In its third iteration, Pitchfork Pageant London was greater than ever, going down throughout 15 venues across the metropolis, from sticky-floored bars to elegant church buildings and prestigious previous theaters. The realities of the present political second hung within the air, which many artists addressed throughout their exhibits: MIKE shouting “Free Congo, free Sudan, free Palestine!”; M(h)aol imploring individuals to donate what they might; Yaeji thanking individuals for making time to see her set throughout of a weekend of protests. Throughout six days, the genre-spanning competition demonstrated music’s means to supply a form of connective tissue by exhausting occasions. Listed below are a number of the highlights.
Ryoji Ikeda – Barbican Centre, Wednesday, November 8
At occasions, Japanese glitch pioneer Ryoji Ikeda’s set felt viscerally violent. Fittingly going down throughout the brutalist structure of the Barbican, it started with a tinnitus-like piercing ring that crescendoed into white noise, all backed by sharp black and white pixels scattering behind Ikeda like TV static. An audiovisual efficiency based mostly on his 2022 album, Ultratronics, the present moved between an industrial sound and one thing texturally hotter, at occasions ambient and others extra club-facing. The visuals—knowledge units wrought into maps, streams of digits flooding the display, a saturation of orange explosions—added to the sense of apocalyptic digital abrasion.
Fly Anakin – EartH Corridor, Thursday, November 9
The present college of U.S. underground rap might sound at odds with energetic stay efficiency: These are artists reveling in smudged, stoner-y manufacturing and complicated, introspective flows, not the form of hefty hooks and beats you affiliate with a raucous crowd. Virginia rapper Fly Anakin’s set challenged this notion. Between songs, he did tequila pictures and even tried to see what number of push-ups he might do in a row (36, if you happen to’re questioning). Because the quickfire bars of “Sean Value” flowed out of him instantly after that train, he started to chuckle at his personal vocal management: “I needed to maintain my breath like a motherfucker! The lung capability!”
