Le Festif! is known for some endearingly unconventional environments for the artists they book. Some might play at a stage built entirely of tree branches, others might play in a forest with clothes on hangers draped above them, and others might play a DJ set on a city bus. On Thursday night, Montreal's Gayance was the latter not once, but twice in a row.
I was lucky enough to tag along for both sets. Since she never plays the same set twice, neither of them were in any way similar aside from the inclusion of "Moon Rising (10 Years)," a groovy and hugely danceable standout from last year's debut album Mascarade. If you attended the first set, you'd notice a guy climbing atop the bus during that song and attempting to do push-ups. The Festif! experience, baby!
With Gayance (aka Aïsha Vertus) on the decks in a small booth at the very front of the bus, two half-hour dance parties with her playing to a new group of 50 each time. Every time it started moving, the crowd started cheering. They brought their dancing shoes, too: during the second set, one person in the front literally started voguing, which Gayance herself played along with.
Depending on which of the two bus sets you attended, you'd have heard a lot of high-energy electronic music (some of which takes heavy Brazilian and euro trance influence), nu-disco, funky house, some rap classics — Ludacris's "Rollout (My Business)" was a particularly well-received moment — and a healthy offering of U.K. garage, including a garage-style cover of Jennifer Paige's "Crush."
Even Gayance's own song "Nunca Mais," played during the second set, sounds indebted to genres like acid house and artists like Aphex Twin. We heard a bit of her Montreal contemporary Kaytranada, too, with "Weird." But the biggest highlight of the first set was when Gayance dropped a new unreleased track featuring fellow Montrealer Magi Merlin, one with a distinct future garage vibe, like a beefed-up take on the Mascarade sound.
Gayance, already a confident performer during live sets with instrumentalists and backing vocalists, looks just as in her element on the ones and twos, and that shone through in a huge way in an intimate — albeit constantly moving — environment. The bus also took routes in areas that looked far removed from the actual town of Baie-Saint-Paul (you'd find the bus passing by residential neighbourhoods within 10 minutes of the set), so you definitely can't say Le Festif! doesn't commit to the bit with this concept.
People very clearly enjoyed themselves throughout, too, as you could see people dancing, clapping their hands, and taking photos of each other. In other words, it felt like a party in the truest sense. Gayance kept the energy levels consistently high with everything she played, and her globally-informed sound in her own music came through in spades during both DJ sets. The people-watching from the front of the bus was pretty great, too.