Since the festive season has kicked off (some time before Halloween) those rose tinted memories of Latitude and ATP festivals began to fade into fantasy and all thoughts turned towards enduring another bleak British winter. Yearnings for a conglomerate of interesting artists convening on a hot summer’s day are all too strong when your face is a canvas for freezing sleet at 9:00 in the morning. Hark! Never fear for I see stars of warming strobe lights and the promise of eclectic sound booming off in the East and it’s coming from an Aircraft Hangar in Brittany!?
Since 1979 Transmusicales Festival (or if you’re French – ‘Le Trans’) has been host to some of the most varied musical artists of last century and this year provides a powerful line up – M.I.A, The Phenomenal Handclap Band, Gonjasufi and ATRAC are a few to mention. The ear candy is set to be staged in the student city of Rennes and for the most part the shows will take place in Aircraft Hangars throughout the 9th, 10th and 11th of December. This is great, for despite disparaging comments on the state of the British weather, the weather in North West France could be just as dreary if not worse. The second cozy element is that it’s a two pronged festival with bands and Djs playing in a mini festival by the name of ‘Bar En Trans’ and is being held throughout the city in a range of, yep you guessed it, arty bar fair. The city actually has a street almost exclusively full of these twilight watering holes called “Rue Saint Michel” otherwise known by the locals as the “The Street of Thirst”.
If the allure of spending the weekend whetting your beak whilst passively lending your ear to a few bands and scanning the room for a beautiful French person to teach you a lesson in love seems crass, then worry not. Les Trans 2010 hosts some of the most pioneering artists to come out of this and the last decade.
Wooden Shjips, are set to play Saturday evening. With their combination of earth shattering punk and drone all blended with a trippy melee of noodling these San Franciscans are set to psych-out even the most grounded of folk. Before that we’ll be heading to see our very own UK based band Egyptian Hip Hop. Lauded highly for their innovative sets and intricate arrangements the young quartet possesses some of the most exciting potential to come from Manchester in a long while. A large portion of this can be attributed to the fact that they sound in no way like a pigeon-holed Manc band and have thus far forged an intriguing blend of genre-less music. Both the aforementioned bands sit comfortably in the lap of an ‘indie lover’, however Les Trans is showcasing a grand array of hip-hop, dance and electronica most of which we’ll be discovering for the first time and bringing back word of to you.
So if this sounds like a well spent weekend away, it’s because it is; for those fortunate enough to own a ticket, Clash will see you there…if not you can always come along and soak up the atmosphere of Rennes at it’s most vibrant, there’re bound to be a good few pub windows to peer through.
Words by Stephen Linehan
