Five Acts in a Power Plant

Miike Snow’s self-titled debut had been living in my headphones for weeks before anyone announced anything. That album—somewhere between leftfield pop and Scandinavian melancholy, built around hooks that didn’t announce themselves as hooks until you were already trapped—was one of those records that lodges so deep you stop consciously hearing it and just let it become part of the furniture of a season. Seeing them in the lineup for Electronic Beats’ 2010 festival felt like confirmation that something was paying attention.

The rest of the bill was equally strong. Moderat—the project fusing Modeselektor’s rhythmic density with Apparat’s more atmospheric instincts—had put out their debut the previous year and were beginning to feel like something that mattered in a lasting way, not just a promising side project. Major Lazer brought their specific brand of barely controlled dancehall chaos; their live shows had a reputation for going sideways in the best possible sense. Little Dragon were stranger and quieter, Yukimi Nagano’s voice doing that thing it does where it seems to arrive from slightly outside of regular time.

And then there was Kele. Bloc Party had meant something real to me—that post-punk anxious energy, guitar lines that sounded like insomnia given physical form—and Kele stepping out solo to present whatever was taking shape had the specific tension of watching someone you’ve followed for years try something new in public. You’re rooting for them and bracing yourself simultaneously.

The E-Werk in Cologne was a reasonable room for all of it: an old industrial power plant repurposed as a venue, which is either poetic or obvious depending on your tolerance for that particular metaphor. Either way it sounds good in there. Five acts, a converted turbine hall, and the right month to be listening to exactly this kind of music. Some lineups justify the journey before a note is played.