I first discovered Levitation through their Levitation sessions during the first UK lockdown around April 2019. The Reverberation Society was already on my radar, but finding these live sessions from almost all of my favorite artists made me happy. really got through the lockdowns. Fast forward 3 years and I have the opportunity to fly to France with one of my best buds to cover the 9th year of the Levitation France festival. And what a festival it was.
Friday naturally started full of hope and excitement. Our flight was on time and as far as we could tell we had things locked up. Everything changed once we were done wandering around Paris and decided it was time to hop on a fast high-speed train to Angers. Sounds simple, right? Bad. What we didn’t realize was that it was a bank holiday weekend and every fast train to Nantes was full for the rest of the day. Bullshit. The solution to our problems was to book a coach to the same destination. A 4 hour coach. A 4 hour bus that took 5 hours. But, I can’t complain too much, it was really our fault.
After 5 hours of drinking lukewarm beer, eating lots of crisps, playing battleships on Birdy’s phone and desperately pissing, we finally arrived in Angers around 10:00 p.m. We were greeted by the view of the Château d’Angers, magnificent by the way! After smoking a cigarette and admiring the view, we decided it was time for a quick stop at our Airbnb before heading to Levitation to catch Gilla Band and hopefully some of Kevin Morby’s sets. As we approached the festival site and collected our press passes, Kevin Morby closed his set of the evening with his last 2 songs; one of which was my favorite track, Harlem River.
Next, Gilla Band. Honestly, after a somewhat frustrating day, these guys really hit the mark. Their visceral, jagged sound held the audience in the palm of their hand throughout their 50-minute set. After a legendary performance of Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage, their set and Levitation France’s first night came to an end; this is when we met the first of many friends we made over the weekend, Martin, Basile, Noga and Yali. After a good chat and Basil’s gift of something good to smoke, we exchanged numbers and went our separate ways for the evening. Birdy and I ended our evening by smoking Basil’s Gift by the downtown water fountain before heading home to relax after our 36 hour marathon without sleeping, drinking, traveling and eating chips.
Our Saturday started around noon. I left Birdy to get her life back on track while I went to explore Angers and collect all the important supplies; beer, cigarettes, baguette, cheese and ham. After a quick lunch and a shower, we set off together for another tour of Angers, and a few more beers, before heading back to the festival. The first band to ask for my attention was Californian-Boogie-Doom-Garage-Rockers, Death Valley Girls, which I had heard before and really liked. It’s safe to say they didn’t disappoint. Their fuzzy psychedelic sound swept through the crowd, it certainly put me in a trance-like state. The next step was new to me. Brooklyn-based 5-piece Punk art, Gustaf. These guys are super fun, super energetic and are driven by a super gnarly bass sound. After a quick bite to eat at one of the awesome food vendors, we met up again with our new friends, Martin and Basile. That’s when my favorite feature of the festival kicked in. The festival was set up so that the two stages were staggered, facing each other; which means you can watch all the bands play if you want. Me, Birdy, Martin and Basile slammed our house in the center, next to the sound table. It was from this point that we would go on to have the best time laughing and dancing while watching Kim Gordon, Pond, and Kikagaku Moyo’s sets without ever moving 10 feet in any direction; other than going to the bar for ‘refreshments’, which was only about 30 feet away.
After leaving the festival that evening, we went to meet the next mob we had just made memories with over the weekend; Anthony, Matthew (AKA Dick Vein, long story), Paul and 2 others whose names I have never heard. That night we went to sit by the Maine River, smoking, chatting and swapping our favorite bands until 4:00. As the night drew to a close, we all exchanged contact details and arranged to meet up after we woke up to enjoy the last day of the festival together.
Sunday morning was rough, I woke up with the same headache I fell asleep with but I knew I had to shake it off real soon. Today was the BIG day, 2 of my favorite bands were playing later; The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Frankie and the Witch’s Fingers. After a sausage, a beer for breakfast and the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life, we meet Basile and Martin at Joker’s Pub at 3:00 p.m. for a beer before heading back to the festival site. As we sat outside Joker, we ran into Noga and Yali again, who looked more tired than me and Birdy, which was no small feat! We also saw a British couple that my travel companion had met a day earlier, Joel and Georgia. They informed us that they had spotted some BJM members in town, the excitement was now getting real.
We arrived at the festival at 5:30 p.m. sharp, ready for the musical evening that awaited us. Gondhawa started the day with their set of fat, filthy, muddy, stoner Sabbath-style riffs. Following them, shoegazers from Hull, BDRMM, tripped. It’s something the festival did really well, mixing and mixing genres – but no band seemed out of place. After BDRMM, we took a liking to the sonic vibes and awesome sense of humor delivered by Canadian melody aficionados, Ghost Woman. These guys are worth watching for all fans of that hazy, dark, psychedelic sound; they’re playing Manchester Psych Fest in September, don’t sleep on that one! After 3 outstanding performances, we took a little break to grab some food, relax and roll something funky to smoke with Matthieu.
The next band that blew our minds was Crack Cloud. I had seen Crack Cloud support Hosea a few weeks earlier in Manchester. I noticed these guys took a thing or two from their time with Hosea – and good for them! Their hostile, post-punk sound hit with the force of a stampede and I won’t soon forget it. After Crack Cloud, Birdy and I chatted with Evan from Ghost Woman. While we were chatting, we were approached by a guy who we later realized was Trevor, the drummer for Acid Dad – a band I had recently discovered at their Levitation live session and whose I couldn’t get enough of it! Trevor gave Birdy and me a free Levitation t-shirt and his lovely partner Devon took our picture as Frankie and the Witch Fingers started their set in the background. We were both on cloud 9 at this point and decided the only logical thing to do was to throw ourselves amid the waves of people lost in the transient high octane sounds of Frankie and the Witch Fingers.
Now was the time for the Brian Jonestown massacre. We reconnected with Matthieu and rolled 3 quite long and jazzy cigarettes, ready for the most anticipated part of the festival; for me at least. I still haven’t recovered from the BJM set, I’m really at a loss for words. The free and easy but still super tight nature of the band just blows my mind, their onstage communication, the long pauses between songs that should be awkward but just aren’t. There is real magic in BJM that few bands can replicate, no matter how hard they try. At Levitation, it was really nice to see the brotherly friendship between Anton and Joel shine through as they joked around and exchanged smirks throughout their performance. Their set was made up of a few select favorites but mostly new ones, much to my delight. Anton said “we just want to play good songs. It doesn’t matter whether you know them or not, it’s all about having a good time…music and learning is all about the unknown. All in all an amazing performance from an amazing band that could have lasted all night for all I loved. If you don’t know much about BJM, get to know!
It’s not an easy task to keep up with BJM, but one that Lumer didn’t take lightly. We had met Ben from the band earlier in the day and he was laughing a lot. Their sound is a bit like The Stranglers with a big ass kick. In all honesty, I don’t remember much of the set, through no fault of their own. By this time in the evening, I was flying high and had no intention of descending any time soon. We spent the rest of the evening sitting just outside the festival site with Paul, Matthieu, Basile and co smoking Basile’s last gift until 03:00.
Monday morning we had to leave early to pick up our lovely 4 hour coach to Paris. Much to our delight, we met Martin and Basile for a final goodbye before parting ways – I don’t think we realized at that point how much we would keep in touch with them after the festival. After a day spent exploring Paris, we landed safely on British soil and BOOM! At that point, the festival blues began.
Overall the whole festival was fantastic. Everything from the music and the people to the food stalls and the location was so well organized. I will go 110% next year, but this time I might fly to Nantes rather than Paris. If you like anything Post/Art Punk, Garagey or Psychedelic then you have my word you won’t be disappointed. Take a kick from Levitation France 2023 and I’ll see you there!
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