Please enjoy this post as the launching point to all my NXNE 2017 coverage. Click the friendly links below to check out my photos from each performer that I caught this year, and enjoy some photos I took from around the Portlands site throughout the fest.
Toronto's Blajk was another of the bands appearing at Portlands for NXNE 2017 who I had seen before. I first saw them at Bestival in 2016. Click through for those photos.
This time, unfortunately, their singer had messed up his ankle and was confined to a chair for the show. He certainly tried his best to chair-dance but you could tell it wasn't the same. The music still had all of its groovy bounce with liberally applied hooks.
It's coming up really soon! June 16-25 to be exact. It's the 23rd Annual North by Northeast music festival, more commonly known as NXNE or Northby. Yup, this year it's expanding to ten days, with a dynamic selection of music, gaming, comedy, and more. I hope to be there to capture all the action. Check out the coverage from last year, in case you missed it.
NXNE returns to the Port Lands for three days from June 23-25, 2017. NXNE Port Lands will include two main stages, art installations, sponsor activations, and comfortable places to chill between acts, as well as a comedy tent, and carnival rides.
This year's NXNE Port Lands music festival features: Passion Pit, Tyler the Creator, Post Malone, Bleachers, Sleigh Bells, The Soul Rebels featuring Talib Kweli, Twin Peaks, Cold Specks, Muna, Son Little and dozens more. NXNE's Club Land festival will feature the best up-and-coming bands as curated by some of Canada's best musicians.
"In it's first year the NXNE Port Lands saw thousands of attendees in two days," said Michael Hollett, President and Managing Director of NXNE. "Our growth and expansion for 2017 are based on the success of last year with cool programming from indie rock to hip hop to soul and much more each day."
Let’s hope they found a way to pipe in fresh water for this year!
New for this year is a curated club series featuring line-ups hand picked by Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness, Ian D’Sa of Billy Talent, Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene, Shad, Leah Fay of July Talk, Nick Rose, Tasha the Amazon, The Dirty Nil, Rural Alberta Advantage and Raina Douris from Indie 88 and CBC. These shows are Monday through Thursday at venues including The Baby G, The Garrison, Cold Tea, The Rivoli, The Dakota Tavern, Bovine Sex Club and The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern.
NXNE Game Land will kick off the 2017 Festival at Yonge-Dundas Square with a massive live e-Sports competition, new video game demos, interactive activations, and live music June 16-18, 2017.
From June 19-25, 2017 NXNE will host hundreds of new and established artists at over a dozen venues across the city for NXNE Club Land, including The Danforth Music Hall, The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, and Adelaide Hall.
NXNE Game Land will present Canada's largest-ever, free outdoor e-Sports competition at Yonge Dundas Square.
Here are some of the artists I'm most looking forward to:
This year's Bestival Toronto marked my first Bestival experience and I thought it was an incredible spectacle and sensational event. It really takes the festival experience up several notches beyond the typical music festival that provides a few of stages in a field intermixed with beer tents and food trucks.
There are so many things to see and do at Bestival outside of the fantastic musical line-up and the crowd really goes above and beyond, dressing up and making it a real occasion. Bestival features many stages with distinctive vibes from The Main Stage to The Big Top to the Bollywood Stage to the Sunday Best Balearic Bar and the Cosmic Commune. There are activities and games, entertaining staff/actors, the Inflatable Church, the Summer of Love Costume Parade & Party, roving entertainers and costumed characters, and so much more.
I can't wait for next year and hope to see other festivals taking on more of a spectacle vibe over and above the great music.
Please check out all the posts and photos that Roy Cohen and I captured from the Bestival Toronto 2016 weekend:
