Since Fyre Festival founder Ja Rule attempted to overstay his welcome, pushing a track or two beyond his set time until his DJ had to tell him "bro, they clipped us," Rezz took the stage a few minutes late. She didn't waste any time, though. She got right into the heavy stuff, and just kept getting heavier.
Born in the Ukraine under the name Isabelle Rezazadeh, Rezz has been raving in Canada since she was little, crediting deadmau5 as the inspiration to take up the pursuit of original production. Since then she has evolved well past deadmau5 when it comes to worshipping at the altar of lower frequencies. She is arguably the reigning queen of bass music. Her music is so heavy, it creates its own gravity.
About ten minutes into her set at Rifflandia, the bass drop for "H E X" from 2018's Certain Kind of Magic was so devastating that it seemed to draw in her own weather system. As if on cue, the drizzle opened up to a temporary downpour, then back to a light mist a minute later. This would only be the beginning of the precipitation fluctuation that occurred throughout her set.
Rezz already had hypnotic, Coachella-level visuals going for her; Projections of swirling patterns and alien landscapes were splashed wide across the main stage's screens, often spliced with shots of Rezz in her trademark HypnoGoggles. She never performs without them, and since they were also sold at the merch booth, several people in the crowd followed suit. The atmosphere was already trippy as a pixie's adrenal gland without diffusing all of those strobing lights and surreal visions through the varying cascades of falling wetness. I've never seen so many different kinds of rain in an hour. Umbrellas popped up throughout the crowd during her set almost as often as cell phones did.
It really felt like she was controlling the weather, and for all anyone knows, she might have been. It was hard to tell exactly what she was doing up there, but even from the sound booth, it was clear she was wearing her trademark shades, and standing in front of what looked like four CD decks. Didn't really matter, though, because the sound was absolutely perfect, and it boggles the mind to estimate how much that weather machine must have cost to rent, so the production value was through the roof.
The mystique was further enhanced by her minimal approach to vocals. Rezz has been featuring guest vocalists more frequently in recent years, notably including a collaboration with Metric on 2021's Spiral, so I had anticipated a more pop-oriented set from her at Rifflandia. Yet, other than the odd track like "Cut Me Out" from her 2024 album Can You See Me?, which deconstructs a fair amount of vocals as samples, she didn't mix in a vocal track for almost an hour, which was practically her encore.
At that point, she dropped in her Grabbitz collaboration "Someone Else," and followed that up with a dubstep remix of "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed. Other than a little light banter, randomly saying the odd line like "you guys are amazing" and "shout out to being Canadian," and later giving away a pair of her goggles to a young fan in the front of the stage, Rezz let her bass do the talking, and it spoke volumes