Words & Photos by: Thai Tran 

It’s been a long weekend for LNS.  We’ve put a hell of a hurt on our cars, our cameras, and our livers, but we survived it and are better party-people from it.  One of the major events this weekend was Filter Magazine’s 2011 Culture Collide Festival in EchoPark.  The festival’s special in that it emphasizes international band and acts and it spans 8 different venues in the EchoPark area.

The last day of the festival was a bloc party hosted by Toyota.  The anchoring acts were Clap Your Hands Say Yeah from here in the good ole US of A and CSS from Brazil.  We got a chance to shoot these two great acts as well as The Asteroids Galaxy Tour.  All three bands have strong indie followings and we got to experience that from the size of the crowd.  Among the faces were surprisingly people from all age groups.  Lots of older people who you wouldn’t think listened to indie rock but they came out and many of them brought their kids.  The older people seem to enjoy dancing more too which is pretty awesome.

THE ASTEROID GALAXY TOUR (DENMARK)

The Asteroid Galaxy Tour which is a Danish band headed by the smoking hot Mette Lindberg blew the crowd away and told everyone they were more than a “commercial” band.  Google them and you’ll know what we mean or click HERE.  It’s no coincidence we salivate for a Heineken like Pavlov’s dog when we hear them play.  They taught everyone there that they were more than that night though.

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH (USA)

While they started to drown out, Clap Your Hand Say Yeah were setting up and got ready to rock the house.  Promoting their new album, Hysterical, the east-coast crew kicked it off with Sunshine & Clouds (and everything proud) and didn’t kept their foot on the pedal throughout the set, including Maniac, their new single.  Unfortunately, Encores are a festival faux-pas so we had to so we clapped our hands and yelled “Yeah” for nothing that great lasts forever.

CSS (BRAZIL)

The surprise of the night came from the next band on the same stage.  CSS, a group of Brazilian chicks and one dude tore the roof off the place.  The energy these guys had makes one ponder taking our next vacation in Sao Paulo.  They sing in English, they sing in Portuguese, they rap, they yell, they sing and they’re all about fucking shit up.  Lovefoxxx, their lead singer came out in what can only be described as a bedazzled bat-girl.  We hit the ground running with their new song, Red Alert, followed by the funktastic Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above, a crowd favorite.   Felt for a second like we were slipped LSD and found ourselves in an 80’s aerobics class but you couldn’t stop bopping your head to their addictive beats.  Some stage-diving, stripping, dancing and rolling around on stage and we wrapped the night up, another successful evening of awesome music and cool people.

[Gallery not found]

Be sure to check out the full gallery on our FACEBOOK PAGE! 

Share