Peacock Society: reinventing the daytime party, still just as wild

From September 10 to 11, the Peacock Society pulled out all the stops to charm us. The electronic notes came to mix with the songs of the birds of the Choisy Paris-Val-de-Marne park for a weekend placed under the sign of excitement, discovery and of course dance, in all its forms. Its new 100% daytime and bucolic formula reinvents the festive practices of Parisians.

Saturday, September 10, the RER D poured a continuous stream of dancers draped in k‑ways towards the 60,000 m² of the Parc de Choisy. It’s not the rain that will discourage festival-goers. On the contrary, they enjoy it. Along the way, groups of friends take turns dodging puddles at the cost of a few spilled drops of beer. Upon entry of Peacock Society, the color is announced: the largest stage, the Solar, overlooks most of the festival where snack bars, prevention stands and thrift stores are organized. It swarms while dj Harvey takes care of warming up the public from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Yes, two hours! We touch on the strong point of this festival. Far from the poor thirty minutes that can be granted to artists in other events, Peacock Society gives its guests the possibility of deploying a real set, ranging from 1h30 to 2h for the headliners. The result is memorable concerts that leave room for modulation, which festival-goers hasten to embrace through the variation of their dances. What happiness. So we made the choice – even if it was sometimes heartbreaking – to honor this bias of the festival, and to attend the concerts from start to finish, not giving in to the desire to do half/half between two artists.

We were a little apprehensive about the new daytime format of the festival: arrival from 1 p.m. but compulsory departure at midnight. But the festival-goers played the game, as if they wanted to defy the night. Because even if the veil of darkness was only there for a few hours, the possibilities of transgression that we have from the night were there. Exaggeration, detachment from the gaze of others, extravagance, surpassing oneself. We reverse our imagination to make way for a daytime party. In short, place to hostilities: the concerts.

Delicious mix of sure values ​​and good surprises

Like every year, the Peacock Society offers the big names of the electronic scene. We are irradiated by the rays of the Solar stage, where the gods of house have succeeded one another. On Saturday, Peggy Gou made her big comeback to the festival as mistress of ceremonies, 5 years after her last appearance. We also stampeded on dj Harvey, Jamie Jones and the bewitching Vanilla which had impressed us during crazy live sound at Nuits sonores. On Sunday, it was the turn of the maestro of French electro, Laurent Garnier, to preside over the evening. He was, as the festival so aptly pointed out on its Instagram, “like at home for 3 hours of legendary sets”. He was accompanied by Kolsch and dj Koze.

The mirror stage was tucked away, tucked away at the back of the festival. And for good reason ! She made the surroundings tremble with magnificent sets. On the program, a quartet of pure madness: Anatha, Amelie Lens and VTSS and urtrax, goddesses of techno. VTSS is known for her unleashed sets on a background of techno acid, surfing on theEBM. The queen of the night did not disappoint us, even in broad daylight.

Amélie Lens on the mirror stage ©Maxime Chermat

We also had some good surprises. With in particular the English Anz -whose communicative energy had already been detected in its Boiler Room. We are in the middle of the afternoon, we arrive in front of the Woody stage which seems very empty to us after the excitement caused by the Darude the day before. A handful of festival-goers spread out, taking up all the space necessary to rush towards the deliverance of the dance. We’re about to turn on our heels when Anz lures us in with a wonderful remix of Baby D’s hit, “Let Me Be Your Fantasy”. The producer seems to speak directly to us “Let me be your fantasy, I’ll take you higher”. You won, we stay. And no regrets. She goes from danceable tracks to darker techno with disconcerting ease. The festival-goers accompany its movements with their dance. Sometimes experimenting with their whole body, sometimes moving only their head with jerky movements.

©Maxime Chermat

A little further is Trikk who manages to turn the crowd gathered in front of the Nomad. We sneak between the hundreds of festival-goers, we jostle, the glasses are knocked over, we come across lonely souls lost in their world, who wiggle their eyes half-closed in front of the explosions of Trikk.

La Darude and its supercharged lofts

dj kwame © Maxime Chermat

The festival is not content with these big headliners. He invites the cream of the collectives who organize our most beautiful evenings during the year. The Darude, Nyege Nyege, Rinse and 99Ginger were able to appropriate a stage and develop their unique universe. A great way to pay tribute to them and let their creativity speak. We admit that a collective made us dance a little more than the others: The Darude. For four years now, she has wanted to highlight eurodance and trance, all punctuated by a retro-kitch aesthetic. On their stage, the Woddy, we could see the creators dj Kwame and Die Klar, which opened the ball to a wave of nuggets. The legend says that their sets were so qualitative that they had to walk around the festival with plastic bags so as not to be jumped on to cheer them on.

Paul Alone © Geoffrey Hubbel

Paul Alonewhom we have seen pacing all the festivals with her sidekick Mathilde Fernandez of the duo virgo ascendant, took over brilliantly. It surpassed all of our expectations when it closed, featuring “I Love You Always Forever” by Donna Lewis, a must-have hit from the late 1990s. Thank you Paul, it’s been on our minds all weekend!

Who better thanHannah Diamond for to celebrate with the aesthetics of La Darude. All you have to do is scroll through her Instagram account for 3 minutes to understand: pastel pink hair, tube top, cap, sequins, in short, everything is there. Her almost robotic pop music charmed us, especially when she shared the decks with Danny L Harle which closed the evening.

All the guests of the collective played the game by offering us a bridge between two times, with one foot in the 2000s, the other anchored in the meanders of electronic music. The whole thing created a temporal rift, where the lofters took pleasure in letting off steam. We must also greet the public of the collective, which we crown the most benevolent and the most motivated. It all ends with a distribution, or rather a throwing of lollipops in the assembly. This candy is like La Darude, tangy and crunchy to the bite.

Die Klar and its lofters © Geoffrey Hubbel

Finish in apotheosis with the futuristic show of BPM x Molecule

We arrive in front of the Solar to end this festival in style. The show should start at 9:10 p.m.. 9:16 p.m., the technicians are still going back and forth on stage. A “OK, shall we break up?” burst next to me. “But you’re crazy, you really want to miss a set made by a robot ?” Indeed JIL is not quite ready yet. JIL? It is the instrument of the future born from the collaboration between Molécule and the team of BPMthe acronym for Brain Performance Mix, which allows “the first musical performance created and controlled by the thought of an artist”. It is not a robot, but an innovative technology that allows the artist to play music without using his hands by directly connecting his brain and therefore his emotions. The music evolves according to his state of mind, as explained recently by Molécule on Tsugi radio.

To TO LISTEN TOO : Place des fêtes with Molécule and The Absolut Company

This crazy project is supported by the patronage of The Absolut Company Creation, the French startup NextMind, specialized in neuroscience and Molecule technologies. It’s good, under the applause of the crowd, the producer of “If the” appears. But this live does not start like the others, a metallic voice resounds: “Calibration process… Brain connected.” Once Molécule’s mind is connected to JIL using the small headset developed by Nextmind, the show can begin. The blackness of Molécule’s clothes merges with the scene that he constantly walks from side to side. He navigates between his recreated studio on the right with his traditional machines and JIL, on the left, embodied in the form of a monolith that seems straight out of the film 2001 a space odyssey, creating almost mystical moments where beats appearing out of nowhere seem to float in the sky. No need for its rays, the Solar stage lights up from within. The skeptics of earlier are over the moon. Thanks to a discreet but effective visual performance that perfects the grandeur of the man-machine duo, we once again touch the heights, the clouds of this universe recomposed with smoke blows on stage. It’s a standing ovation.

The subject interests you ? READ : 🗞️ Brain Performance Mix: create and control music by thought

Your heart was tight reading this article because you already miss the festival? ARTE Concert has planned everything and posted on Youtube the retransmission of the concerts of Anetha, urtrax, Adam Beyer and Boys Noize.

To READ TOO : ARTE Concert broadcasts the headliners of the Peacock Society!

Best moment : When we came across, on Sunday, a group humming “I Love You Always Forever”, the famous closing of Paul Seul.

worst time : When we received a lollipop thrown by dj Kwame, founder of Darude, in the eye.

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