While the audio for GFOTY’s set has been released for a little while, it’s the video of her Boiler Room performance that shows why the divisive label PC Music has achieved such success, much to the excitement (or utter chagrin) of the DJ world. Boiler Room is the first major time most music audiences are seeing GFOTY. Other than her Halloween stream via PC Music, there’s not been much visual recording of live sets. And the Halloween stream was more video art than a live art. The big question about this set, GFOTY’s first public broadcast, is whether the crash-and-burn style set is unintentional or performance art.
GFOTY enters in American flag print with a hood, Beats by Dre headphones, and takes a sip from an enormously large, perfect-for-a-music-festival martini glass. She begins as expected, playing some PC Music tracks (with A .G. Cook at her side) at the same time as dancing (something “forbidden” for “serious” DJs) like the girl-at-the-club she is. From there, GFOTY speeds up and slows down everyone’s favorite party songs, screaming the titles as she refuses to “properly” mix. About halfway through, her decks seem to mess up, and she begins to apologize over the mic, then suddenly starts singing over songs like “Cameltoe,” then apologizes for being a bad DJ, then says how she’s getting paid so much money to DJ SXSW. She calls Cook to help her with the CDJ. She smokes a cigarette as Spinee begins to set up besides her.
GFOTY seems to be interested in music as a commodity. Rather than record a set that will get lost in the sea of other Boiler Room videos, GFOTY chooses to evoke an excessive stereotype of the cool, messy club girl, who everyone thinks is only a DJ because she fucked her way to the top, drunk and high the whole time. This performed self can’t mix and talks about wanting to fuck onstage. GFOTY reclaims this sterotype and does a performance that uses elements of DJing in order to speak more deeply to a live (and streamed) audience. Her covers of tracks and spontaneous yelling through the mic calls to mind Björk, for a post-Miley Cyrus generation, the next natural step after Grimes’s controversial playing of the Vengaboys in her Boiler Room. The highlight is GFOTY’s live rendition of her own track “Friday Night,” where she yells over the music without care while showcasing the song’s true (excellent) nature. It all seems like an appropriate way to showcase GFOTY’s digital persona live. Her tracks when played over the internet are interjected with digital garbage, so of course her live performances must be filled with unexpected glitches.
Maybe this is all an overanalysis of PC Music, but then again, this is a group where one of the artists (QT) has stated her music is all an advertisement for an energy drink.
• GFOTY: https://soundcloud.com/gfoty
• PC Music: https://soundcloud.com/pcmus
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