12 Songs: Techno Yeehaw Vol. 1
The year is 2032. Coachella and Stagecoach have merged to form what promoters promise to be the ultimate American festival experience - and you’ve managed to secure tickets. After months of anticipation, the day finally comes.
You enter through the front gates, flanked on each side by a pair of animatronic bulls.
Directly across the field, the long-awaited Daft Punk reunion set has commenced. The infamous black pyramid they stood upon during their 2006 Coachella performance has returned, and has since been emblazoned with the Bass Pro Shops symbol. They’ve also swapped their leather tuxedos for denim Wrangler jackets, and their signature helmets for rhinestone-studded Stetson hats. With their true faces on full display, the audience realize to a general dismay that they are, in fact, still cyborgs.
The performance comes to its conclusion when one of the robots short circuits thirty seconds into “Revolution 909.” You make your way across the field, following what sounds from afar to be a far more organic-sounding performance.
It’s Luke Bryan, standing completely alone on stage. In lieu of a traditional backing band, he’s squatted over a MacBook Pro, fumbling through his catalogue on a massive projector screen, his cluttered desktop of MP3 files on full display. It takes him five minutes to locate a folder titled “HONKY TECH,” at which point he launches into a heavily-automated rendition of his self-titled album. The banjo riffs are measured, cut, and looped on a digital grid; the vocals are processed through a vocoder; and the slide guitars have all been replaced by sweeping waves of vintage synth.
Other highlights include a soul-stirring bluegrass set from Aphex Twin, a Merle Haggard hologram, and a surprise collaborative performance from Dolly Parton and the Prodigy. All in all, this is money well spent.
As you exit the festival grounds, you reflect on music’s past in disappointment. What complete and utter banality. The great country + techno merger was inevitable; the future is now. —Jackson Todd
Listen to 12 Songs: Techno Yeehaw Vol. 1 on Spotify here.
[above artwork by Godfried Donkor]
