Live Report: Faithless bring otherwordly beats to Electric Picnic day 1

After 25 years of playing together, Faithless seem to have figured out exactly how to hit every mark you’d want a dance music artist to hit – perhaps due to their absolute willingness to experiment with their sound, or their unwavering, electrifying energy.

As capable as the band is to transform the Electric Arena into a giant nightclub, the beats dancey, infectious and absolutely intoxicating, there is a haunting, otherworldly quality to their sound that stirs something deep within you, with ethereal vocal lines and pensive instrumental.

Faithless at Electric Picnic. 2024 Copyright Maya Solanki.

The way beats resonate in your chest is usually reserved to more heavy techno – but despite their relatively minimal use of bass, the industrial, almost acid house quality of their mixes make them sound rave-y and incredibly hard-hitting.

And yet with a full group of musicians and singers standing on stage, Faithless feel like a rock band too, meeting at the crossroads of so many genres that it would be a crime to try and put them in a box - just as techno forward as it is danceable, the sound sometimes disco-inspired but always dreamy, transporting and galvanising. Song after song, listening to the band feels like an infinite forward motion.

Faithless at Electric Picnic. 2024 Copyright Maya Solanki.

Faithless is a case study is good EDM – because it would be as easy to dance all night to pop inspired melodies as it would be to close your eyes and be transported to somewhere darker, airier, with their masterful use of melodies that edge on being dissonant, and yet stay perfectly in line, making the set as stirring as it is whimsical.