You’ll hear it again and again from anyone who’s been: Fuji Rock is a special festival. Nestled in the mountains of rural Niigata a few hours outside of Tokyo, this three-day festival is as much about the music as it is about soaking in all the gorgeousness that rural Japan has to offer: towering, cloud-capped hills; a burbling river to wade in; glowy nighttime pathways with disco balls scattering light across the trails. And festivalgoers really did soak it in: as seems to be the tradition, it was a rainy Fuji Rock this year, drizzling all three days with a downpour on Saturday. But that didn’t stop the hordes of Fuji goers from having an awesome time — one that, in many ways, is markedly different than most Western festival experiences.
For one, the trash carpet that typically accumulates on the ground throughout the course of a festival was amazingly absent (replaced instead by a nice, goopy mud flooring known for claiming unsuspecting flip-flops). Indeed, Fuji Rock holds itself to high environmental standards like much of Japan, including a rigid recycling system complete with staff ready to guide you through the process should you get confused as to where to toss your chopsticks.
Along with the impressive lack of litter, there was also stark lack of smoke clouds among the crowd given that Fuji Rock is a strictly drug-free affair. Actually, Fuji Rock seems to be a more wholesome festival than many might be used to. Trendy couples decked out in proper hiking gear roamed the festival with strollers and children in tow, and to keep kids entertained if Björk wasn’t really their style, kids were welcome to climb around “Kid’s Land” in the woods, an eco-inspired playground that even adults would be jealous of.
And though Fuji Rock boasted some huge names this year — Björk, Aphex Twin, Gorillaz, and Lorde, to name a few — many Fuji Rockers seem to be regulars, making the trek to the hills every July no matter the lineup. Just looking at the abundance of camping gear, it was clear that many attendees were pros at the whole festival camping thing. Save your Summer ‘17 festival collection — the look for Fuji Rock consisted of hiking boots, oversize ponchos, and the ever-ubiquitous bucket hats. But despite donning gear fit for climbing Fuji’s namesake, many festival pros took the more lax route and staked out in chairs and tarps during music sets, scattered about the hills overlooking the massive Green and White Stages. In the states, you can bet your chair would be gone or your tarp trampled upon if left out for hours at a time, but at Fuji Rock this is a regular occurrence, and like most things in Japan, things surprisingly work out and faith in humanity is restored just that little bit.
This year’s Fuji Rock was a rainy three-day marathon, the brunt of which was reserved for Saturday nighttime festgoers. But to keep the chill away, the festival’s tasty warm ramen was just a stone’s throw away at any given moment, along fire dancers and fireworks, because it’s not a Japanese festival if you don’t have fireworks. Yes, Fuji Rock is too special — and expensive — to waste sitting in a tent, rain be damned! And so, here are the top 10 acts of Fuji Rock 2017.
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10. The xx
The xx at Primavera Sound by Philip Cosores
English indie group The xx took the stage Friday night, opening appropriately with “Intro” and transitioning smoothly into “Crystalised”. The xx cast a moody feeling across the stage, Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft’s breathy, dark vocals intermingling. But as nicely as the duo vocals go together, Madley Croft introduced “Performance” with a pause, saying, “This next song I’m going to do on my own, and I’d like to dedicate it to anyone who finds it hard to say how they feel.” Her performance was honest while avoiding sappy clichés — stripped down and subdued without being boring. If The xx were colors, they’d be black and blue and the Fuji Rock sky — gray for miles but still beautiful.
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09. LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem at Shaky Knees by David Brendan Hall
It’s hard to explain how exactly New York pop punk group LCD Soundsystem managed to pull it off, but for those who left Aphex Twin’s slightly overlapping set and made the trek out to White Stage, the rain seemed to fall a little less hard out there. Maybe it was just the crowd, but approaching LCD Soundsystem’s set felt kind of like walking into a party with all your friends, with music you used to hear bumping in the dorms. Songs like “Yeah” — simple, you know? “Yeah, yeah, yeah, hey, hey, hey, hey…” Don’t think too hard about it, just dance. They did play some newer material off of their yet-to-be-released American Dream, but nothing quite beats the old stuff, like the somber and hypnotic “Someone Great”. And maybe LCD frontman James Murphy was trying to be funny for his choice in encore music given the fact that the entirety of the crowd at this point was drenched and mud-soaked, but he finished the set with a pounding round of “Dance Yrself Clean”. Well, we’ll sure try.
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08. Cornelius
Japanese oddball Cornelius kept it classy as he approached the Green Stage on Saturday, donned in sharp white button-ups, black pants, and sunglasses as “Welcome” flashed across the screen in cursive. His band played a mix of experimental, genre-bending tunes, including the more subdued “Sometime, Someplace” — a lovely electronic rock song that offered an upbeat start to the set. “Helix/Spiral” marked another spacey, robotic hit, followed later by the bizarre mix of heavy rock and robot pop on “Count Five or Six”. As expected, the set offered a delightfully diverse mix of music, and no matter what Cornelius played, the crowd seemed to absolutely revel in it, one girl in front furiously shaking her hips as she yelled “Tanoshinde!” (“Have fun!”) to her friend while two bucket-hatted guys in the back spun in circles. Perhaps the most pleasant track was the “Star Fruits Surf Rider”, a chirpy song that sounds like it belongs in the Super Mario universe rather than within a ski resort outside of Tokyo. But perhaps that’s the beauty of Fuji Rock’s unique location and vast mix of talents: it is as much of a sonic escape as it is physical.
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07. Rhye
Rhye at Festival of Disruption by Heather Kaplan
Cool kids Rhye performed on Friday out in the Field of Heaven, the most remote stage in Fuji Rock, but somehow appropriate for this group. There was something really special about the crowd that ventured out there to see them. The group eased with care into the set, snapping along to the beat as they opened with “Verse”. An understated dude in an oversized black sweater, Canadian singer Milosh delivered an impressive live performance. His voice is untouchable — smooth and decidedly feminine — crescendoing effortlessly over the Fuji crowd. Accompanying Milosh were string players who likewise delivered their parts with grace and precision. It was a carefully executed performance, yet appeared effortless. Of course, the hit of the show was the more upbeat “The Fall”, a song just as seductive as it is melancholic. At one point during the set, the microphone apparently couldn’t handle the silky vocals of Milosh, uttering a massive shriek of feedback across the crowd, but Rhye recovered quickly, demonstrating their truly unshakeable smoothness.
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06. Lorde
Lorde at Coachella by Philip Cosores
Lorde knows how to get a crowd crowing! As usual, Fuji Rock was graced with less than ideal weather for this set, but despite the gloom and doom, the young New Zealand songstress came onstage dancing in her white trainers and gothic lace dress, gushing with an infectious sense of energy and charisma. Taking note of the mist-covered greenery of her surroundings, she casually mentioned the fact that she’s a witch, lowering her voice to note, “We might conjure the spirits tonight.” But honestly, the real magic was Lorde’s ability to get almost every audience member near the head of the stage up and dancing. She played some nostalgic nods to teenage longing, like “Buzzcut Season” and “Melodrama”, pausing to explain that the latter harks back to that time when you were a teenager, “throwing your whole heart into everything you do,” when everything was “psychedelic and fluorescent.” She expanded further upon youth later before playing “Ribs”, explaining, “This is a song I wrote when I was 15. I was afraid of getting older.” And it’s in that moment that you remember that Lorde is only 20 years old. If she’s exhibiting such a powerful stage presence and remarkable vocal range — at times strong and throaty, other times sweet and coquettish — it really is exciting to think about how she’ll continue to progress and develop in the upcoming years.
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05. The Avalanches
The Avalanches at Governors Ball by Ben Kaye
Australian mix n’ match champions The Avalanches took the stage on Saturday when the rain was really starting to pick up, but it didn’t stop this colorful crew from radiating good vibes across the rain-soaked crowd. While the majority of Fuji Rock had mud up to their ankles at this point and grim, dripping faces shrouded by hoods, The Avalanches’ crew looked great in flashy sparkles, camouflage, cheetah print, and toothy grins to accompany it all. The group decided to kick off with a bold move, not only starting their set with their 2016 hit “Because I’m Me”, but asking the nearly silent crowd to sing along. To tell you the truth, The Avalanches might have had a bit more energy than the Fuji Rock crowd could handle at that rainy moment, and at one point rap diva Eliza Wolfgramm picked up a baseball bat, swinging it around stage as if to whack some momentum and energy into onlookers, before eventually admitting that they didn’t realize how bad it was raining out there. Still, good vibes were all around. They killed it with “Subways” — a disco dream-pop hit with an accompanying ’60s-style video all about cartoons just trying to figure out the big, bad world of public transportation. But of course, “Since I Left You” stole the show with its fizzling burst that got everyone grooving. Despite the slightly sleepy nature of the 5:00 p.m. Saturday crowd, there’s no denying that the Avalanches delivered an uplifting and dance-worthy set.
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