Having been to multiple rap shows in various stadiums and arenas, this performance was the most memorable one I’ve seen so far. Most rap concerts play the song through giant speakers while the artist does ad-libs and lets the crowd perform the rest of the song. Armand Hammer’s performance heavily contrasts with those other shows because they actually rap their entire songs from beginning to end without the traditional hypeman. It’s something that shouldn’t be uncommon in today’s music scene. This creates a much more intimate atmosphere for fans to connect with their favorite songs and truly witness the artistry of hip hop. Additionally, the rap duo’s style of performing adds a new dimension to their songs, allowing the audience to hear them in a new, different context, and allowing them to discover unrealized themes in the lyrics. 

The energy of the crowd was unlike anything I had ever seen before, with each person locked in like a lion towards its’s prey. People were rapping along to the songs word for word while consciously rocking their heads back and forth. The energy of the crowd was like a wave, coming and going in seismic shifts. This was absorbed by the performers, with every verse vibrating through my chest and echoing through my mind for days to come.  

Armand Hammer’s setlist was incredibly structured, as it allowed both artists to shine as both individuals and as a duo. It summed up the entirety of their careers and gave a showcase of artistic evolution over time. For me, this concert was the best of the Mission Creek Festival by and far, and there is no amount of money that I wouldn’t pay to witness this show again. I am forever grateful for the opportunity to witness hip hop in its purest form, and create an incredible life memory that I will never forget. This was a masterclass in how hip hop should be performed.  

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Wearing a translucent white gown and intriguing jewelry, with two feathers facing horizontally on both sides of her nose, she resembled a glowing white cross, an angel, or a ghost. The draping fabric moved as gracefully as she did, slowly crossing the stage, moving up and down the stairs between the rows of seats, while she made intimate eye contact with each viewer. After each song though, she would return barefoot to her looping pedal, where she would craft the next one from scratch.

Hatis Noit brings a performance to the Mission Creek Festival that is steeped in her own, rich diverse experiences. These experiences include hearing Gregorian chants, along with the ones of Buddhist monks in Nepal. All these sounds inspired her music which aims to connect the natural aspects of the universe with the spirituality that can be found in humanity. The critically acclaimed Aura is the epitome of this concept, and she shared the experience of crafting these sounds with Iowa City.   

She shows the power and versatility of vocals in “Jomon”, looping an intense, heartbeat like burst of air to give a consistent drum sound. Her voice is full and strong, making for an invigorating sound throughout. The transition to “Angelus Novus”, however, brought the audience to an entirely timeless holy place, with those sounds reminiscent of Gregorian chants, whispers of prayers, and the humming of monks.

As she neared the end of her performance, Hatis Noit described the inspiration for “Inori” as the widespread, collective pain from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. In this song, she introduced her recording of the ocean near the Fukushima power plant, the only element of pre-recorded audio throughout the concert, and the only non-vocal sounds. She lamented those lost and those who longed to go back home, before transforming these powerful emotions into ever more powerful vocals. Her closing song, “Sir Etok”, meaning ‘the end of the Earth’, brought a feeling of being lost deep in nature among far stronger forces. Her loud cries, filled with an intense collective emotion, faded into silence, and she smiled to thank the audience.

Following the performance, she stood by her merchandise table to talk to those who wished to speak with her. When asked which song on the album was her favorite, she appeared surprised, as if she had never considered it. Her answer was both the opening and closing tracks of Aura, but it raises the question of what criteria could possibly be used to rank such abstract expressions of deep emotion.

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Goodman was organically acoustic and crisp in rhythmic melody. The audience watched and listened intently to her endearingly heartfelt set, ripe with tenderness and genuine sincerity. In her performance, what a person is able to recognize is the power of using one’s own voice to amplify others, by telling stories that can be applied to many who share the same narrative. Within her set, one acknowledges this strength of collective catharsis, as the crowd conjointly participates in releasing bottled-up emotions and feelings.

While the discography of Goodman is reposed and serene, there is a potent intensity that drives the effects of the music into something more passionate. In the flecks of her embers, golden and tinsel, we come across a horizon, abundant with fields of ambition to beckon toward the other side, where things are much more sanguine. In this, we breach the secrets that may lead to the answers of questions asked about this messy, frenzied world. We ask the question, “Why are things this way?” Goodman answers with, “Because of the possibility of changing how things are, for the better of our self expression.”

As Goodman’s compassionate voice echoed through The Englert atrium, glimmers of meaningful introspection came as a queer woman recounted her experiences from a rural area that initially had not been the most welcoming of arms. To the messages that linger within her lyrics, as listeners, we find that we picked up a few things from her songs that we could connect and share a rapport with. At least once in our lives, we have experienced the feeling of being left out or being out of place in an area we lived in. Within the extent of Goodman’s discography the audience is grasped by a sense of belonging and acceptance that might not have been found in the places that had once refused us for who we are. What she creates is a safe space for one to settle within their own body, being done honestly and truthfully.

During the set, Goodman occasionally looked out to the audience, as well as the light that beamed upon her. While performing, she reflects on how far she has gone, finally being one with herself. By the end of the set, the crowd exited the venue with a newly born appreciation for themselves. Goodman’s set was able to whisk everyone into a dimension at which all are free to be who they are with no apparent hesitancy to embrace the candid self.

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“Wonderful,” I thought, as sarcastically as anyone’s thoughts can really get. Another pair of people tried to enter. The worker says, again, “We’re at capacity.” Some people murmur about “We can hear it out here anyways.” Undeterred, I stepped up, flashing my media pass. The door jockey lets me in, thankfully.

The band is halfway through a song when I enter to a packed room and loads of sound. Bootcamp’s songs are short, so it doesn’t take long for this particular one to conclude. This aspect is part of Bootcamp’s hardcore punk roots: short, aggressive songs, and raspy, loud vocals. These are all key components of hardcore, but more specifically the subset of punk from which Bootcamp derives much of their sound. It’s meant to be an assault on the senses.

On this metric, then, Bootcamp always succeeds. For my own part as a listener, I’ve always admired their percussionist, Oliver, able to seemingly effortlessly make order from the unordered chaos of a punk show. The guitarist, Dolly, was the progenitor of said chaos, the birthplace of the most virulent of the sound profile which makes Bootcamp so distinct. As a broken record might say, the band always prevails by this metric. While I wasn’t able to see it all myself, as I exited the show I heard there was a mosh pit in the Café, which is a relatively tame establishment, all things considered. Nobody mentioned it at the time, but this was perhaps foreshadowing for the Osees show later at The Englert Theater, where seats were largely ignored in favor of crowding in front of the stage to form a makeshift pit.

Bootcamp always manages to produce a powerful energy, infused with the essential subversive elements of any good punk band, and the genre as a whole. Where punk goes, a pit should follow, and where else better than the sleepy Trumpet Blossom Café? The presence during their set epitomizes and demonstrates Bootcamp’s ability to spark the need for heavy music in people, no matter how down tempo the venue.

Bootcamp is, altogether, a fantastic group produced from the already prolific Iowa City hardcore scene. They always put on a great show, and their set for Mission Creek was no different. They embody the best aspects of punk, while having the energy and reach to back it up. As I said at the beginning of this article, I’ve seen Bootcamp before, and I’ll always look forward to seeing them again. I left the show satisfied, though my own heart ached for unrelated reasons. So many familiar faces stood outside of Trumpet Blossom.

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Assisting him on drums was Jack Chaffer from full body 2, the band he’d been touring with. Rows and rows of bright lights were flickering faster, making letters and shapes. Somewhere a machine spurted out smoke, before the bell like synths of “Livin’ Loose”, off his album Slide, started the show. It all felt immense. Enormous now, the sound was all around us and everyone was moving as the beat pulsed. Clanton wailed out “If you don’t hurt me I won’t hurt you back/Don’t want to lose you.”

We had then entered into timelessness, a wild feeling that happens when a show becomes more than a show and becomes everything, all that’s important is in the moment. No outside world, only the here-and-now in the crowd. You can’t process thought. An overwrought emotion akin to ecstasy as you’re squeezed against some raving fan screaming in your ear, skin against skin, sweat from shoving and jumping. Lasers.

A new song, I don’t remember which one, maybe the title track off his latest album, Ooh Rap I Ya, moved us into a more trance like atmosphere with its juvenile enthusiasm. 3D models of abstract blobs of color, yellow, orange, neon greens and wobbling blues, were on the TV sets while Clanton was throwing himself upon the towers before descending into the audience. Some people were standing still and hitting a vape in a small circle. Clanton grabbed water bottles, opened and flung them at the crowd. It was all so wet. Lots of sensation. I think I hugged him at one point. 

“Justify Your Life”, “Make It Forever”, “Punching Down”, all bangers. Absolute anthems. Clanton’s discography contains a clear eyed understanding of nostalgia, the misty undercurrents of memory and how it can layer and change, even in the span of a song. Nostalgia itself should be true. An intimate remembrance hyper-specific to one’s sense of self and lived experience. Recalling childish terrors, diving in the deep of what comes at night before the onslaught of sleep and dream. What a life can hold. We all exist in specific contexts.

Nostalgia currently in the cultural landscape is more a means to capitalize on itself for the sake of escapism, profit, and product rather than a pure memory that can sometimes come to you. Nostalgia now is a constant regurgitation of defunct memory until nothing means anything anymore and you find yourself existing in a present already bogged down with the past. We are consistently told to remember when. To wallow in it when times were better and more free, and when we weren’t burdened by the world. 

Nostalgia. It’s all artifice, but that’s what makes it alluring. The genre where Clanton first established himself, vaporwave, is essentially predicated upon creating false nostalgia. There, accelerated hyper-capitalist renderings of modern life are meshed with contemporary internet aesthetics, all while reworking ’80s and ’90s music for a total tranced out experience. It’s a genre filled with ghosts. Clanton’s image isn’t pure. The flashing lights became emojis, old PlayStation logos, you might have seen some scatterings of Neon Genesis Evangelion and other anime flash briefly on the many TVs. Clanton has crafted his stage persona to encapsulate the terminally online, future sound of music, combining Internet aesthetics and production with glittering pop-hooks reminiscent of the Backstreet Boys and Seal. However, it’s his sheer earnestness and sincerity that cuts through all the artifice to get at real vulnerable emotion. 

It’s easy to grow disillusioned on the Internet. Like Sisyphus, we’re bound to doom scrolling: you will hit the wall and you will hit the vape. Most of his music is focused on looking back on the past. Ooh Rap I Ya’s lead single, which served as the show closer, is literally called “I Been Young”. With this though, both Clanton’s musical talent and ferocity for live stage shows can only ground you in an unadulterated present. Yeah I raved, and it felt good. Writing this now, I can’t shake a small frustration with not being able to fully articulate how alive a show can make you feel, the physicality and passion provided by the spectacle. I took two low quality photos of the show. Looking back, mean nothing to me now. I have similar photos from when I saw Clanton months ago in Madison.

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The next phase in the performance crept its way in as m picked up a microphone and started speaking into it. The speech was sorrowful as heavy reverb added to the existing droning, turning the previously panicked mood more somber. The words themselves were obscured by these recursive layers, yet some bled through before joining the haunting echoes. It felt like the heavy strata of the past had piled onto my back, threatening to crush my future before it could occur. m holds the mic close right up to her face with both hands as if she was using a flashlight to tell ghost stories. What I can make out is sluggishly spoken. “I never…” “I’m sorry…” “I love you…” “Darling…” These artifacts of love left behind contextualized the abstract performance. Eventually m put the mic down, leaving only the underlying drone and layers upon layers of reverb to drift away. 

The noise resumes its pre-vocal intensity. The soft, constant echo is replaced with the searing buzz of before. This time m is almost no longer in control of this noise, holding the knobs with both hands like she’s riding a bull, and turning them with exaggerated movement. This is one of my favorite aspects of the performance. Her movements directing the sound seem so precise and calm during the beginning but as the show ramps up, this control is gradually lost until she appears to be wrangling with this mess of machines and wires connected to her laptop.

Blinking lights on these pedals both ground the odd, spacey feeling into a rhythm, yet give the appliance a certain mystique, like a quaint security camera hiding in the corner. The droning sounds, the blinking lights, the expressive motions, none of this is superficial. It all is working towards the sound, the main course of the performance, but every part of it further mesmerized me.

The last leg of her performance included a very special feature: a voicemail from UIPD detective Ian Mallory. Without turning this show coverage piece into an exposé, Mallory has gained infamy in the past few months for arresting multiple trans protesters, including m. In sending the voicemails to all of those arrested months after the event and for certain statements he has made in court about the UIPD, Mallory has made himself a mascot of the injustices the UIPD has committed against trans people. This is deeply tied to recent state legislation targeting trans rights and the reality of being a trans person in Iowa City.

The decision to incorporate Mallory’s voicemail into her performance was bold and made a lasting impression on me as the sound wound down, before eventually stopping. m thanked the audience, leaving her reverb effect on by accident, before turning it off and trying again. A couple giggles emerged in the moment as the audience clapped in their own gratitude for giving us a performance unlike anything we had seen before.

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The lights dim and the band begins to pack the stage, complete with two sperate sets of drums. Even if I’d gone into Osees with absolutely no knowledge of the band, now is the time when I’d have known something was up with these guys. Some guy in the crowd yells that John Dwyer’s shorts should be shorter, a guy next to me starts absolutely losing his shit, and I begin to recognize faces. This crowd was so much larger than I was used to, but it still felt familiar. In the company of a barkeep, a friend, my favorite bookstore’s owner, and a super nice stranger, I felt invincible.

The actual show was incredible. The acoustics at The Englert are very round and deep, causing the raucous noise of the Osees performance to shake every object and occupy every empty space in the room. The performance was god knows how long, but it felt like an eternity in mere minutes. The songs were effortlessly strung together, and I got lost in the music, the trance only breaking during soundchecks. At some point the push of the crowd behind me got too tempting, and I stepped inside. The show culminated in an absolutely scorching performance of “The Static God“, my personal favorite Osees song. I screamed my lungs out and hopped like a fucking maniac. Nothing else would have been fitting. The show comes to an end, and I begin to catch my breath.

Walking away from the stage takes the form of stumbling, and I can barely feel my feet. I’m overheating as is, and I would have been absolutely toasted had I worn my extra layer. I step out the doors of The Englert and into a world of drunken frat guys and irregular traffic, only to step back inside a second later. In the daze of it all, I’d forgotten my jacket.

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Midwest hip-hop duo Strangers of Necessity kicked off Mission Creek’s Friday evening at Gabe’s, bringing a perfect blend of positive energy, precise bars, and smooth production to the festival. The synergy between Iowa City based producer CoryaYo and Chicago rapper Fooch the MC was apparent throughout the set, with CoryaYo’s DJ Premier type beats providing the ideal foil for Fooch’s braggadocious flow. “Punishing rappers like I’m Frank Castle,” he raps on one early song. “Go against Fooch you might lose your nine lives,” he warns on another. Beyond snappy one-liners, he also excelled at interacting with the Mission Creek crowd. “Can I kick it?” he shouts, “Yes you can!” they respond. “Can I kick it?” he shouts again, “Yes you can!” they yell back louder. Fooch’s request to see hands in the air is also enthusiastically received, giving the show a dynamic, interactive feel.

Fooch is also cognizant of the night’s other big event in Iowa City. “We’re gonna keep the party going because I know you wanna watch the game and shit,” he says, referencing the much anticipated Final Four basketball match between the Hawkeyes and the University of Connecticut. Fooch even has bars for the occasion: “If I was in college ball I’d be Final Four, but this isn’t my final form” he raps later in the show.

While all their songs sound punchy live, it’s cuts from their 2020 release Vibe Theory that really stand out and get the crowd moving. The easygoing pace of “Fundamental”, which features CoryaYo on the mic, is followed by the huge bass of Vibe Theory opener “Incredible Flow” with Fooch rapping the song’s memorable chorus. “You digging with these vibes we giving?” he asks midway through the show. An enthusiastic ‘Yeah!’ is the resounding response from the crowd. It was Strangers of Necessity’s first Mission Creek appearance, but I certainly hope it won’t be their last.

Anthony Worden

“My name is Anthony Worden and I’m from Iowa City. So psyched you’re here. I love you guys!” Anthony Worden’s first interaction with the Mission Creek crowd underlines his genuine affection for the city, venue, and festival. He’s delighted to be playing Mission Creek at Gabe’s, and wants the crowd to know. Considering he grew up in Cedar Rapids and graduated from the University of Iowa, such a fondness for the region is perhaps expected, but it’s clear Worden’s affinity for Eastern Iowa is fundamental to his personality and music.

However, Worden’s show is, ironically, the victim of Iowa’s success. His band’s 9:00 PM slot at Gabe’s brutally clashes with the basketball, a cruel twist of fate he’s quick to acknowledge throughout the show. “The question we’re all wondering, who’s winning?” he asks midway through. “Aw man. Fuck UConn man,” he responses when the news isn’t good. Yet this conflict with the match is also a way of galvanizing the people in attendance, those who chose live music over televised sport. “You said no to the mass of people who wanted to watch the basketball,” says Worden proudly, “You just wanna rock! No TVs up here,” he laughs, although there is a mad dash to the screen on the floor below as soon as Worden’s set wraps at 9:30 PM.

Worden’s show is in many ways the product of transition. He has a new band: Joe Shanks on guitar, Lucas Adolphson on bass, and Chloe Weidl on drums. They sounded in perfect sync alongside Worden’s own distinctive vocals and guitar. He also has a new album, Plain Angels coming out on May 10th. Worden describes the album as a product of “work, personal grief, and collaboration. It’s my most personal record and musically my strongest.” This internal confidence shines through in his Mission Creek set, which thrilled the loyal Gabe’s crowd. My only regret was that thirty minutes wasn’t long enough to do justice to his four, soon to be five, albums. If that’s my sole complaint, then it was a damn fine rock show.

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On Day 1 of the Mission Creek Festival, L’Rain stepped out barefoot on The Hancher stage cast in violet light, along with emerging sounds of barking and baying dogs. Cheek declared to the audience that tonight “You have to howl with the dogs.” Bells chimed, and cell phone ringers danced around the howls, growing and circulating into a wake up call as Cheek introduced the first song by saying, “I love dogs, I miss mine. See you on the other side,” leading into the beginning of the track “I Killed Your Dog”.

Music flowed from a soft melancholy to the thundering overflow of pure noise, interjected by jazz solos, drum breaks, and simply bizarre synth noises. L’Rain is made up of outright talented musicians all in communication with each other, playing off what one another other brings through their instruments. Roles of guitar, bass, and synth were picked up and traded off during sax-drum duets. In a set structured like a jazz performance where improvisation is key, everyone listened as much as they played. Grounded by each song’s melody and motifs, the instability never broke apart the threads holding each song together. Rather, it brought a gradual and unpredictable experimentation, transforming repetition into a gallery of noise. We think of a gallery as a static place of art displayed on a wall. However, L’Rain curates her own sonic gallery from music into the dimensions of time and sound, placing the frames around her motifs and found sounds to add them to her collection. This collected galley is not static, it can only last as long as the music and its memory allow it to.

Her final song began with laughter. Though Taja Cheek’s life working with field recordings and experimentation would lead her to discover a new dimension of sounds, her laugh must be among the most beautiful sounds in the world. Laughter, screams, and howls distorted into electric echoes that bent into each other. Looping into shrieks tinged with a sad, dark edge was the closing track of the set “New Year’s UnResolution“, having the performance come to its end.

These are artists who perform an experience rather than perform a recording, feeding their feeling into music. L’Rain stands out from the “experimental” label as among the few whose experimentations are a genuine expression of emotion, rather than simply playing into dizzy eccentricities that the catch-all label accommodates. This music revolves, rotates, ebbs and flows with all the disruptions and subtleties of grief, loss, joy, and love. Translating contradictions into sound as human rationalities, emotions and memories collide. L’Rain is so overwhelmingly human.

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Here we all shared this common appreciation for De Souza and her music, which best summarizes and encapsulates this feeling of growing up. In other songs of hers like “You Can be Mean” and “How I Get Myself Killed” she sings about the complexities and complications of the processes of moving through phases in life, when one is not yet exactly sure who they are or what they want. Further tracks along the setlist like “Take Off Ur Pants” and “Younger & Dumber” are tracks that embody sensations of what it means to look back on past encounters. These experiences along the seams of things that turned out as they were either inevitably or unexpectedly, become memories that follow you for the rest of your life.

Within this hemisphere of wistful and dewy-eyed tonalities, the music’s live ambiance left the onlookers maudlin with acceptance to whatever may come our way within this venture of maturity. What De Souza tells us through this show is that everything will be okay, and that one must only hold on until the very point of when things will eventually get better. The show left the crowd with a sense of reassurance and comfort, beyond what other things may be able to offer. It left many with a newly found sense of hope for what’s to happen in the future, and provides us with a determination to go on with our lives, with a form of insight that is welcoming to refreshing prospects. They are particularly signifiers of one’s openness to learning more about the world and the rest of yourself.

De Souza’s performance was intimate, closely-knitted, and aligned to its listeners, making a musically ascribed language commence between herself and the audience. The performer and listener meet at a common point of understanding for each other that says “I have been there,” and “I get it.” This confides in the listener that they are not alone. This energy is one that shares secrets amongst the crowd, through the unspoken translation of feelings, emotions, and thoughts that is conveyed through Indigo De Souza being homesick for a tomorrow that is waiting, if not itching, to transpire.

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