ve left. His sound is in a more classic, if sometimes frenetic, house vein. But the one thing you can always count on is Madeon's adeptness at injecting da funk into every one of his songs. This is being billed as a "live" set, so we're curious to see if that only includes guest vocalists or if a full band will be involved. We've reached out to both his label and Spring Awakening organizers with no response from either, but will update this if we get any clarity into just what "live" means in this context. No mater what, though, this will be a can't-miss set.
Moon Boots - Sunday on the All Gone Pete Tong Stage at 5:45 p.m.
Pete Dougherty, a.k.a. Moon Boots, is a familiar face to Chicago crowds after spending years playing in the now defunct local dance-rock combo Hey Champ. Dougherty had always DJed around town, but it wasn’t until he took on the Moon Boots moniker and focused on filling his sets with euphoric Balearic beats that his career as a globetrotting DJ really took off. A Moon Boots show is always a head-bobbing good time, and we think you’ll find yourself sinking into the Moon Boots vibe and treating his set as a welcome respite from the more formulaic bass drops that will dominate much of the weekend.
Crystal Castels, photo courtesy Casablanca Records
Crystal Castles - Sunday on the Electronic Stage at 7 p.m.
This will be Crystal Castles' first Chicago appearance since singer Alice Glass left the band and was replaced by Edith Frances. Ethan Kath is still the backbone of the band musically, so we expect the group’s Spring Awakening appearance to not hold any real musical surprises. It’s hard to ignore how central Glass was to making Crystal Castles shows full of crackling electronic anarchy in the past, so it’s primarily the question on how Frances will handle taking over that responsibility that makes us curious to see this set. At worst it will feel very metal, at best it could be a disorienting visual and audio explosion. This set makes our list because we simply don't know what to expect and are excited by the unknown x-factor here.
Spring Awakening is June 10 to 12 in Adams/Medill Park, and tickets are still available. There is no word on whether Steve Aoki will be bringing cake though.