The fourth edition of the French Techno Parade was originally scheduled for the middle of September in Paris. Unfortunately, in addition to some troubles, the tragedy that took place in New-York leaded to its cancellation for security reasons only two days before the planned date. But since the United party was confirmed, we couldn't miss it and especially the live performance by Ural 13 Diktators !
We arrived at about 23 hours. The big concert hall of the Zénith was not yet full of people. There were nice visuals, two big video screens and a main stage in the shape of a pyramid. At the top, The Hacker was ending is set. He was followed by Tonio who started a hard techno mix so early. And what we were anticipating happened : all DJ sets have been played until the morning in a hard and similar style. Neither Luke Slater, Jack de Marseille, nor Marco Bailey have shown originality. Each set was technically perfect but no surprising. Even if it didn't affect most of the people, we must admit we were a little bit disappointed. Only Charles Siegling from Technasia spun more "musical" records... and of course, the live-act's !! First, The Youngsters, French duo from Montpellier, played a great and efficient live with some of their hits like the ones released on F-Com. Regarding Ural 13 Diktators, even if we expected a little bit more craziness on the stage, they didn't disappoint us at all !! They slowed down the tempo (it was good !) and their performance was absolutely brilliant : 80's sounds and melodies, some electro and a lot of power. The first Lauri was controlling the music machines whereas the other Lauri was standing at the front of the stage with a Roland synth-guitar and a little microphone in order to add a vocoderized voice on the tracks. The famous HI-NRG style of this Finnish duo was in the place !! We were waiting for this for so long time !! Too bad some of the audience didn't understand their music (it was maybe too surprising after those hard DJ sets !). At last, there was also a little tek'house floor - where Kiko played a nice musical selection - and outside of the Zénith, there was a house floor at "Le Cabaret Sauvage" club. The place was smaller and very nice. Therefore the atmosphere was better. Two quality live performances were done by English duo Swayzak and German artists Markus Nikolaï and Clair Dietrich. DJ set of Alex Gopher was good too.
So respect to Futuria Production and Magic Garden. It was the first time they were associated to organise a big event together and despite the Techno Parade cancellation, they decided to do the party without any changes on the line-ups : all artists were confirmed. The two main French promoters took risks and there was not as many people as they could expect. We hope this will not affect their next work.
www.futuriaproduction.com     www.magicgarden.org
Ludo, 03/10/2001