The sixth edition of Pitchfork Festival London was the biggest it’s ever been. For six days, nearly 100 artists performed across 16 venues, including ballrooms, nightclubs, churches, and pubs. The week was marked by events that could only have happened at a Pitchfork-sponsored event: Nirosta Steel bringing his left-field disco jams to the ICA, Actress live-debuting his new project Radical Frame at EartH Theatre, and Noname celebrating 10 years of her classic mixtape Telefone at Heaven. Along with those, here are six highlights from the week.
Ana Roxanne – KOKO, Tuesday, November 3
Ana Roxanne’s vaporous mix of New Age ambient, minimalism, and choral music took form on her latest album, Poem 1, like mist settling as morning dew. At KOKO, she appeared alongside bassist Nico Leibman and drummer Jem Doulton to perform these hymn-like songs that, despite their featherlight quality, have the power to knock the wind out of you. Roxanne makes every delicate chord change, harmony, and bass note feel like a seismic variation, and their simplicity allows her unhurried soprano to take center stage, as it did on the gently pulsating “Keepsake” and bracing elegy “Cover Me.” Even the gentle brush of a snare drum seemed to fill every square inch of the theater.
Tortoise – Hackney Church, Wednesday, November 4
As Tortoise took the stage, they launched straight into “Night Gang,” the droning outro to Touch, their first album in nine years. The core members are now spread out in different cities and no longer record in freewheeling jam sessions squeezed into John McEntire’s Soma Electronic Studio, so it felt like a luxury to watch them move as one organism on stage. They have been playing for nearly four decades now but they still have it, not missing a beat during the interlocking time signatures of “Glass Museum,” and throwing sweat-soaked towels in the corner after hammering away at “Ten-Day Interval.” Doug McCombs’ bass remains loud enough to make the tip of your nose tingle.
The Avalanches – Roundhouse Theatre, Friday, November 6
The Avalanches opened their biggest UK headline show to date with the Flirtations’ Northern Soul classic “Nothing but a Heartache.” It’s the type of throwback number you could imagine them flipping into a big-tent anthem in their sleep. But the song soon cut to a maelstrom of the glitchy ad-jingles that feature on their latest opus, No Bad Memories, as if their CDJs were having an exorcism. The Avalanches may have perfected their formula of feel-good sampledelica, but Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi are still insatiable crate diggers gleefully mixing frenzied footwork (courtesy of collaborator Khadija Al Hanafi), Jersey club kicks, and twisted breakbeats into their set; the one-two punch of “Because I’m Me” and “Since I Left You” toward the end felt like a well-earned victory lap. This is the Avalanches at their most madcap maximalist, still finding ways to paint a stupid grin on your face in the middle of the dancefloor.
Bassvictim – Troxy, Friday, November 6
London is Ike Clateman and Maria Manow’s spiritual hometown, making the sold out Troxy show on Friday—on the day they released new album War + Peace—their triumphant homecoming. The crowd turned the grand art-deco ballroom into a messy south London house party, complete with couples arguing in stairwells among plumes of weed smoke, as if Jay Gatsby got his hands on a copy of Basspunk 1 & 2. The duo’s set felt like these enfant terribles were finally growing out of their reputation of haphazard performances. Manow still thrashed across the stage but with newfound poise and control, while Ike kept the audience in the palm of his hand, knowing precisely when to let the bass rattle the room on the afters-anthem “27a Pitfield St.” Particularly endearing was seeing Manow chant the love letter to the city, “L-ON-D-ON,” especially since she used to work at the bar in this very venue only two years prior.
Thaiboy Digital – Village Underground, Saturday, November 7
Have I been the only one aging at these Drain Gang shows? The stream of Drainers in their early 20s is a testament to how the Swedish collective has remained at the forefront of underground rap and hyperpop scenes of the past decade. If the reaction to “Silk Road” and “Destiny” was any indication, the crowd was here to party with Thaiboy, who has carved out his own lane as CEO of the club with his EDM-fantasia album Paradise. The puffer jacket he wore over his polo as he emerged to the shimmering sound of “Beijing” was quickly removed due the heat emanating from the Shoreditch crowd. But he seemed completely at ease, debuting a handful of promising new tracks and a rare rendition of the first slippery, lovelorn single he ever recorded, “Yr so Beautiful”—one for the old head Drainers in the back thank you very much.
Hania Rani – Royal Festival Hall, Sunday, November 8
The towering, neo-classical organ at the Royal Festival Hall is made up of 7,866 pipes that stretch 60 feet across the stage. Underneath this mountain range of metal is where Hania Rani began her sweeping performance of new material on Sunday evening. After letting sustained notes overlap in hypnotic cycles she let an ominous, foghorn-like note reverberate through the audience. Drawing attention to the materiality of instruments is a staple of Rani’s practice; she wanted us to hear the air flowing through one of the organ’s large metal pipes, just as her piano recordings invite us to hear the creak of the pedals as part of the compositions. Building on this tactile materiality, the performance—split between organ, grand and standing piano, and analog synthesizer—was recorded with live reel-to-reel tape delay by collaborator Greg Freeman, creating the echo that gives Rani’s cascading arpeggios the ghostly, cinematic sheen that sounds like nobody but her.