Tag: Immersion

Festival: DRILL LA – Day 01 @ The Echo (Los Angeles)

Three days of music explodes in Echo Park!

Wire’s DRILL Los Angeles Festival kicked off with a three band night at The Echo (the smaller of the two venues living in the same building) with performances by Alina Bea, Immersion, and Bob Mould. As I’ve said before, I’m somewhat of a fan of The Echo (and its basement counterpart, Echoplex). The sound is almost always on point. The only downside of the upstairs is the lighting and small size of the stage leave a bit to be desired. It’s no surprise that most of the punk rock and smaller indie acts play upstairs while the downstairs houses larger bands and equally larger stage. That said, the intimacy provided by The Echo is its strongest point, and for the evening’s performances, that was a must.

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Festival Preview: DRILL Los Angeles

WIRE brings DRILL back to the West Coast for the first time in 4 years!

When I was seventeen I went to “The Warped Tour” in San Francisco. I had never been to a festival and it was definitely a bit mind blowing. The concept of walking from stage to stage strategically placed in a given area, with an enormous lineup of bands, having to pick and choose which bands to see and which bands to miss, was thrilling to say the least. I continued going to bigger and bigger festivals after that (Coachella, Sasquatch, Treasure Island) until about 2010 when I ultimately began to feel jaded by them and I haven’t been to a single festival since. So here we are in 2017, I am now in my 30s and I’m going to another festival. This one, however, promises to be a whole different experience entirely. Since around 2013, English post-rockers WIRE have been curating a festival called DRILL. The catch with DRILL is that it doesn’t rely on gigantic locations and 100s of bands but, instead, focuses on smaller venues and puts more energy into bringing diverse musical styles and bands, both new and old, together. While, thematically, many of the bands are linked by the post-punk, darkwave, dream pop genre, it is safe to say from past DRILL lineups that it promises to be an exciting and unique experience.

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