The Best French Techno Festival Is in Saint-Étienne
Ancient Methods. Photo - Julio Ificada

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The Best French Techno Festival Is in Saint-Étienne

At Positive Education, there are sulfate kicks, super sugary Krieks and after-parties dirtier than your shoes.
Marc-Aurèle Baly
Paris, FR
JI
photos by Julio Ificada

A version of this article originally appeared on Noisey France. In recent years, during the off-peak, bastard festival season of November, Saint-Étienne's Positive Education has carved out a special niche for itself. Boasting an exemplary and engaging lineup that doesn’t derive too much from Techno Factory (an example many French festivals would do well to emulate), this third edition of the festival (if you count Edition 0) really made us want to see it live. All the more so since the lineup featured the likes of Regis, Front 242, and Varg.

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After hours, ahead of their time

Soon after Positive Education kicks off, you realize what an odd atmosphere surrounds you. It’s a bit out of place, out of time—an impression only reinforced by the near-deserted manufacturing neighborhood where the festival takes place, and by the hotel halls decked with AS Saint-Étienne banners (take note: this is only soccer reference I’ll make here). On the first evening of the fest, the half-empty dance floor of La Galerie is home to the sounds of Marius Georgescu. You have the sensation it’s already dawn, even though the festivities have only just started.

The ambiance is a cozy one, the ground already sticking to people’s feet. People dance unabashedly while the Romanian rolls out a nice set, resolute and cushy all at once. The sensation of it all occurring outside of real time is further accentuated afterward when we head, late Friday (or early Saturday if you like), to the after-party. It’s in a tavern called Le Clapier, which looks like an image I might have of the Golden Pudel if I had ever been to Hamburg, or perhaps of an Alsace roadside restaurant hidden among the mountains—only we’re in the middle of St. Étienne, as I keep having to remind myself. Such are my impressionistic memories of Black Merlin’s 7 AM set.

The importance of the environment at a techno festival

At Positive Education, each venue offers a different “musical landscape.” The biggest one (Lot 242) is dedicated to live shows and sets that straight-up clobber you. These include Regis—whose set packs a punch that makes me spill my beer—then Vatican Shadow, so much better than at Visions (proving the guy is truly suited to small spaces). At the entryway is the Canteen, which, much as its name indicates, offers up snacks and chill, ambient sets. The other venues are split between industrial music/techno, acid/hardcore, and world/industrial/house. Chances are you’ll never feel too homesick, seeing as most of the festival-goers are from Paris.

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What might have been a pretty stupid party turns out to be not so bad at all. The cafeteria proves a necessary resource for resting and refueling, and the promiscuous ambience of venues makes you feel as if you’re among intimate friends. All the more so at IUEKE’s Saturday performance, featuring Phuong Dan, Tolouse Low Trax and Vladimir Ivkovic, and led deftly by Gwen Jamois with his tonton flingueur looks. It’s all so good-natured, nobody even budges during the sound interruptions.

Toulouse Low Trax

Industry accidents Trisomie 21’s live show will probably go down as the only real black spot on the festival, thanks to a fairly catastrophic sound system. And what can you say about Varg? This big, Swedish, hoodie-wearing teddy bear’s music—together with his vaguely post-internet aesthetic—make for a vague, uninvested and frankly weak potpourri. Seeing as he was at his laptop throughout his show, I wondered if he was really just browsing Facebook.

Trisomie 21

Varg

We also need to talk about Vatican Shadow. Coming onstage all alone under a rain of stroboscopes, Dominick Fernow punched the air with his fist, insulted the audience and screamed bloody murder at the ceiling. He didn’t crack even one smile during his performance, which was in the form of a techno 4/4 tunnel and borderline fascist (his backdrop was adorned with anti-Israel slogans and other “shock phrases”). Surely this guy, whose goal is to shock everyone, must even get sick of himself sometimes. On the other hand, in a way these same qualities can save a live show, seeing as the punitive side of hangar techno can be very quickly exhausting. And without this element (whether or not it was intentional), I’d have sworn someone had stuck me forcefully before a Haneke film.

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Vatican Shadow

Vatican Shadow

A little later that day, the duo of Fixmer/McCarthy brought yet another dose of outrage and excess. With fake Corey-Feldman-in-his-dark-period airs, Douglas McCarthy launched into an EBM rendition of The Normal’s “Warm Leatherette.” Normally, this would be pretty risky stuff, but at 4:30 AM, in St. Étienne, after liters upon liters of Kriek, it goes off without a hitch. Sometimes accidents have some good in them.

Fixmer/McCarthy

Fixmer/McCarthy

A Pikachu at Ancient Methods

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: this festival has its audience, and they come off fairly homogenous (overheard from one Positive Education festival-goer: “Yeah, seriously, I go to way too many drum’n’bass parties”). Even when you stumble on a niche of a niche (and let’s face it, an industrial techno fest is one), you’ll always find more die-hard partiers who’ve come to bond than nerds who’ve come to see how Regis’ set has changed since his last Boiler Room appearance (for those curious: it’s always pretty much the same).

Regis

Regis

Among the horde of Parisians and people in colorless clothing, I stumble, smack in the middle of an Ancient Methods set, on a guy dressed as Pikachu. He literally lights up the crowd, seeing as their tones pretty much range from gray to black—except for one guy with a flaming red Neubauten T-shirt, but he doesn’t really count. Make no mistake: this walking cartoon is one of the last bulwarks against the ever-looming homogenization of monochrome Berlin techno and the culture club in general. Make of it what you will, but I’m pretty sure you’ll never see a guy dressed like that at Atonal.

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Ancient Methods

At the beginning of most festivals, you gauge the wildlife a bit without daring to dive in too fully. You look around a little, you dip your toes in by going from venue to venue. And inevitably, after having pushed your limits throughout the fest, the last night turns out to be a true ordeal. Saturday night at Positive Education is no exception. Copious amounts of beer and glaring sleeplessness wreak their havoc, and everything starts to seem like a huge fog. The guards are on edge, pacing back and forth with a tad too much concern. This lends the event a “state of urgency” ambience that you might call… interesting.

Plenty of people around me are coming out of their shells, while for my part I start to feel like a larva huddled in its corner—no doubt leading many to take me for a dealer. Fortunately, Ed Isar’s cheerful, jackin’-house set at La Galerie has all it takes to warm hearts and butts. A little later on in the same venue, Manu Le Malin wears out his quiet strength, nailing the dance floor with a jackhammer of hardcore drumming. One girl tells me that some guys there really don’t take no for an answer; soon after, a guy with two black eyes tells me he “looooooves” my jacket. I start to feel a little afraid, which I take as a sign that I should finally head for home.

Edisar

Manu Le Malin

When some parties in Paris opt for names like Possession (or, at the other end of the spectrum, Fusion Mes Couilles [Melting My Balls]), the “quiet” Positive Education retains a gentle dullness that won’t give anyone the cold sweats. It may seem bland, but the festival’s pleasing, no-frills atmosphere is actually really important. Despite the freezing cold we battled from the first night (it gets easier each night after), there’s always something warm emanating from within the Cité du Design, where Positive Education takes place.

These days, location is almost as important (if not more so) than the music itself at a techno festival—and at an industrial techno festival, multiply that by ten. Positive Education, with its dilapidated-but-not-too-dilapidated aesthetic, its aging industrial windows, is clearly a far cry from Techno Factory or the impersonal hangars we so often encounter—something nobody’s going to complain about. On the whole, the festival is immediately reassuring (“on a human scale,” you might say) and reasonably priced, with a “Canteen” that’s not disgusting, its many Krieks furnishing the necessary doses of sugar for the final night. It’s nice to go there and not automatically feel like an asshole or a walking beer-opener—a rather rare experience, these days.

Marc-Aurèle Baly is on Noisey. Julio Ificada too.