FKA twigs

It’s hard to pick a highlight from FKA Twigs Sunday night appearance on the white stage. I was too hypnotized to remember any.

Emerging from the backstage shadows almost ten minutes after the scheduled start time (unheard of at Fuji Rock), the sultry UK R&B artist, real name Tahliah Barnett, showed no sense of urgency, taking things smooth and slow. Her voice a breathy whisper, she pirouetted across the stage to a rising and falling symphonic wall of strings, frozen jabs of synth, and the drum machine’s underlying pops and clicks. She was catlike one moment, leaping and stretching when the music peaked, then writhing and wiggling the next, almost like a snake.

Rarely breaking a crawl’s pace, the music was hazy, mysterious and atmospheric. She never called out to the audience, not speaking a word until just before the final moments of her performance. The entire crowd appeared to be lost in her trance, breaking it when everything grew dark and silent, only then bursting into cheers and talking to one another in amazement.

She let the music control her, moving like the entire world was in slow motion. Individual songs never stood out but rather blurred together. Moments almost seemed to stand still, sending chills of the spines of everyone in attendance. FKA Twigs didn’t intend for anyone to latch on to a particular moment or memory in the performance, she made them all melt together like warm chocolate.