Liverpool Music Week 2014: Caribou, Evian Christ, Patten, Jessy Lanza: Camp & Furnace, Liverpool

Dan Snaith, Caribou

The tenth edition of Liverpool Music Week kicks off in style with Dan Snaith’s Caribou melting faces in the Baltic Triangle, Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke was there for the opening hit.

Liverpool Music Week 2014 boasts possibly its most stellar lineup yet, and as the festival’s opening set there’s a certain something more in the air for opening headliner Caribou – a sense of quivering anticipation for the undoubtable euphoria promised by Dan Snaith’s electronic outfit.

But before that esteemed Canadian takes to his adoring public, Jessy Lanza has the unenviable task of opening. It’s a worthy set, tight and minimalistic, with Lanza taking to her subtle, understatedly saccharine vocal with a certain appealing elegance. Though her crowd remains sparse, those in attendance receive her with considerable warmth, and she sets an impressively accomplished precedent.

Patten, her successor to the stage, has less luck. Though the evasive producer’s set is leagues away from a bad one, it seeks a slightly unwelcome experimental edge. Forceful in texture, his set eddies about a determined twist of live-sampled vocals and assertive beats, and is texturally dripping in innovation. The problem is that it just begins to drag, an increasingly restless crowd just in search of a straight up groove.

Patten

Evian Christ follows, confirming if assertion be needed, just why the acclaim continues to rain down on the Ellesmere Port electrosmith. A veneer of swarming smoke begins to shroud the producer as he takes to his decks, backed by a truly marvellous light show that’s filtered through translucent screens and generated smoke to euphoric effect.

The music itself elicits similar ecstasy, vigorous hip-hop samples lent the stoutest of spines by colossal boom-bap beats. With the crowd soon swelling to capacity the night is thrust into a consummate new plateau of perfection.

Camp & Furnace could hardly have been teed up better as Caribou and his backing band stride stagewards. An opening blast of summery synth sees a myriad of arms raised aloft, a sudden crush of bodies to the front and the unmistakable roars of rapture.

The opening few tracks maintain magnificent momentum, and though far from the hits, the tunes ricochet forth with breathtaking abandon. Its a matter of seconds before jubilant exultation takes hold, and it’s clear the quartet simply thrive on the fact.

Caribou and co rarely fall back to their mainstream, simply hurtling through their set with exultancy. Jessy Lanza returns on vocal duties for a segment, but her prodigy plays second fiddle to a simply incredible vibe.

When the hits do drop – Swim, Odessa and latest outing Can’t Do Without You rearing their most welcome of heads – the heights reach a dizziness that only the most special of gigs can hit, and as an extended electronic freakout brings their divine hour and a half to a close, this years LMW is left reeling in sheer bliss with only one night down.