Electronic Beats Festivals 2012: Video Highlights

Once again, another year of Electronic Beats Festivals has come to a close (unless you count our upcoming Montenegro appearance, but hey, that’s really more of an event), and once again we’re bringing you the best of the best in one neat, condensed A/V package. Before we role out next year’s modeselektion for you, we suggest you start with one of our personal favorites. Here’s James Blake at EB Fest Gdansk, playing his beautiful interpretations of Feist‘s “Limit to Your Love” and “I Never Learnt to Share”. Below that you can see a full runthrough of some of the amazing performances, featuring Blake, Squarepusher, Dillon, Jazzanova, and Digitalism.

Next we’re jumping ahead to current times. The recent Zagreb festival left us breathless and exhausted, thanks in part to the standout show from Hot Chip. Though it isn’t quite as exciting as being there, we think the video below, which shows the band performing “Boy From School”, “Flutes” and “How Do You Do”, does a good job summing up the atmosphere.

If there’s one thing we love as much as good music, it’s a good spectacle. Artists like Squarepusher and Hudson Mohawke do a perfect job of showing that you can be one man and still put on shows that feel massive and awe-inspiring. Their shows were some of the sweatiest we attended all year, and also some of the most smile-filled.

We leave you with Prague and Cologne as the final highlights (as we were sadly unable to obtain video of our beloved Grimes). Austra‘s dark pop incantations and the thundering pop of Woodkid are the perfect sounds to close a year of thrills. Mr. Lemoine proved quite the crowd-pleaser (a feat he recently performed yet again in Zagreb), and Austra’s Feel It Break is still on heavy rotation here—and if you knew how much music we were exposed to on a daily basis, you’d know what a feat that was in itself. We’ve never been disappointed by Austra, and her performances of “Young And Gay”, “Lose It” and “Choke” still echo in our ears. But now we make room for a new year with new sounds, and a whole new season of EB Festivals. We know you’re going to love it.  ~

Published November 13, 2012.