For a third consecutive Labor Day weekend, the North Coast Music Festival takes over Union Park with a packed bill that draws from the seemingly disparate but surprisingly synergistic worlds of electronic dance music, jam bands, hip-hop, and indie rock. Sixty-nine acts will take to the festival’s four stages over the weekend, and another 50 will spin for dancers wearing headphones at the Groupon Noise Refuge Personal Space Silent Disco—the DJs will perform two at a time on separate channels, and the headphones can be switched from one to the other. Among the fest’s nonmusical attractions is a “Living Gallery” sponsored by the Reader, which will feature painters and graffiti artists working live all weekend. Tickets, festival rules, and more information—including a list of the many official afterparties—are available via northcoastfestival.com. —MR
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Paul Oakenfold 8 PMRed Bull Stage Legendary British DJ Paul Oakenfold is responsible for some of the best things that have ever happened to dance music and a good number of the worst. He almost single-handedly broke acid house in the UK, and he and fellow pioneers such as Andrew Weatherall brought together the pop world and the dance-music underground with production work for the Happy Mondays and other Madchester bands, in the process catalyzing the Summer of Love out of which global rave culture grew. Then again, he also popularized trance techno and helped Ibizafy EDM—but at least at this point in his career, his good deeds still far outweigh the bad. —MR
Yacht 3:45 PM North Stage According to its website, Yacht is a “Band, Belief System, and Business,” and the main business of core members Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans seems to be to make pop-inflected dance music with its roots in the form’s early days. Their songs’ plentiful hooks function as lures to draw unsuspecting listeners into what’s effectively a multimedia performance-art piece that blends apparently earnest new agey cosmology, occasionally strident politics, and personal styles that I suspect the buyers at Urban Outfitters are keeping tabs on. —MR
Big Boi 7:30 PMNorth Stage Ardent OutKast devotees have long been vexed by the assumption, common among the group’s casual fans, that Andre 3000 is the “creative guy” and plays off Big Boi, the “rap guy,” like he’s the straight man in a joke or something. But while Andre has lately seemed content with the occasional cameo verse (and convincing Rick Ross to let him do a guitar solo on his record), Big Boi has been releasing crazy-ass concept albums full of future funk that will probably sound shockingly modern to listeners two decades down the road—and now he’s talking about collaborating with Kate Bush. So what if he doesn’t wear hippie headbands? Give the dude a break. —MR
8/31-9/2, Fri 1-10 PM, Sat-Sun noon-10 PM, Union Park, Ashland and Lake, $50 per day, $350 three-day VIP passes, other three-day passes sold out, all ages.
