Die Antwoord flaunt their genitalia, Deadmau5-keteers swarm, and Belle & Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch loses his hat at the Treasure Island Music Festival

October 16-17, 2010, in San Francisco

By Katherine Hoffert
Published: October 19th, 2010 | 1:00pm

While its views of the San Francisco skyline and Alcatraz are truly spectacular, Treasure Island may not be the best location for a festival, after all. Situated in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, its unforgiving susceptibility to weather creates a problem when the icy wind kicks up, as it did on Saturday, or the rain comes down, like on Sunday. Festivalgoers stuck it out, though, packing in tighter and dancing to stay warm. Unfortunately, those who were dancing were still freezing, resulting in longer lines for tea than beer.

Keeping with tradition, the first day of the annual music festival was dedicated to more electronic and dance-oriented acts, and it paid to get to the island early on Saturday to catch the immersive electronic alchemy of Holy Fuck at the Bridge Stage. The Toronto four-piece’s spazzed-out psych jams brought to mind a wild beast ravaging through a frozen landscape, and it was fascinating to watch frontmen Brian Borcherdt and Graham Walsh pull off electronic effects without traditional techniques or laptops. In addition to maneuvering through a pile of analog synths, pedals, and knobs in front of him, Borcherdt manipulated a 35mm film synchronizer to achieve the scratching effects of a turntable and nearly swallowed his microphone on several occasions.

Holy fuck

Though their name is less offensive than the previous act, Cape Town’s Die Antwoord (which means “the answer” in Afrikaans) were easily the most vulgar, confrontational, and entertaining act of the weekend. It’s fair to say most people were there to see if these purveyors of the South African white trash “Zef” aesthetic were the real deal. But that became insignificant, fast. The mulleted Yo-Landi Vi$er and Ninja proved their "fokken” intense, double-time rap-rave rhymes popped just as much as the veins in their necks and were just as aggressive as Ninja’s blatantly bouncing genitalia. While audience members ate up the meme-making “Enter the Ninja” and caught the Ninja when he dive-bombed them, the most memorable/uncomfortable part of Die Antwoord’s set was Vi$er’s performance of “$copie.” Over DJ Hi-Tek’s pogo-ing techno beat, the pasty-skinned, alien-esque, chipmunk-voiced rapper teased, “I got what you want, boy / And you’re never gonna get it / So you might as well forget it.” This pretty much sums up Die Antwoord. They have something we’re never gonna get—mystery—and this has proved to be the most powerful tool in the Internet age.

Over at the Tunnel Stage, Upstate New York’s Phantogram were an almost too dramatic change of pace, their spectral, beat-heavy dream pop like an extension of the cloud-engulfed skyline behind them. Though keyboardist Sarah Barthel brought tons of energy to the stage and the addition of a live drummer made their sound more tactile, the intensifying weather and lack of vile insanity made Phantogram’s set less than captivating.

Performing in Tokyo the night before, a sleep-deprived !!! brought more goofy energy to the Bridge Stage with their spastic dance-punk disco. Decked out in a trench coat, singer Nic Offer worked it for the photographers, dancing around ridiculously and jumping over the photo pit into the crowd. New to the expansive line-up was dynamic vocalist Shannon Funchess of the band Light Asylum, who made a point to mention that Dave Smith, “the electronic wizard,” was also in the house. Considered to be the father of MIDI, Smith designed the Prophet 5—the world's first programmable polyphonic synth—in 1977. However, the audience was less interested in this than !!!’s 2003 single "Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard,” for which “everybody cut footloose.”

!!!

Austria’s Kruder & Dorfmeister were up next on the Bridge stage, performing for the first time in nearly a decade. The downtempo dub remix pioneers brought a tried and true sense of professionalism to the day and performed with the help of MC Earl Zinger and Ras MC T-Weed, while visuals from Fritz Fitzke made their live set like a dubstep version of Kraftwerk’s. On tour celebrating the 16th anniversary of G-Stone Recordings, the Vienna-based label they founded, K & D celebrated their past, present, and future with Treasure Island.

Like with Holy Fuck, it paid to be up front for Sweden’s Little Dragon at the Tunnel Stage. In addition to witnessing the elegance and passion of Swedish-Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano—who was like the Billie Holiday of electro-pop, you could see the detailed workings of her unusual instrumentation. The most interesting and visually stunning of these were the thick glass plates dangling to her right, which produced a flat percussive sound when she knocked on them. Combining the ‘80s pop spirit of Madonna with the darker synth fixation of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it was a fun dance party even for those in the back.

Little dragon

But it was Toronto’s Deadmau5 back at the Bridge Stage that stirred up the biggest dance party of the weekend and an all-out technological orgy onstage. Perched high above the crowd in a black cube, Joel Zimmerman donned his signature Mickey Mouse-esque headpiece and employed insane LCD visuals that turned his set into an even more tripped-out version of Disney’s Fantasia. For “Sofi Needs a Ladder,” a female MC, Sofi (Some Other Female Interest), took the stage and spit the rhyme, “Drop you like a needle on the record, scratch my itch” to wild applause. The fandom for this artist is insane, and the crowd was a sea of mau5 heads and rave bracelets.

By Sunday, the indie-rock beards and guitars day, the weather had turned from bad to worse and rain caused many to bail on the festival altogether. Vendors smartened up and brought soup (thank you to the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen for the delicious tomato soup and the most amazing comfort food ever: grilled cheese with bacon, roasted tomatoes, and homemade bread and butter pickles!), and bands like the National didn’t need a fog machine.

She & Him didn’t have it too bad during their afternoon set at the Bridge Stage, though. Either from excitement or in an effort to keep warm, Zooey Deschanel came out bouncing in a navy blue coat with pink ruffles poking out the bottom. She kept up this spunky energy throughout their vintage folk-pop set, which included a rollicking cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.” M. Ward matched her in his navy blue shirt, but his demeanor was much more laidback and his guitar playing was cool and intuitive. Perhaps it was the way that her coat resembled the one she wore in (500) Days of Summer, but it was difficult to separate Deschanel’s music and acting careers and trust her as she sang sweet love songs like “I Was Made for You.” After all, she broke Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s heart!

Known for reckless live antics that have gotten the plug pulled on their sound and left singer Ami Shalev with a broken leg, it was no surprise to see only security and photographers on the Tunnel Stage for Monotonix’s set. The hairy, shirtless Israeli punks had set up on the ground, but were dangling from the soundboard tent and crowd surfing with their instruments in no time. The real surprise was when Shalev led the audience in an a cappella sing-along of the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Monotonix

As was the case for quite a few bands there that weekend, this was the last show of the tour for Broken Social Scene, yet another Toronto group on the bill. Mainstay Kevin Drew asked the audience to keep up the energy for the next 50 minutes because they needed it to keep them going. While the many members of BSS may have been exhausted, neither broken guitars nor rain would break their spirits. With an arsenal of guitars, a horn section, keyboardist-vocalist Lisa Lobsinger, and “the Apostle of Hustle” Andrew Whiteman in tow, they pleased the crowd with old favorites like “Almost Crimes” and “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl.” Lobsinger took over Emily Haines’ vocal duties on the latter, and the audience quietly chanted along, “Park that car / Drop that phone / Sleep on the floor / Dream about me.” After commenting that there was “no foreplay in this festival” in reference to Treasure Island’s strict enforcement of its schedule, Drew said, “I’m gonna come crowd surf right now to be close to you” and almost made it clear to the soundboard.

Over at the Tunnel Stage, Surfer Blood were impossible not to like. Fusing moody Morrissey-inflected vocals with Weezer's big, Blue Album-era choruses and power-chord hooks, these Florida boys weren’t always technically on point, but the energy was there. This was largely thanks to Marcos Marchesani, the Animal of keyboardists, who pounded on a second set of floor toms with maracas along with his keys. Wearing a red beret, frontman John Paul Pitts said, “Broken Social Scene were awesome—we’re really sorry about what we did to you guys in Australia,” then played “Twin Peaks” without going into any more detail.

This wasn't the last we'd see of Pitts, who showed up onstage during headliner Belle & Sebastian’s performance of “There’s Too Much Love” along with a few other exceptional clappers pulled from the audience by frontman Stuart Murdoch. Apologizing for their long absence, the Glasgow twee-pop ensemble played a fan-oriented set full of oldies like “I’m a Cuckoo,” “Step Into My Office, Baby,” “Like Dylan in the Movies,” and “The Boy with the Arab Strap.” It was also a San Francisco-oriented set, with “Sukie in the Graveyard” about a San Francisco girl that lived in the attic of her art school, and the lyric “San Francisco’s calling us / The Giants and Mets will play” from “Piazza, New York Catcher” resonating especially strong after the Giants’ devastating 6-1 loss to the Phillies just moments before. (People had been keeping track of the NLCS on their iPhones all day, and the game was on backstage.)

San Francisco’s weather made its way into Belle & Sebastian’s set, as well, when Murdoch accepted a hankie from an audience member for his sniffly nose and told a story about how he lost his hat in San Francisco earlier that day. His wittiness was utterly charming—especially when he threw mini Nerf footballs at the babies in the audience before launching into “Lord Anthony.” But it was Belle & Sebastian’s genius melodies and orchestration that kept the audience wrapped around their finger. With the help of a small string section, a brilliant French horn, and Sarah Martin's lovely violin and flute, their beloved songs totally came alive. Murdoch thanked the crowd for toughing out the cold and ended the night with “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying” and “Sleep the Clock Around.” It an appropriate close to an exhausting and brutally cold weekend.