REVIEW: Time Festival 2015

Never in our short lives have we seen more bizarrely and well dressed people than at Time Festival last Saturday. Never in our lives have we been to a festival that catered to such a diverse bunch of music lovers. From “out-there” Die Antwoord die-hards to the ultimate Mac Demarco, hipster fan/fucc boys – everyone was there. At forty degrees Celsius it felt more like we attended the festival on the surface of the sun as opposed to the lovely, Fort York Garrison commons, but alas, we made sure to mix in a couple of waters and sneaked out with only minor burns. So without further adieu, here's what we thought was worthy of writing home about:

We kicked off the afternoon with Diiv. A New York based indie rock group with a lot to say about nothing at all. It was a perfect day for the dream-pop, and the venue was bleeding happy fans due to the volume of sunshine and beer - everyone one was set up for success, right? Wrong, the bands carelessness and blasé attitude onstage was enough to send us back to the magic tree to listen from afar. Their wisecrack remarks weren’t endearing, or funny…just annoying. Musically though, we have to say, they're doing everything right.

That frustration was short lived as Alison Wonderland took the stage. Now she is someone to write home about. Alison if you’re reading this, expect our call for an interview. As we all know, there aren’t too many female DJ’s out there, so we found ourselves feeling extra thankful for this remix mastermind. Honestly, she brought absolute ~fire, track after track after track, while not forgetting to make sure we knew she had slept with her ex-boyfriend the night before. See ladies, you can have it all. Her set was VERY trap and bass heavy, which we haven’t heard in a while. While trap has been rapidly losing steam (in our opinion), her set defribulated it back to life. Pun intended. Trappy/snare drum heavy Rick Ross remixes, soft bass-heavy vocals, it was pure dancing heaven. We loved it. Loved her. Love her Adidas t-shirt/dress.

Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. How have you become so Japan? Were those Pokemon samples? Was that small, barely-there squeak of a hello really from your mouth? We have become quite confused by Ryan’s persona. On one hand he has released action packed, infectious, too-hype-to-handle remixes, but has also the ability to completely put a crowd to sleep. Hate to be harsh, but honestly sometimes we felt like we were listening to a ring tone! New takes on old classics like “Snow in Newark” kept the crowd going though, reminding us that he is one of the best producers out there and that maybe (hopefully) ring-tone design is only temporary. In our humble opinion, this guy has more production-talent than most in the game, but needs to incorporate a LITTLE bit more crowd-pleasing tendencies into his sound. Just a little bit, we’re not asking for much.

While we haven’t really listened to much Freddie Gibbs beyond Piñata (released with Madlib) and My Dope House – his collaboration with king Kaytranada, we were really psyched for his set. He has a reputation for being an incredible hype-man and absolutely turning UP during his sets. The festival didn’t have a massive police presence, but they must have been VERY annoyed while Freddie constantly led the crowd in “F**K POLICE” chants, and smoking a fat blunt on stage. He did not disappoint and was one of our favourites (if not favourite) of the day. He kept the crowd on their toes by dropping his biggest tracks, while usually only going through the chorus once or twice and spitting at most two verses (one verse almost always being acapella). A really cool point in his set was when he dropped the incredible head-bobber and dance-inducing track Pronto, with its reference to Toronto – “Took ‘em to the condo, pronto, Half Indian, I called her Tonto, Throwin’ fins in the six, shout out Toronto, yeah”. This is a clear reference to Freddie being a fan of Toronto’s strip club scene. HAHA. You go Freddie.

If Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain and Axel Rose had a love child it would be all five members of Ariel Pink. They were by far the most memorable group of the night, tripping up the crowd every three minutes when they changed tracks, and simultaneously changing genres. They started hard and were totally discombobulating, forcing every pair of eyes in the crowd onto the stage. Not even front man, Ariel Rosenberg’s short-shorts could make them look away. Watching the couple hundred onlookers react to their performance – which we soon found out was fueled by a bottle of Jameson - was like watching a cat follow a swinging treat on a string.

Firstly, to the girl who was entirely shirtless at the Mac Demarco show, that’s for being you. #freethenipple. You got a lot less attention than we expected, which in some ways is great because it meant no one was overly shocked. Anyways, Mac was arguably what we were looking forward to most at Time. Despite the countless hours we have spent wishing we were the girl he was singing about we had never seen him play before and finally, it was our time. Opening up with “Salad Days” was a good call – immediately the darts were out and everyone was singing along is a smoky bliss. His blatant “I don’t give a f***” attitude was in full force, freely discussing farts and providing the crowd with a PSA about the harful effects of smoking. Thanks Mac. “Another One” was our favourite track of the set. The blissful new ballad was especially dreamy heard live - almost good enough to make us forget the scarring video, but not quite.

All in all, this festival was a wacky, unexpected, energetic, well run, all around great time. We walked into the Fort York Garrison Commons with absolutely no expectations, and were totally pleasantly surprised. We danced, bobbed, ate incredible food, drank a lifetime’s worth of Strongbow, and basked in the beautiful Toronto sun. Everyone was friendly, the selection of artists kept us on our toes, and we found some new favourites to add to our iTunes. We want to thank the people from Time Festival for hosting a great way to spend our Saturday. We look forward to coming back next year!

#TimeFestival #Toronto