Festivals » Oct 30 HARD Haunted Mansion at Shrine Expo Hall

Reviews

  • Glitch without Narrative

    28 Jun 2011, 05:01 by HazZero

    Fri 24 Jun – The Future #007 presents Brainfeeder

    Flying Lotus can take you to space and back. At HARD Halloween 10, he introduced himself to the heads with an opera of synths and hip hop verses, beginning the set with a climb over an ambient aural mountain, giving way to a fight of rhythms against a rapid fire of snares and sounds. It was as epic as you can imagine it.

    This show didn't have a narrative to its experimentation, letting the sounds fall to merely noise.

    For every 3 or so songs, FlyLo would just end the set. Another 3 songs, another fade out. "Let's try something out." "Here's some unreleased stuff." Discouraging words, especially considering it sounds like this is being treated more like practice then an actual concert I paid $22 for ($27 if you bought at the door). For half the price, High Contrast wrote an opus the night before, no pauses included.

    The Gaslamp Killer displayed this error the most clearly…
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  • Night Two

    1 Nov 2010, 09:12 by milos57

    Sat 30 Oct – HARD Haunted Mansion

    Saturday might have been the more consistently banging night of Hard Haunted Mansion 2010, but when Sunday's artist killed it, they REALLY killed it. Before I get to the artists, a few logistical notes. The line situation was much better. We no longer had to take our shoes off to get inside. And once again, the crowd was cool for the most part.

    Underworld owned the entire festival with an incredible, thumping, soulful set. "Soulful" is the most important word, as even some of my favorite electric artists lack this quality. I'd waited years to see Underworld and they were worth the wait, with superb instrumentation and great stage presence from Karl Hyde.

    Boys Noize put on an insane closing set, complete with a Gollum-like narrative about the dead, all his best tracks, and even a Boys Noize-d rendition of the Ghostbusters theme. Brilliant intense stuff. The whole crowd was losing it.

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  • Night One

    31 Oct 2010, 23:42 by milos57

    Sat 30 Oct – HARD Haunted Mansion

    This might have been the best HARD event I've been to thus far. For one, the crowd was far more mature than at previous events. Yes, there was kandy here and there, but not nearly as much as at HARD LA this past April, which also boasted a very rude crowd and overall bad vibes. Not this time. For the most part, people were energetic, with sweet costumes, but boasted good crowd etiquette as well (at a dance concert, this can literally make or break the event.)

    The Bloody Beetroots played a headliner-worthy set that was much better than their April visit as Death Crew 77. The carried themselves furiously, with an excellent setlist that drew from their older material quite generously (including the great "We Are From Venice") and a killer drummer. The crowd ate it up.

    SebastiAn was also in great form, with one of the coolest openings for a DJ set I've ever heard - the seven minute feedback marathon of his new track "Threnody". …
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