PIAS Nites Friday : The Perfect Setting [Tour & Taxis Brussels, March 25, 2011]

Big thumbs up for the event organization team in charge of the PIAS Nites in Brussels' Tour and Taxis. A job well done - and in line with the event tag-line "Experience Music Differently" ! My favorite band of the evening: Matt & Kim - a very nice surprise as I didn't knew them before !

The event was held in two halls of the immense Tour & Taxis location in Brussels - and the organization was just about perfect. Hall one was setup for the sponsors, with two lounge bars, radio studio's, a Vedett photo studio, ... The second hall was the real party room - with plenty of focus on the light show within the hall, and not just focused on the impressive stage. The VIP bar (in an adjacent room) looked cool but suffered from too few VIPs and the VIP podium (positioned sideways at the back of the hall) seemed out-of-place for this Friday night.

I missed the set of the "Van Jets" - like apparantly most people did. I guess the idea was to program a popular band at the very beginning of the evening, to get the crowd to show up. Clearly, that idea failed.

Matt & Kim were nothing short of spectacular. I had never seen them, but the energy, their enthousiasm and the persuasive electronic beats were simply irristable (and yes, Robyn would have been a great lead act to follow this duo). There were too few people in the large Tour & Taxis event hall to make it a real party - but they surely didn't mind and kept trying hard. Go and see them (in a smaller venue) if you have a chance - looking at their tourlist you will get plenty of opportunities. And remember to bring your dancing shoes !

Next to my favorite Matt & Kim's performance of the evening, I stayed through Crystal Fighters, Buraka Som Sistema and Cassius. Cassius started and ended with their popular song, and played a solid mixed set in between. By then, the room was more than half-full, and there was enough of a crowd to party.

As I wanted to return in good shape for the second night of the PIAS event, I left prior to the set of Aeroplane. Click & read more about the Saturday event with Faithless !

PIAS Records, short for Play It Again Sam, has a long history and a great list of bands that pay tribute to the label... read more about them at Wikipedia. Soulwax, Editors, Joan as a Policewoman, ... all originate from this originally Brussels' based label.