New Urban Music Blog

I just remembered that last year, I blogged about the Worldwide Festival on a daily basis. Almost live from Sète, France. So, after a long nap and some cups of coffee, I'm now reviving this and post a short summary of the first day of the festival.

It all started pretty early on Thursday at the Centre Régional d'Art Contemporain (CRAC) where we got our wristbands and met up with the rest of our people. Currently, there is an interesting exhibition by artist Claude Lévêque there that is called "The Diamond Sea". Many of his works that are inspired by maritime/naval topics, reminded me of the exhibition by Olafur Eliasson I saw in Berlin a couple of weeks ago. Check it out if you have the chance to.

Right in front of the CRAC was a small stage, where we enjoyed the performances by Trilogy (check them out, they're this year's Talent Search winners), Half Seas Over (featuring none other as the mighty Elan Mehler) and the even mightier Dorian Concept (the whitest boy alive *g*). Beautiful hours in the burning hot sun, but worth every minute. Afterwards, we just had to jump into the refreshing water of Sète's harbor. Cooled as down a little

At about 8 pm we arrived at the Phare du Mole, the lighthouse, just to learn that Gil Scott-Heron did not make it to France. Wish him all the best nevertheless! But it was kind of a disappointment. His band played anyhow, but it just wasn't the same. Lefto blessed us with amazing DJ set before the Gil-Scott Heron Band, but Mala, who came on stage afterwards, just isn't my cup of tea. Foreign Beggars are totally crazy guys and must be big in France and/or England, but in Germany, not many people seemed to have heard of them before. So it was Floating Points feat. Fatima who saved the date for me.

I'm sure, Lefto will post one of his hand-crafted videos later on, and I will link to it from here. Right now, we're chilling in our airconditioned hotel room and getting ready for the beach. Today's highlights are so numerous: Sbtrkt, Havana Cultura, Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo de Cotonou, Flying Lotus, Gonjasufi, The Gaslamp Killer and Joy Orbison, amongst others. Worldwide, baby!

Update: As Gilles just twittered, both Flying Lotus and Joy Orbison had to cancel their gigs due to food poisoning Damn it!