Last weekend it was the second edition of the electronic two-day festival PITCH. This Monday I gave you the report of day one, which included shows from The Weeknd, Jacques Greene, Azari & III, Jameszoo and more. Today part two including Shlohmo, Nathan Fake, James Holden and again many more.

I started this day with one of the highlights of the last edition of Incubate; Nosaj Thing. Unfortunately the setting wasn’t right; his dark, irregular beat music at the Bacardi 150 Stage (a kind of beach club kind of vibe) and scheduled at the afternoon. Especially when I saw that he didn’t brought his visuals this time I wasn’t expecting a lot from this performance. Surprisingly enough it wasn’t so bad after all. Jason (Nosaj mirrored) turned his own difficult beats into dance floor material and his new tracks, where I heard much more vocals, sounded amazing. It was also pretty cool to see that this Asian geek turned in a short time into a hip LA-guy who has much more confidence on stage.

After this nice beginning of the day I went to one of my lasts tips; Shlohmo. Another producer from LA, with mostly dreamy and skipping beats. With this kind of material started this producer his set. After three tracks he decided to handle a completely different approach; first the downtuned version of Genie In A Bottle, then an instrumental hiphop version of something that sounded like Sexy And I Know It and later on a classic track from Ludacris; What’s Your Fantasy. Didn’t expected this move of this man, but I must say; it worked. The whole room went crazy on his dirty glitchy hiphop tracks with an abundance of 808 snares and hi-hats. A similar case what Jameszoo the other day; a maybe easy but also a wise choice, which definitely (in both gigs) paid off.

Then something more subtle; Elektro Guzzi. Normally this pretty basic minimal techno wouldn’t get a lot of attention. The big difference between most minimal techno acts and this Austrian act, is that this trio is playing their music completely live, with only a guitar, bass, a drumkit and some percussion. A pretty damn hard job because they didn’t stopped after playing one track; they played like a normal techno dj would do. This band consists of only top-notch, freakin’ tight musicians. On the negative side I  have to say that after thirty minutes this act kind of bored me and it almost felt to my like a kind of gimmick or just a one-trick pony.

The following act has an impressive service record; making recordings for almost twenty years, being a respected film director and being responsible for wobble classic Flat Beat. That’s why I was pretty curious what kind of set Mr. Oizo was gonna play for us. Unfortunately (for me, the rest of the audience didn’t seem to bother) his set was pretty straight-forward and really Ed Banger-ish. Nothing wrong with this record label, but this sound is copied so many times and we’ve heard so much, that we’re just tiered of it. And for an almost 40-year old musician who still plays this kind of music, it’s just disappointing.

A completely different artist, but another performance where I was pretty curious what I sounded like. Gold Panda could choose for his languid chillstep beats from his record Lucky Shiner of much more techno-wise, like his DJ Kicks-mix. Finally it was a mix of both, but the not the best sounding; his first tracks sounded just awful, which we can (probably) blame to the Gashouder. Later on he played more known material, which he rebuilt for the dancefloor. His set finally ended up between a rock and a hard place.

Luckily did Nathan Fake a much better job. His techno started a bit cold and it looked like this man and the audience had to get to used to each other. It sounded like he was really on a search for the best form. After thirty minutes he let us hear that his new stunning track Iceni Strings is also working really well on the dancefloor and it sounded like a turning point at his performance.  His set turned into more warm techno and the audience and Nathan Fake finally get the click together. Hopefully Nathan Fake will get this click sooner on 15 September when he’ll performing at our festival.

Where Nathan Fake just get only one hour from the organisation to find this click did get his label boss James Holden 2,5 hours to prove himself. It was not weird that this man did it with perfection. He worked towards to a perfect climax and proved himself as the perfect closing act from a really nice festival.