On Saturday, I went up to New York City to catch Anoraak and Fred Falke live at the Brooklyn Bowl. If you've never been to the Brooklyn Bowl, I highly recommend it-- it had an incredibly chill vibe, great disco balls, and was one of the best venues I've ever been to.
Check out the full review, pictures, and video below.
Anoraak, who I interviewed a couple months back, went on around 12:30 with his drummer and bassist/keyboardist. I hadn't seen any live videos of Anoraak since his days performing with a laptop, but wow, I was impressed. The band sounded tight and, while lacking enough members to recreate all the sounds of his albums, still did a great job performing the songs. He did a mix of tracks from Nightdrive with You and Wherever the Sun Sets mixed with some new tracks that are going on his next record. Some of the tracks included "Crazy Eyes", "Waiting For Your Phone Call", 'Nightdrive with You", and "You Taste Like Cherry". The new tracks sounded great and I could tell there would be a couple new favorites for his next album. He played for about 45 minutes.
It was worth noting Anoraak didn't play as much keyboard as you would think-- he played most of the songs on guitar, which makes sense considering his records seem to be moving away from the pure synthetic material of Nightdrive. Even though I'm a bit of a synth purist, it didn't bother me-- he still had the great Anoraak vibe. Regardless of how the next record sounds in terms of synths (when I asked him about the songs after his set, he said they were a bit "harder rock") I don't think his fans will be dissapointed. If you're curious what he played live for keyboards, they used two Akai MPK49s.
Fred Falke went on stage at around 1:45. I'll admit, I mostly know Fred Falke's tracks with Alan Braxe by name, but it doesn't make me any less of a fan. Fred's DJ set was awesome-- every track brought down the house. He mixed a string of his remixes together seamlessly and included some live bass for tracks. It was so cool to see one of the legends of the French House scene perform and live up to all my expectations-- it was the most top notch DJ work I've ever heard.
Included in his set was his awesome remix of Robyn, which includes his bass playing when you see him live. If you can check out Anoraak and Fred Falke on tour, I highly recommend it!
Nice! Next time they come to Sweden i´ll be sure to catch them!
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