We wrapped things up on 88 Delancey with a bang this past Saturday, as everyone from Tiombe Lockhart (that's her pictured above, being awesome and whatnot) to DJ A-Trak got golden during their respective sets.
Former Gen F stars First Nation started things off noisily with tracks that were part Animal Collective, part free jazz, part weird girls jamming on the floor...guess that's all Animal Collective, but maybe our comparisons are just lazy. In fact, FN's space jams sounded like nothing else going on during CMJ.
Speaking of singular styles, the Blow were able to translate the sheer awesomeness of Paper Television live - even with the duo trimmed down to just Khaela, who busted out dance moves, told stories, and sung her heart out.
Aloe Blacc was up next, mixing the more MC-centric tracks from his solo album with Emanon jams from the recent and not so recent past. Aloe's freestyle over Mobb Deep's "Pearly Gates" instrumental (produced by the other half of his group, DJ Exile) was a nice surprise, but the highlight was probably a rendition of Emanon's Sister Nancy-sampling "Count Your Blessings." BAM BAM!
When Duffy Driediger of Vancouver's Ladyhawk dedicated a song to "the psyched guy on the FADER poster" - while mustachioed drummer Ryan Peters had said psyched guy on the poster pretend to fellate his drumstick - it probably sums up the group's greasy glory better than anything we could write here.
TK = RIFFS
Crystal Castles showed up late (presumably because they had to purchase a new MicroKorg? Their keyboard looked pretty boxfresh to us...) and yelped their way through a wildly distorted blast of video game-inspired electro madness. It was fun.
Montreal's Malajube might have been Saturday's biggest surprise, sounding far tighter and more muscular than they do on record. At first that meant us saying "This sounds kinda like Spin Doctors" (dude's ski hat didn't help) but went into us saying "These dudes can really play" which then led into "Yeaaahhhhhhh!"
Hometown heroine Tiombe closed out the night with a mix of Platinum Pied Pipers jams (Wajeed from PPP was in the building) and unreleased new tracks from her forthcoming debut solo LP. Strictly bangers (seriously though, go back and take another listen to Triple P, wow...), and while Tiombe's set signaled that the four days of FADER Sideshow-ing had finally drawn to a close, we gotta admit it was one hell of an ending.