Yes it happens to overlap with Veld. Yes, it is a little bit tragic but a decision will have to be made and this line is definitely out for a win.

Taking place at Fort York Garrison Commons, GROVE will be home to such acts as Hot Chip, Girl Talk, Phoenix, Young Empires, Nightbox, and Icona Pop among a few others. This is a day dance, and Girl Talk will bring it home after dawn.

We are giving away a pair of general admission tickets to a lucky QUIP fan, to enter for a chance to be that lucky fan visit our Facebook, a click over to the GROVE contest tab.

If you just can’t wait the tickets are available at Ticketmaster, Rotate This and Soundscape for a mere $59.50.

*The contest opened on July 8 at 10AM and will closes July 22 at 10PM ET. Must be of legal drinking age to participate. Open to all residents of Canada excluding Quebec.

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I’m on the corner waiting for our photographer, Brandon Farrington, to find parking, and as doors open, a group of bouncers exuding a heady mixture of would-be Lucha Libre stars and CIA types bark out instructions with precision to ready IDs for entry (i.e. “show me your papers, schnell!”). As a barrage of, lets say, under-dressed youths ricochet off the impenetrable bouncers’ ID checkpoint, the call goes up that only state IDs will be accepted, no high school or middle school ID cards allowed. At first it’s only a few, but before long about a quarter to a third of the line start to begrudgingly admit to themselves that they are, indeed, not going to get in. Some hinting at tears, others blaming each other for not having been born several years farther in the past, they scuttle off into the side streets of Logan Square, to do whatever it is fourteen year old kids without structure do.

So, entering the mammoth venue, the music has already begun, a medium-tempo concoction of house music, with a few nods to top-40 thrown in for good measure. Those who actually made it inside seem to have forgotten the tension on the street, and the party feels no worse for wear. Scanning the crowd of shirtless bros and woefully beach-garbed girls, Brandon’s summation seemed worthy of print: “it’s like walking into an STD…”

All venereal infections aside, the brunt of the party doesn’t really kick in until R3HAB gets into the booth. He spins a straightforward blend of pop-friendly house, replete with the hard-hitting drops one comes to expect of any EDM show worth its bath salts. But the main event, Mr. Aoki himself, is the true crux of the pandemonium. There’s a flurry of bodies grinding together; squinting your eyes and skimming the top of the crowd, one perceives a sea of glowing neon and upturned faces, limbs breaching the surface at chaotic intervals, wails hovering momentarily before drowning out, under booming audio. And presiding over it all, the sort-of-obviously Jesus-mimicking MC himself, and heir to the Benihana empire, Steve. It’s a weird, weird scene down there.

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By 9:45 or so, the line into The Congress has slithered around the block, a simmering pastiche of adolescent hijinks, appropriately representative of the wide distribution in age. The show is 17+, so while the expected 20 and 30-somethings, barely hiding just-shot-gunned PBR cans loaf around and smoke cigarettes, there’s also a substantial constituency of giggling titillated teens. Someone’s father is reading a book a few feet from the line, displaying exactly zero effort in the nonchalance department, to the stark dismay of one teenage girl.

To suggest that a Girl Talk show is less about performance than experience isn’t necessarily wrong; it’s just too reductionist, and kind of wet-blanketish. As the priest exists between God and congregation, so too does Gillis, inhabiting some elusive space between the music and the crowd. In a platonic reality, he might be the nexus point at which our profane sphere comes into contact with a Bacchanalian soundscape of lust and narcotic revelry. In reality, you’ve just never in your life seen a room more jam packed with sweaty bodies intent on dry-humping the shit out of each other. Did we mention there are balloons and confetti cannons?

Gillis’ set begins like a camera’s lens coming slowly into focus; a digitally rendered chant modulates from a two-syllable glob of sound into something steadily louder and more recognizable. No sooner does he take the stage, when a mass of clamoring fans start to shuffle in, stage right. It’s well known that Gillis allows fans to come onstage and dance, and people have been jockeying into position at both sides of the stage since before the hip hop openers, Zion 1.

The samples Gillis draws from are all lifted from his most recent album, 2010’s All Day. Having listened to the album for a week prior to the show, the live renderings are un-surprising, but somehow retain all of their entertainment value.

The appeal underlying his mash-ups rests in the warm and nostalgic familiarity of songs we know and love, 70’s soul classics comingling pleasantly with gangster rap and punk rock, bubble gum pop nuzzling fondly against dub step. And that appeal translates into real performance power when you start to follow Gillis’ transitions.

As he’s expressed in some of his interviews and writing about his work, these are the points, in a live show, of the highest importance, and which leave the most room for improvisation. So whether he’s laying TI over The Strokes or Missy Elliot and the Beastie Boys on top of Blitzkrieg Bop, a transition is, at all times, beginning, occurring, or leveling out.

Macgyver-esque toilet paper cannons whip through the air, coagulating to a backdrop of LED panels reminiscent of a half finished game of Tetris, all while more fans seem to be piling onto the stage by the minute. Someone jumps the barricade and doesn’t quite make it past security, as another girl topples backward off stage, only to leap back up unscathed.

As the mass of dancing fans cluster around Gillis, it’s easy to lose him in the crowd, but for his efforts to amp them up, climbing bare-chested onto the DJ table, invoking a near-pandemonious reaction.

The show’s sensory engagement is multi-tiered, but chiefly visceral. So while it’s easy to dismiss Girl Talk’s performance as a well-curated dance party, it’s equally possible to lose one’s self in the fray. And there’s something about that trance-like draw that’s untouchable, and certainly worth the experience.

Check out more photos from this show on our Facebook page

The post Sweatin’ to the oldies (and/or newies): Girl Talk at The Congress appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Last night I witnessed some serious ladyboners going down at the Beat Kitchen, and it quickly became apparent that it is time to add another muse to the pantheon of rock goddesses, North Highland’s main squeeze Breda Malvini.

Fewer things are more refreshing than hearing a beautiful female voice carry a band. It helps break the monotony of dudes singing about being dudes with other dudes, something that gets a little old pretty damn quick. And I am not talking just from a purely sexual standpoint. The female touch adds a certain indescribable something to a band’s persona.

Going back to Leslie Feist, what would Broken Social Scene (BSS) be without her? Not much, that’s what, and the band has spent plenty of time trying to replace her creative input since she blossomed in her solo career. BSS is a prime example of the degree of authenticity that the ladies lend to a band, something that North Highlands has in spades. Love songs sound more loving, ballads more believable, and everything seems to be real.

Brenda Malvini isn’t just some eye candy thrown into a boy’s club – far from it. She is the creative centerpiece of the Brooklyn-based quintet. Their diverse compositions ebb and flow from her keys, with each supporting piece intertwined in place. Gentle builds catch you off guard, and Malvini’s voice just slaps you across the face with almost every note.

Given the musical range on Wild One, I was really curious to see how they would perform live. Most notably, North Highlands does a beautiful job of gently leading their fans into brief moments of catharsis with each successive track. Their pacing was phenomenal, something that really becomes important when you’re a group that touches on a wide variety of music genres in a one-hour set.

When breaking into Salty, the Beat Kitchen swayed in time with the dreamy bass line and fluttering guitar licks. The room kind of transformed into a collective happy place, and even the band seemed to react to everyone’s little moment. It was far and away the highlight of a night punctuated by an emerging talent in the indie game.

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