INDIO, Calif. — The Coachella Music Festival has seen the future. And now that North America’s most prominent rock showcase has given us a glimpse of festival spectacle, things will never be the same in the desert.
Or at other high-profile fests like Tennessee’s Bonnaroo or Miami’s Ultra or Washington’s Sasquatch.
The three-day Coachella takes over the expansive polo fields outside Palm Springs, Calif., each spring, and it enjoyed a mammoth event last weekend. It sold out in less than five days, and the lineup was unquestionably strong. Headliners Arcade Fire, Kanye West and Kings of Leon brought the hits, and a buoyant crop of support (Interpol, the Black Keys) and up-and-comers (Rural Alberta Advantage, Lil’ B) filled out the bill roundly.
But it wasn’t only the music or the huge art installations that left the kids talking as they exited the festival grounds each night. It was the two things combined — the art as it meshed with the music, complementing the bands and their most epic jams and memorable hooks.
It sounds so simple, but it took a collaboration between Coachella and a group called the Creators Project to fully realize it: art and music together, on the festival’s humongous main stages. And, no, we’re not talking about the simple additions of lasers, LED walls or specialized lighting rigs.
What we saw at Coachella this year: a stupefying ball drop of 2,000 illuminated orbs during Arcade Fire’s most emotional sing-along. A groundbreaking video installation set to Animal Collective’s progressive set. A “Tron”-like grid of vertical, sound- sensitive light displays lining the top of the festival’s largest tent.
The visuals blew minds — both sober and intoxicated — last weekend. And given the buzzy aftermath of the displays, it’s safe to say that the collaboration has changed Coachella, and likely the other major music festivals in the U.S., for good.
“Our goal was to help Coachella transform into a festival of the future,” said Hosi Simon, the general manager of the Creators Project, a venture between culture/media conglomerate Vice and technology company Intel. “For us, it was very important to elevate the fan experience and the music experience through the use of technology and our creative partnership.”
With Vice’s knowing smarts and Intel’s access to technology — and the help of multiple techno-savvy artists — this year’s festival was easily the most memorable in Coachella’s 12- year history.
In fact, this year’s overall experience was so much more overwhelming than past years’ that it made promoter Goldenvoice look like it had been resting on its laurels the past few years. Sure, the festival was expanded from two to three days — and the booking has evolved along with the expansion of more traditional, static-art installations that litter the polo fields.
But this 2011 event was a whole different festival, and you could tell that the bands actually played a role in the creation of each set-specific art project.
“For us, it was important to go on to the main stage and help those artists express themselves in a completely different way,” said Simon, whose day job is at Vice. “What we’ve put together was an absolutely successful experience, and it set a gold standard for all the other festivals in the world. Fans from now on are going to expect something like that — an authentic, visual experience that wouldn’t have been possible without technology.”
It’s brazen, but true. It’s now hard to imagine a Coachella without artist Muti Randolph’s translucent, sound-reactive grid in the Sahara Tent. Even this year’s hottest DJs (Skrillex, Afrojack, Boys Noize) aren’t a lot to look at, especially from the back of the tent. But Randolph’s interactive lighting grid, which stretched the length and width of the tent’s roof, never failed to entertain.
And what of United Visual Artists’ living, breathing stage — called “Under Surveillance”? The light-enhanced, “Transformers”-like moment that followed the Interpol set was one of the strangest, most captivating scenes of the weekend. Or the unexpected ball drop, which was created by artist Chris Milk with the guidance of Arcade Fire? As the balls fell from the stage’s roof during that climactic sing- along in “Wake Up,” goose bumps and tears spread throughout the crowd infectiously. It was that powerful.
Of course, the point isn’t to re-create these installations year after year at Coachella — and the Creators Project gets that. They’re taking some of the existing pieces to various events all over the world. After that, it’s all about the creation of new work. And we hope some of it debuts at our next stop in the desert — April 2012, to be exact.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com; @RVRB on Twitter
