Club Cheval is a name that has been popping on most people’s radar as of last Fall with the release of their acclaimed Discipline EP as well as a smoking hot performance on the MainStage for 2015's Hard Day of the Dead. Since then talk of their live show and full-length debut record release has built the greatest hype for this super group’s current Discipline Tour across North America. Consisting of French artists Canblaster, Myd, Sam Tiba and Panteros666, Club Cheval lived up to the hype throwing down one of the most powerful live electronic shows we have seen in awhile.
It went down late at night in Downtown Los Angeles. Union Nightclub appears to be a hole in the wall venue placed on a street where everything is dead at that time of night. After catching Felix Da House Cat’s Mixmag streaming party, we headed to Club Cheval’s performance arrive only 20 minutes before they were set to hit the stage.
Club Cheval wasted no time and began driving in hypnotic house beats to get the crowd moving. They rinsed through their debut record as if we were 6AM at a European underground. The minimal LED lights beamed bright through the audience with each banging beat and their ability to sync up a collection of analog hardware synthesizers and drum machines made it a much more genuine performance. The addition of a crash cymbal added to their live feel by creating a massive amount of acoustic energy in each buildup and drop.
It really wasn’t until I witnessed this performance that I realized what these four French producers were trying to create with this project. In essence, Club Cheval felt like a modern day version of Kraftwerk. They wore matching black outfits and performed with a very classic European feel, yet they did so with complimenting hip hop and RnB samples and tossed around tons of influence from today’s tech and deep house styles. Indeed we’ve heard of acts like Disclosure or Rufus Du Sol pulling off live house performances, but something about Club Cheval felt extremely diverse, foreign, and refreshing. It might have been their obscure chord progressions and harmonies or their confidence in showing off the abilities of their analogue devices during song transitions. Whatever it may be, we have definitely not seen anything to this magnitude before and we look forward to their presence at more U.S. festivals in the coming years. Lookout DJs because its acts like this that will really be the talk of the town in the coming festival circuits.
