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Pitchfork Music Festival in Paris is one of our highlight events of the year and it is kicking off early next week with the pre-festival two day bonanza Avant-Garde shows. A two day marathon of gigs in the Bastille district spread across 7 venues with a wide range of acts to binge on. There’s absolutely no way to actually see them all at once. Unless you have a secret up your sleeve like teleportation or some kind of self-conscious hologram lying in your basement you didn’t tell anyone about… That’s where we hope to come in handy. We’ll be covering the gigs with Sophie Jarry (photographer) and reporting from the the venues live on Instagram with snaps, video streams here and there to give you a feel for the evenings.

After launching in 2016, the Pitchfork Avant-Garde festival is back! On 31st October and 1st November, get ready for a nocturnal stroll around seven emblematic gig venues in the Bastille area: Café de la Danse, Badaboum, Mécanique Ondulatoire, la Loge, le PopUp!, Supersonic and Pan Piper.

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Here’s our master plan for both nights on the strip:

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[title maintitle=”October 31st” subtitle=”What we would recommend seeing”] [accordion] [item title=”Mavi Phoenix”]

Mavi Phoenix
19h40 @ Badaboum

Mavi wastes no time to let you and her lover know what she wants. Your attention. And it’s our attention this talented 20 year has as her lyrics run headstrong from the first breath. “Love Longtime” leaves the poetry in the music and surprises us with a verse of spoken word. It’s the kind of song that you know will be a killer in acoustic form as well. If it’s a balance of street cred and passion Mavi is after, she’s on the right track. She’s got a confidence that pops like a high fashion shoot and the raw youth that tells us “Love Longtime” is only a hint of what’s to come. Listen to the banger below…

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Yellow Days
21h05 @ Supersonic

We virtually met Yellow Days aka George van den Broek over Facebook chat earlier this evening. He’s a 16 years old musician, singer and songwriter from London with a voice that recalls the hay-day of Only Real, with hints of King Krule in the instrumentation. It’s sounds awesome in the headphones, so can’t wait to bask in bliss tomorrow as I pack this bag of mine.

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Benny Mails
22h10 @ Badaboum

For me, hip-hop music that can best be defined as “chill” usually makes for good background music, and not a whole lot else. Usually. With his new tune “Mantra”, London’s Benny Mails breaks that mold by deftly keeping things laid back without ever holding back, in a paradoxically relaxing track about teenage anxiety.

Homegrown London-grime influences and trans-Atlantic heroes like Nas both had a hand in shaping Benny’s style, as is evidenced by the combination of tight-but-meandering flows and an unmistakable English wit. Like listening to an uninterrupted stream of thought, we’re pulled through highs and lows over the course of “Mantra”. There are mood swings marked by waxing and waning tinges of vocal aggression, making for a deeply realistic sense of the artist’s personality, and giving an extra dose of sympathetic weight to the personal truths and secrets being disclosed.

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[title maintitle=”November 1st” subtitle=”What we would recommend seeing”] [accordion] [item title=”Rostam”]

Rostam
19h30 @ Café de la Danse

The voice rings a bell? You’ll have heard it on Vampire Weekend’s tracks, that’s why. Rostam was one of the group’s founding members, but left in early 2016 to launch solo pursuits. For his first album Bike Dreams, the talented multi-instrumentalist and producer serves up a raw, introspective experience with a dash of his Iranian origins that’s honest, captivating and heady.

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Oklou
20h50 @ Badaboum

She may only be 25, but OK Lou has a long history in music. This Internet-age French producer is pretty avant-garde and influenced just as much by mainstream pop as experimental sounds. Her music is emotional and intense, which plays out beautifully on stage.

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Oko Ebombo
22h40 @ Pop Up Du Label

Here’s the long awaited debut EP ‘Naked Life’ by the Parisian born and raised Oko EbomboSomeone we’ve been following very closely for the last 3 years since he posted his very well done video for ‘Naked Life’ and saw the entire body of work progress, evolve and blossom into a fully fledged musical, visual, and performing tour-de-force.

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