It's 4:30am on a Friday night/Saturday morning in Barcelona, and the Primavera Sound concertgoers have been rocking, soaking up the sun, and drinking at Parc del Forum for over 12 hours straight. Are these conditions ripe for a dance party or what?
As I left the safety of WFMU's broadcast tent at the festival, engineer and upstanding gent Scott Konzelmann raised an eyebrow at me. "You're not going to record the Diplo set alone, are you??" I figured that no matter how hairy, drunk, sweaty, drunk, drugged out, and drunk the crowd was, I'd be safe within the confines of the fenced in sound area. Luckily, Scott K. knew better and escorted my ass through a heavy funk of feral beat-worshipers, dodging teetering partykids and flying fluids to the sound (safety?) fence.
Philadelphia's Diplo did the thousands of rowdy late-night partygoers right. With a live mix sampling everything from African folk to Dutch DJ Sandro Silva to Hot Chip, with signature nods to Brazilian baile funk, M.I.A. (who he has worked with previously), and plenty of laser beam effects. The result was a well-balanced party mix -- everything you'd expect from the man who has remixed tracks for Biz Markie, Gwen Stefani, Beck, Justin Timberlake, Black Lips, Kanye West, Telepathe, Radiohead, Britney Spears, and most recently, Tiesto(!). Diplo is also purveyor of the excellent Mad Decent record label, which has released music from the likes of Bonde Do Role, Buraka Som Sistema, and Major Lazer.
Put your hands together, and make some noise... This set might be a good follow-up to Jason Sigal's Creative Commons workout mix.
More sets from our Primavera recap series here on the blog: Superchunk, The Slits, The Clean, Van Dyke Parks, Pavement, Neu/Harmonia, Almighty Defenders
Playlists for the 2010 Primavera broadcasts (and links to archives of other WFMU live events).
Some of the festival's artists gave us MP3s for the Free Music Archive.
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