Virgo ascendant: a soaring but depersonalized show

With their crazy techno tunes, Ascendant Vierge played at Paléo on July 22 in all simplicity. Almost too simple: it felt more like an electro party than a festival.

French electro group Ascendant Vierge performed on Paléo's new Belleville stage, dedicated to music of this genre, on Friday, July 22, under a fine, pleasant rain shower. Embarking everyone aboard a spaceship bound for another galaxy - difficult to define which one - the two band members, Mathilde Fernandez and Paul Seul, offer an intimate, simple and soaring moment. Dressed in pink and black, one at the turntables, the other at the microphone, the two artists are right where they belong, performing one track after another without comment. 

If Ascendant Vierge's music lends itself to techno club nights, it also lends itself to an outdoor concert at a festival. Even if you don't know the band, electro fans were well served this year by the new Belleville stage: you don't need to know the artists playing there if you're driven by a desire for discovery. Even if the atmosphere is very different from an evening (or night) in a club, the fact of not being confined within four walls is never unpleasant, quite the contrary. The experience is quite different when it comes to the environment.

The usual atmosphere 

In front of the stage, we find the usual electro crowd: no big surprise there. In the front rows, heads were bobbing, everyone was jumping and the air was thin. All in all, a routine atmosphere for this kind of music. However, as soon as you move away from them, the atmosphere becomes less oppressive and you can breathe. The show is almost more enjoyable from the rear. You can take in the grandeur and beauty of Belleville: the rays above the stage sparkle to the same rhythm as the audience's tapping feet.

The only downside to the concert is that it's a concert, not a DJ or live-set. Very depersonalized, the hour-long performance is simple and effective. But the lyrics, crazy and very often funny, are almost erased by the aggressive volume of the bass and electro sounds, one of the constitutive elements of the band's eccentricity. «I think quite a few people came to see them. It's a shame they didn't address the audience once,» commented one festival-goer afterwards, who had been looking forward to seeing the band at Paleo for some time. The potential of an open-air concert was clearly not exploited.

Write to the author: erica.berazategui@leregardlibre.com

Header image: French band Ascendant Vierge, Paléo Festival Nyon 2022 - © Paléo / Ludwig Wallendorff

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