In just a few weeks, Pitchfork Music Festival Paris returns to Grande Halle de La Villette with M.I.A., DJ Shadow, Moderat, Nick Murphy (fka Chet Faker), Bat for Lashes, Todd Terje& the Olsens, Parquet Courts, Joey Purp, and more en tow. To gear up, we’re highlighting some of the full best sets in the fest’s brief history. In 2013, Paris featured a wide range of top-notch electronic sets, from the likes of Disclosure, Hot Chip, and Darkside.The following year, fresh off their stellar debut The Bones of What You Believe, Chvrches celebrated the fest’s Halloween tie-in with singer Lauren Mayberry rocking full Dia De Los Muertos makeup for the high-energy set. That same year, Caribou (aka Dan Snaith) played a career-spanning show that shifted moods as much as Snaith’s impressive catalog; he returns to the fest this year as his alias Daphni.
In addition to this year’s main festival (running October 27 to 29), Pitchfork is also hosting a block party around Bastille (11th arrondissement) on October 25 and 26. Pitchfork Avant-Garde features 42 emerging artists—Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith to Kweku Collins—across seven venues. Find tickets to Pitchfork Avant-Garde here, and tickets to Pitchfork Music Festival Paris here.
Disclosure (2013)
By October of 2013, Howard and Guy Lawrence were riding high from their debut, Settle. The album debuted at No. 1 in the UK, but by the end of its rise—which was in full swing at the time of this memorable set—it had launched instant classics worldwide, most notably Sam Smith collab “Latch.” Since then, Disclosure have remixed Settle, released their sophomore album Caracal, and put out the surprise EP Moog for Love. Revisit our feature “Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Disclosure Break Down Every Song on Their New LP.”
Darkside (2013)
Darkside, the experimental duo comprised of Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington, played their final show just one year after their Pitchfork Music Festival Paris set. Together, they released a self-titled EP and Psychic, one of 2013’s best albums. Both artists put out new music this year: Jaar released his excellent Sirens (his second solo record after 2011’s Space Is Only Noise), while the Dave Harrington Group put out Become Alive. Read our new interview “Sound the Alarm: Nicolas Jaar and the Politics of Dance Music.”
Hot Chip (2013)
Hot Chip’s guitar-heavy Pitchfork Music Festival 2013 performance arrived between their 2012 album In Our Heads and last year’s Why Make Sense? Despite no shortage of new material, the show’s highlight arrived about an hour in, when Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley stopped by for a slow-burning cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes.”
Chvrches (2014)
The year before their Pitchfork Music Festival Paris debut, Chvrches took the world by storm with bonafide bangers like “The Mother We Share” and “Gun.” Since then, the Glasgow synth-pop trio has released second LP Every Open Eye and traveled the world on tour (including shows with Death Cab for Cutie), keeping sets fresh by doing things like dedicating songs to the late Harambe. Listen to our 5-10-15-20 podcast with Chvrches.
Caribou (2014)
In 2014, Dan Snaith released his excellent Caribou record Our Love. When he next takes the stage in Paris, he'll perform as Daphni, a project with one full-length (2012’s Jiaolong) and a growing number of new tracks to its name. Revisit our 5-10-15-20 interview with Snaith.