Posted by Caelin Meredith

And so the last day of the RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest in Ottawa arrived. And after Saturday’s epic blowout, Sunday felt like it might be a slower day. But what should have been a bittersweet coda turned into quite the party. After these two weekends of EDM, and almost two full weeks of rock, pop, hip hop, blues and dubstep, the fest went out with a bang.

Ottawa’s BKRK (a.k.a. Paul Burke) got the late-afternoon crowd warmed up with punchy beats. Seemed as though a lot of people were still riding the high from the previous night’s Skrillex show.

Next up:  Vancouver’s Felix Cartal. Did I mention what an amazing job DNA did programming the Electro Stage with a great mix of local, Canadian and international artists?

Cartal got the crowd jumping with remixes of Fedde Le Grand, Autoerotique and Laidback Luke.

Over on the Claridge Stage (the second main stage), Toronto’s The Weeknd performed. You couldn’t fail to be impressed by the number of fans who turned out, and who clearly knew the music by heart.

Considering rarely he performs, and his widely-reported reluctance to sign with a major label, it was interesting to observe his fan base: teenage girls, with a load of twentysomething guys. Curious, but it all worked.

Back to the Electro Stage for the final night — and it ended with Ultra Records star Wolfgang Gartner (a.k.a. Joey Youngman) delivering a crazy electro house set. Massive bangers and hit after hot hit. Here’s our boy Felix Cartal taking in the mayhem.

So the two Sunday nights at Bluesfest ended up being among the craziest and busiest of the festival. The tunes were the largest on these two nights: first with Chromeo on the opening weekend, and then Gartner wrapping it up on the final night. Kids losing their shit until the bitter end, until the last song was played out,

So long, Ottawa. I’ll miss the way you guys gave it your all for every act !

Check out Caelin Meredith’s site PUSH > PLAY.

Posted by Caelin Meredith

Almost at the of the RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest, and for EDM fans in Ottawa this was to be their day. Strategically, the Electro Stage showcased hip-hop as the Full Flex Express took over the Main Stage.

An homage to the legendary 1970 Festival Express tour that sent Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and The Band rolling across Canada by rail, the Full Flex Express packed Skrillex, Diplo, Grimes and Pretty Lights aboard a specially outfitted Via Rail train to party their way from from Toronto to Vancouver.

The set started at 6 pm with Diplo playing in 34-degree heat to about 10,000 people. He was in a chatty mood, continuously introducing his tracks on the mic and joking, “I heard Ottawa was harder than Toronto — but I had no idea how much harder!” This latter met with screams and cheers.

He dropped AC/DC to a thoroughly crazed reaction — no surprise, given, as I’ve mentioned before, Ottawa’s classic rock roots. Plus “Roxanne” by The Police with a deep Moombahton flow. The other huge anthem: “Rack City” remixed in various flavours.

Diplo felt so at home here he spent the last minutes of his set crowd-surfing, holding the mic and chatting. DJs jumping into crowd: is there any lingering doubt they’ve become our new rock stars? Nobody can touch them right now (figuratively speaking).

Meanwhile, over on the Electro Stage, Tyga was in the process of sending Ottawa’s hip-hop lovers ballistic.

I honestly had no idea that the local “heads” were so f**king nuts for the Cash Money/southern ballers style. But they lost it from the moment he hit the stage. He slammed it non-stop, and I had to duck side-stage as soon I heard the first few bars of “Rack City” — I could feel they were gearing up to lose their shit.

Elsewhere, Skrillex’s fans were busy getting ready to freak out the f**k out.

Pretty Lights was next up on the Main stage, as the crowd continued to swell. His set was orchestral and massive, punctuated with tunes like this one: “I Know The Truth.”

And finally, the main event! Skirllex brought a larger and more elaborate show than he had the previous night in Toronto. The backstage was closed due to all the pyrotechnics, lasers and whatnot, which meant no photography. So I had to sneak these …

This was a full-fledged rock concert ordeal, on a par with or bigger than what any of the week’s other main stage headliners had delivered — and the record crowd of 30,000 freaked to every minute of it.

… and FINALLY, an after party!

With the train set to depart at 2:30 am, getting to the party felt a little rushed, but once everyone got to Ritual Nightclub and settled in, the only issue I could foresee was getting all the artists to leave on time.

After Koan Sound (who are also on the train) played a dubsteppy set (including ragga jungle licks like “Special Dedication”), it was down to the Don. Skrillex, having just performed a full-on concert, played another few hours at this intimate club venue.

And the crowd was right there with him, partying on just as hard.

He gave it everything he had, sweating profusely and never letting up — even taking the photographer’s camera and snapping pics of himself with the crowd. Steadfast and dedicated, he is without question the hardest-working DJ out there right now.

And with that, the Full Flex Express left Ottawa as quickly as it had come, leaving a trail of wondrous disaster in its wake.

Check out Caelin Meredith’s site PUSH > PLAY.

Posted by Caelin Meredith

After going dark for a few days the Electro Stage came alive for the final weekend of the RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest in Ottawa. And if you’ve been reading the recaps so far, you’ll know that the fest is definitely due for a name change, what with a lineup that includes headliners like Skrillex and metalheads Mastodon. Although perhaps distantly blues-inspired in some former lifetime, neither heavy metal nor dubstep could really be said to fit on the same bill as Howlin’ Wolf.

Toronto-based Grantdtheft was first up on the decks this Friday night. As a self-styled DJ/VJ, his forté is integrating video with his audio mixes. I thought he was doing this all in real time, and he assured me later that he was — but the real work lies in the gruelling studio process of synching video to audio. Once that’s uploaded (see “days of work”), then he mixes live as per usual.

Mad skills and loveable tunes that had the crowd singing along; hip-hop and reggae anthems and hooks like no other DJ  had summoned all week. And maybe a few guilty pleasures rolled up in there as well.

A festival generally means fewer rules than a club gig, more freedom and less pressure to bring the latest and greatest. You get to play in more of a relaxed, party atmosphere. So maybe the reason I ended up hearing the remix of “Fading Like A Flower” twice in one week!

Then … it was time for Drop The Lime.

LISTEN TO DROP THE LIME ON SOUNDCLOUD

The last time I’d seen him was with Major Lazer in Toronto at Sound Academy, and this was definitely one of the sets I was looking forward to most: he seems to plays all my favourite jams, with tight technical mixes.

A natural-born musician, he also took an opportunity to chat engagingly with the crowd. Definitely one of the house -ier sets of the week, it got the ladies onto the dance floor — and the guys quickly followed suit.

Red Bull + fire extinguisher = the perfect metaphor for his set. Pulsating rhythms and beats that grip the heart. Beautiful and classic vocals co-existing peacefully with dirty, grimy bass lines to whine your waist.

Here, the boys chill offstage and catch up. These festivals give you a chance to see old friends and get to know new ones.

A-Trak, the evening’s headliner, turned in an absolutely mental set, drawing a crowd even larger than Tommy Lee and Aero’s or Paul Oakenfold’s — no small feat.

A ton of Montrealers made the two-hour drive and placed themselves strategically in the crowd to cheering with fierce Canadian pride for their hometown hero — a onetime DMC champ who has toured with the likes of Kanye West.

A-Trak’s quiet demeanour offstage belies his onstage persona: the “Big Bad Wolf.” Can you guess, by the way, which track was the banger of the night? Here’s a hint.

No question, this was the perfect way to gear up the Electro Stage for the final weekend of the festival.

Check out Caelin Meredith’s site PUSH > PLAY.

Posted by Caelin Meredith

Day 5 action on the RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest Electro Stage kicked off at 2 pm with a lineup that included Toronzo Cannon, Flight Distance, Lukas Nelson and Drastik (another Red Bull Thre3style finalist).

But it was local heroes A Tribe Called Red who really blew me away.

One of the benefits of a festival setting is the opportunity to discover an unknown act. Since hearing A Tribe Called Red perform live, I’ve become mildly obsessed, to the point of downloading their free album. For a taste of what these guys are like, CHECK OUT THEIR SOUNDCLOUD.

A Native Canadian trio, DJs  Bear Witness, Shub and NDN are into “mixing pow wow with contemporary club sounds,” as their Web site describes it — but that understates their impact. Performance-wise, they juxtapose politically charged visuals of First Nations culture against remixes of Adele and UK bass drops. All in all, a bass-heavy set with some truly organ-shifting moments.

“The set felt good, though very different from a club gig where you have four hours to get it going,” they told me afterward. Still, the crowd clearly appreciated their hard work. “The applause at the end was overwhelming; I had Goosebumps on my arms.”

On the other Bluesfest stages that day, the acts included Orgone …

… Down with Webster for the shrieking pre-teen set (a suitably PG-13 set with no thrown underwear) …

.. and Seal — who, for all his MOR rep, delivered an impressive performance and remixed a lot of his hits (but, thankfully, stayed true to “Crazy”).

Day 5 Electro Stage closer Chromeo turned in the BEST set I’ve heard all week — one that will go down as one of the standout performances of this festival. Sunday’s crowd showed no signs of fatigue and “raved” harder than previous nights.

Dave 1 and P-Thugg were generous in their selection and full-on with their performance, even coming around from behind the decks a few times to join the party. “When The Night Falls” and “Heads Will Roll” were big favorites, but it was the extended full mix of Duck Sauce’s “Big Bad Wolf,” with accompanying visuals, that had everyone jumping and howling.

Toward the last half-hour, the set shifted gears into “Ball So Hard” and a steady hip-hop interlude featuring the likes of Kanye, DJ Khaled and Rick Ross. It all wrapped up stunningly and had the crowd begging for an encore — a sentiment clearly appreciated by the band — but once again the strictly enforced injunction against music after 11 pm left those hopes dashed.

More Bluesfest Electro Stage recaps still to come …

Posted by Caelin Meredith

The weekend — which means the Bluesfest goes 10 hours a day. A nice, relaxing way to spend two days off work: milling around on a grassy knoll by the river and hearing some great music.

Rocking the Electro Stage: Nobody Beats The Drum, from the Netherlands. Despite the afternoon slot, they performed a high-octane set to a fair-sized crowd. Still, I wish I could say it was something like this:

Sjam and Jori from NBTD told me they have been on the road for the past eight weeks, playing shows and making music during the 16-hour van rides. Their current work, they said, is especially influenced by the landscape, as they’ve just completed a quintessential American road trip, starting in Alabama and heading up the west coast.

Ordinarily the band has a 27-foot screen to showcase their one-of-a-kind videos. Unfortunately, the stage specs at Bluesfest kept them from using it.  A small sample of what we missed out on:

Next up was France’s Mustard Pimp. “Christian rap/death metal/electro” is how he chooses to describe his music his on his Myspace page under “genre.”

Hard but crunchy beats with full basslines, featuring well-timed peaks and subsequent drops. Plus: a notable absence of dubstep! Not that I’m hating — it was just a refreshing change, since every other DJ has managed to incorporate some dubsteppery. CHECK OUT MUSTARD PIMP’S MUSIC ON SOUNDCLOUD.

Meanwhile, on the main stage… this was happening.

And that’s all we’re gonna say about that. Back to the Electro Stage, and the evening’s headliners: MSTRKFRT.

Jesse said the last time he was in town they played to more than 2,000 fans at an all-ages gig in Hull. The Bluesfest attendance was on par with that, and the crowd jumped non-stop for an hour and a half. An electro-and-dubstep-fueled, Moombahton mashup of hits, including Nero’s “Crush On You,” which got the calls for rewinds. The crowd surfing throughout this performance made it seem as much a rock show as a DJ set.

And FINALLY … an after-party! MSTRKRFT were there as guests of honour rather than working behind the decks, so DJ duties fell to local hero Mister P, who’d played the fest a couple days earlier. The music flowed at JunXion in the Market, as partiers reveled until dawn.

Posted by Caelin Meredith

Another gorgeous day — and The Weather Network says it’s gonna stay this way for the next 10 days: 28 and sunny. You couldn’t ask for better weather for an outdoor concert. Especially since we’re right on the river, so the evening brings fresh breezes — a bonus when you plan to be dancing for hours at a time.

Kid SL started the night. He’s an Ottawa native, and competed in last November’s Red Bull Thre3style Canadian Finals in Toronto.

A technically accomplished DJ, he played with flawless professionalism, even though the crowd seemed shy about dancing. That’s the drawback of having the first slot of the evening: you tend to get the “dinner or sunset set.” Still, that didn’t stop him from delivering a solid, high-octane performance — most notably dropping “Crush On You” with Mark Knight’s “Alright.”

Sacramento dance-punk outfit !!! (pronounced chk-chk-chk) followed — and what an amazing show they put on! A live band with heavy funk and percussive influence, they were an unusual programming choice, but it all worked brilliantly sandwiched between two DJ acts. The energetic live performance really got people primed as the sun went down.

Then there was front man Nic Offer: charismatic and kind of crazy, sporting garish Rolling Stones Some Girls shorts and dancing his way furiously through the hour-long set. He got the audience fully engaged by jumping into the crowd and performing a song on ground level — at one point holding a note for an astonishing 20 seconds.

Tommy Lee and DJ Aero closed things out on the Electro Stage that night.

Unlike the previous evening, which saw LMFAO performing at the same time as Paul Oakenfold on another, there was no competition for the EDM audience, so Tommy Lee and Aero got the kind of crowd numbers they’d hoped for — just shy of 1,700.

They played a progressive/electro hybrid, with 20 subwoofers added on stage to give a clear but distinctive sound.

It’s no surprise (considering Ottawa is such a rock town) that House Of Pain’s “Jump Around” got the biggest reaction. Then, Aero subtly dropped the “900 Number” by The 45 King, flirting just enough before pulling it back. This is a favorite of his so he only ever plays just a few bars, to keep it fresh.

The visuals — mostly well-endowed ladies — were well suited to the Mötley Crüe drummer, even though this was a family night for some. It took more than an hour of the set, I felt, before they really found their groove and came alive, pulling cheer after cheer from the crowd — all of which prompting Aero to grab the mic and say, “Ottawa goes off … we had no f**king idea!”

The dancing became less polite and more hedonistic as Benny Benassi’s “Satisfaction” and some raunchy dubstep pumped from the speakers.

“We were at Tila Tequila in Ottawa in 2008,” Aero told me after the show. “Joel Zimmerman opened for us then — before he was you know who.” They were ready to keep going and locate some kind of after-party, despite having to fly to Aspen the next morning.

I’ve been surprised, actually, that there haven’t been any club gigs tacked on to the festival programming. I was expecting after-parties and club nights to be organized to take advantage of all the talent passing through, but so far the only “official” after-party is scheduled for Thursday, when Big Boi plays a DJ set after his main stage performance.

And so ended Day 3. Still to come: Mustard Pimp, MSTRKRFT, A Tribe Called Red, Chromeo and much more. Stay tuned.

Posted by Caelin Meredith

This year’s RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest in Ottawa is heavy on the electronic dance music, light on the blues. A bold move considering the festival’s history, but a shrewd way to tap into a younger market and draw larger crowds to this incredible site.

One field with five stages and an indoor theatre (showcasing comedy), the festival site is just outside the downtown core and on the river, allowing for spectacular vistas and gorgeous sunsets. Attendees have the opportunity to experiences many different genres, all in one location.

[Photo: Patrick Doyle]

Opening night saw Tiësto rocking out on the main stage to thousands of his followers. Other EDM heavyweights on the bill this year include: Dragonette, LMFAO, Paul Okenfold, !!!, DJ Aero and Tommy Lee, Mustard Pimp, MSTRKFT, A Tribe Called Red, Chromeo (DJ set), Adam K, Arty, Drop The Lime, A-Trak, Diplo, Tyga, Skrillex and Wolfgang Gartner.

The Day 2 highlight: Paul Oakenfold on the Electro Stage going to head-to-head with LMFAO on the main stage.

[Photo: Sean Corby]

First on the Electro Stage was local up-and-comer Mister Parker. When asked what it was like to play Bluesfest, he said, “This is one of the biggest festivals to hit Ottawa — and playing for a hometown crowd is always a big rush. People were freaking out.” He was clearly excited to be on the bill with a legend like Oakenfold.

You could tell he was a hometown favourite, with the smattering of supporters he had in the crowd all sporting his t-shirt.

Next up was Cole, who delivered an energetic performance to those gathering for the Oakenfold show. Physical and present, he DJ’d on the Star Trekish Emulator and let old school Fatboy Slim dance alongside newer, harder tracks.

Dragonette played the Claridge Homes stage, which is perpendicular to the main stage but equal in size. They belted out hit after hit in 30-degree weather (at 8 pm!) and the crowd sang every word.

The band treated fans to an autograph session after the show, and Joel said they are still in disbelief after their Juno win with Martin Solveig.

LMFAO were the headliners on the main stage. Because it’s right next to the Claridge stage, they don’t schedule acts simultaneously, thereby preventing noise competition.

With SkyBlu injured, the backstage was closed to media, which made photographing the show challenging. Redfoo, however, put his all into delivering one hell of a solo show.

Despite the absence of his partner, he held court comfortably for the 20,000-plus who turned up for some “party rockin’” and kept up the carnival atmosphere with gusto.

Meanwhile, over on the Electro Stage, nestled alongside the river and tucked behind the building away from the main site, British elder statesman Paul Oakenfold delivered. What looked at first like a thin crowd soon blossomed to 1,500 strong.

Oakenfold laid down some of his most popular tracks, including remixes of “We Are Your Friends,” “7 Nation Army,” “Personal Jesus” and “I Need Your Loving.”

The set was definitely less trance-oriented than I’m used to hearing from Oakenfold — but he was playing for the crowd and reading them like a true professional.

He ended ceremoniously with his own anthem “How long.” Though the crowd was furiously chanting for an encore — “Oakenfold! Oakenfold!” — he couldn’t oblige, as Ottawa stringently enforces its noise bylaws, requiring the festival to end all its music at 11 pm sharp.

Tonight: !!! and Tommy Lee with DJ Aero.

Stay tuned over the next eight days for reviews, highlights and everything EDM from the Ottawa Bluesfest!