Cercle fumbles: a cautionary tale of how not to scale a dance music brand
Cercle promised a night to remember. Instead, they gave us screen savers and surveillance, bad sound, and amateur lighting. You can’t fake it with projectors.
TLDR: Cercle's Odyssey is a half-baked event series, not a magical dancefloor, and not worth the price of admission. However, because ticket prices on the secondary market have crashed to ~25% of their original value, it might be worth checking out, if you can get cheap tickets.
Highlights from the May 9 event include Moby performing his big hits with a roster of six other live musicians. Unfortunately, Moby's excellence could not overcome the broken execution that showed up in the form of terrible acoustics and amateurish, unsophisticated, and undercooked lighting and visual effects. Cercle as an organization have lost sight of the dance magic that propelled the Cercle brand to YouTube stardom.
WORD ON THE STREET POPS CERCLE'S BUBBLE
We attended Moby's performance for Cercle Odyssey in Los Angeles on Friday night, May 9th. The event was part of a new series marketed by Cercle, an event production company that rose to fame with gorgeously produced dance music streamed to YouTube during the global pandemic. The company marketed Cercle Odyssey as "the world’s first immersive 360° nomadic installation" featuring artists including Moby, Black Coffee, The Blaze, Whomadewho, Monolink, Mura Masa, Ben Bohmer, Bonobo, and Max Richter. One artist per evening performs for roughly two hours "in the round" -- in the center of a room surrounded by their audience.
Despite the talent roster, these events are, unfortunately, unsuccessful, and aftermarket ticket prices have crashed as disappointed attendees have shared their impressions in scathing online threads. After the Mexico City series of events, negative word of mouth soured appetites for future events, and at the time of this writing, of the remaining 19 events scheduled for Los Angeles and Paris, just two are "sold out." (Cercle deceivingly marks all past events as "sold out" on its website regardless of the fact tickets for the Los Angeles events were available for purchase all the way up to the event dates.)
What's going wrong for Cercle, an organization that prior to Odyssey had built a powerful brand that music lovers trusted by producing over 250 high-end music events, including its own festival? I went in to investigate the situation first-hand last night, and have some thoughts.
KOYAANISQATSI = LIFE OUT OF BALANCE
During the stage reset time between the laughably-short 30-minute DJ set by Eli & Fur, Cercle distracted our attention by playing a six-minute excerpt from the film Koyaanisqatsi, an 86-minute documentary without narration or dialog that features beautifully filmed montages accompanied by a minimal score by Philip Glass. Cercle explained they were showing us this excerpt because the film had been an inspiration for Odyssey.
The film's title, pronounced "koy · aa ·nuh · skaat · see" is a Hopi word for "life out of balance" (meaning, literally, "chaotic life") and the film shows, through its juxtapositions of natural and man-made settings, how the modern world's embrace of technology might be contributing to this life out of balance, this modern chaos.
Cercle states on the Odyssey website that they wanted each event to "unfold like a living painting with videos projected onto the walls and ceiling, all synchronized live with the music." They likely believed this would be a path to success because the heart of their brand was about putting music into beautiful settings such as the Eiffel Tower, hot air balloons over Cappadocia, the Giza Pyramids, and other gorgeous destinations around the world. They likely believe that the beauty of these settings was important to the success of their prior events (and it's hard to argue the hundreds of millions of views their YouTube videos of these events have accrued to date).
But needing a fancy location ultimately limited the growth of the firm. Beautiful settings are hard to book, and operate. I had fun imagining the board meeting in which Cercle's leadership team twisted their mustaches and proposed replacing natural beauty with the technology of projection:
Exec 1: We can’t just book the pyramids or the Eiffel Tower over and over, and most of the world can't get there. Shareholders demand growth!
Exec 2: Ok, so let's put the events in warehouses near major population centers and --
Exec 1: Sacre bleu! Warehouses? Hideous! Cercle is about beauty!
Exec 2: S’il vous plaît, let me finish. In zese warehouses, we shall project video of stunning places. Our target consumer lives in screens and will be watching on YouTube anyway — zey won’t know ze difference.
Exec 1: Genius!
Cercle Odyssey unintentionally demonstrated the truth of the film's core "life out of balance" message. Cercle's biggest mistake comes down to fundamental design decisions -- as a brand that rose to prominence through YouTube, it seems clear that the Odyssey event series was built for their primary audience of online YouTube users. Cercle tried to create a traveling Vegas-style "Sphere" on a modest budget, and their technology distracted the organization from executing properly on the in-person component of the event.
To be fair, I seriously doubt that the Cercle exec team are mustache-twisting villains, and yet it's hard to read positive intent into the decisions that led to the design of Odyssey. It failed on the most critical elements of a proper dance party.
THE CAMERA PROBLEM
One of the big selling points for me for the event, when I purchased tickets without knowing who the headliner would be, was the promise of a camera-free event. And on this promise, Cercle delivered.
Kind of.
At the event check-in, our phones were put into Yondr pouches so that our eyes would "be the sole witnesses to the experience ahead."
And yet, once we entered the space, we noticed cameras everywhere. Not snuck in by attendees, but wielded by many official event photographers and videographers. We had surrendered our phones at the door only to encounter an environment bristling with cameras on the inside. Photographers with heavy DSLRs rigs moved around the space catching crowd reactions to the music. Other photographers held cell phones aloft to capture vertical footage that could be used for marketing the events on social media. There were massive broadcast-style cameras mounted on podiums. There were cameras mounted over the entire floor -- a fact that we were reminded of when the event floor was shown from above on the large video screens.
Cameras everywhere serves the organization's YouTube goals. Cercle, on their website, require people going to their events to agree to the following:
"By going to this event, you irrevocably consent to being filmed and photographed, and allow Cercle to use your image and your voice in any media, for any purpose, anywhere in the world and in perpetuity without limitation and without financial compensation."
This wasn't a camera-free event. It wasn't even a phone-free event. I'm thankful for the fact that I wasn't surrounded by a group of phone zombies holding their phones aloft the entire time, but I didn't feel safe at all to dance as if nobody was watching, because I was perpetually under a lens. Just a couple days after publishing my article on how the panopticon fucks dancefloors, I had unwittingly stepped into a panopticon. Unnerving. Unsettling.
One redditor quipped, "I felt like they invited us just to fill out the crowd shot."
Cercle likely calculated that they would have an easier time getting punters to buy tickets if they promised a post-event recording, so the heavy use of cameras was necessary to deliver on that promise. But the cameras are also part of the Cercle standard operating plan for their events.
What happened to simply attending a party, without needing to photograph or take video of the entire thing?
TOO QUIET, MUDDY SOUND
Wearing my 17dB filters in my 1of1custom earplugs, I found the sound too quiet. Consulting my Apple Health data the morning after, I learned that the room's "exposure without sound reduction" measure averaged 93dB to 94dB, with a range of 75dB to 105dB.
The best-sounding rooms I've been in tend to measure about 103dB on this same measure of sustained exposure. The difference between 93dB and 103dB may not sound like much, but it's a massive gap -- a 103dB room sounds about twice as loud as the 93dB room, to human ears.
The sound pressure levels had likely been tamped down due to the acoustics of the space. The bass was muddy and boomy, with unintentional reverb in the cavernous Los Angeles Convention Center Space. I don't know if acoustically transparent projection screens were being used, but I thought I could also hear faint slapback from the high frequencies bouncing off of the vinyl sheets onto which all the visuals were being projected.
One Redditor wrote, "Music always comes first. The sound was horrible - muffled and low. It sounded like I was in a cafeteria. I could hear everyone speak."
Another agreed, "This person is not over-exaggerating when they say it was muffled garbage in a cafeteria. There was no clarity and delineation of the different musicians. You couldn't make out what the singers were saying. Moby was doing cool hybrid live dance tracks, and you couldn't hear his beat played by hand on the drums on top of the track. It was muddy one note bass with everything buried in the mix."
Cercle partnered with L-Acoustics for the sound, but there's a story here that we'll probably never know about why the sound was so problematic. It may have been venue-specific, or it may have to do with a deeper flaw with the sound design, as attendees in Mexico City were lodging similar complaints about the sound.
Ultimately, the Cercle Odyssey event is designed to deliver a standardized experience across locations. It's all done inside a box that's 50 meters long by 10 meters high. Perhaps the acoustical treatments (or lack thereof) around these boxes are insufficient, perhaps wrapping the whole room in giant plastic sheets to receive projected images muddies the sound.
Regardless of reason, not nailing the sound is a cardinal sin, especially for an event with such a sizable production budget and such expensive ticket prices.
VISUALS DETRACTED; SEVERELY UNDERCOOKED LIGHTING
Sound wasn't the only problem. The screens that surrounded us on all sides, and the screens overhead infused the space with ambient light that -- in combination with the omnipresent cameras -- made us feel like subjects lit up for the cameras. Some 16 or so 50,000-lumen 3DLP projectors from Panasonic provided crisp visual projections, but harshed the vibe with their high-lumen output. A good dance party is mostly dark. This one was too bright at all times.
Shorter folks -- like my girlfriend who's 5'4" -- could only see the top third of the screens anyway, so all the big projections did for her was provide a lot of unwelcome ambient light that made it hard for either of us to feel comfortable. At one point, she remarked, "I feel like I'm surrounded by Microsoft screen savers," but then later upgraded it to "Apple TV screensavers." There was a sort of soulless aestheticism to these videos that betrays a lack of creative vision. One video of space rocks floating through space looked like dated 2010 video game graphics -- the shading, textures, and animations were all sub-par and felt cheesy (I spent a couple decades working in the games industry -- I have a professional’s eye that doesn’t miss attempts to sneak in low-budget work).
Things get worse.
The lighting sequences were actively bad. The primary moving heads used were Claypaky Sharpys, a light that costs about $7,000 USD per fixture. There were at least 150 of these in use throughout the venue, with about ~110 of them in the room with us. I can tell when someone has lovingly programmed lighting sequences and have spent hundreds of hours obsessing over the brilliant effects that can be experienced in dancefloors such as Yuma, Despacio, Berghain, Wall of Sound, etc. These moving heads were hardly programmed to move, stuck to a few colors, and were minimally programmed. Big miss.
Moby played three or four of his more "ravey" records, and the lighting was positively embarrassing during these moments, with all the lights popping off here and there, chaotically, without much grace. The green lasers fired off near the end of the event felt really cheesy -- like a budget rave. These "rave" sequences were some normie lighting guy's idea of rave lighting; absolutely disgraceful. Whoever was on the lights needs to be given more time, and perhaps more education, so that they can do better work.
MOBY SAVES THE DAY
Luckily, Moby's an experienced performer and his performance, after the risibly short "DJ set" by Eli & Fur gave the event some redeeming value.
Here's some of what he played for us.
In the first half of the event, Moby's tracks were more artsy and epic -- like the soundtrack to a beautiful nature documentary. He played downtempo, trance, and house full of strings, melodic angel choruses, and uplifting vibes. Songs included:
In This World
Bed
Dark Days (Tonic Water Remix) by Moby & Lady Blackbird
Go (with live bongos by Moby)
God Moving Over the Face of the Waters
Porcelain
About halfway through, Moby took the mic to talk about his first-ever performance in Los Angeles in 1991. He and Jason Bentley helped build a DIY DJ stage out of plywood for the event, and Moby admitted to being a "little rave kid" at heart. He played several ravey tracks, starting with Bring Back My Happiness, then the following tracks (in rough order of appearance):
Morningside
Natural Blues
The Broken Places
Feeling So Real (Siona Remix) by Moby, Miss Monique
Where Is Your Pride (Essel Remix) by Moby & Benjamin Zephaniah
Honey
We Are All Made of Stars
[encore] Bodyrock
Moby and team did struggle a bit with the "in the round" nature of the stage. He tried to move around the stage and give equal time to people on all four sides of the stage, but his movements seemed a touch awkward as he navigated turns at the corners. Performing "in the round" takes some practice, and he noted that this was his first time ever doing so.
For the budget, Cercle probably could have put Moby and the other six artists on a rotating platform so that they could focus more on performing and less on not tripping while doing laps on a rectangular stage.
BUT DOES IT DANCE?
Cercle Odyssey's design undermines dancefloor vibrancy.
By putting the performer on a raised stage in the center of the room and lighting them like a monument, the choicest dancing real estate is given over to the performer. This design made it clear that everyone should face the center. What's more, the rectangular stage had four times the length of "rail" of a typical stage because there were four sides of railing (aka crowd barriers) for folks to attach to. Those who got to one of the coveted rail positions held on for dear life, as did most of the second and third rows behind them, just in case a spot opened up. As a result, about half the room was hard-locked into facing the stage at all times, and these folks generally danced a lot less because of the constraints of being in proximity to the railing and needing to guard their spots so that no intruders could slip in and grab onto the rail.
The event certainly wasn't oversold (it hadn't sold out) and there was plenty of room to dance. But the dominant presence of the stage combined with the overwhelmingly bright screens around the room meant that the performers and the visuals were commanding almost all of the crowd's attention. On healthy dancefloors, the action is on the dancefloor, not up on a stage or on screens around the room.
Folks were mostly polite to each other. Attending were Los Angelenos in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, with an average age of maybe 35; fairly typical of Moby's fandom. They didn't show a ton of entitled behavior, outside of a few very yappy finance bros and two obnoxiously drunk women who were so out of it they didn't even make it the full duration of Moby's set.
Unfortunately, Moby's set list also made it impossible to catch and hold onto a dance groove. The tempo of the music bounced around from slow ambient (where the entire room could be heard yapping over the music) to house to techno, and the pause and applause between songs stopped all dancing entirely. It was a concert, and concerts rarely host great dancefloors.
The VIP area's entrance and exit sent snooty VIPs (who danced even less) through the GA area, and they were often so insistent on their need to get to or from the VIP section that they barged through dancing groups mid song while angrily guarding their draft cocktails ($20) or champagne flutes ($24).
Four front-of-house staff sat on their laptops at the foot of one side of the rectangular stage, dampening dance energy with their stillness and their forest of technical gear.
The Yondr pouches our phones had been locked into were also awkward hindrances to dance. They slapped against bodies that dared to move, and the chintzy straps that held them dug into our skin uncomfortably once we worked up a sweat. Yondr isn't necessary; it's easy enough for phone lenses to receive little stickers over them and for folks who take these stickers off to be ejected from the event.
Even the merchandise experience wasn't designed for dancing. Those who purchased a tshirt, sweatshirt, or other merchandise had to carry their shopping bags into the event with them. The folks saddled with shopping bags gamely tried to dance, but it was obvious that the bags were interfering with their ability to express themselves through dance. They looked like shoppers shifting from foot to foot while waiting for a bathroom stall at the mall.
WHY EVEN BOTHER WITH CONCERTS?
It's become abundantly clear to me at this point in the Magical Dancefloors journey that concerts rarely (if ever) offer vibrant dancefloor experiences. Concerts are fine, concerts are fun, but concerts ain't the place to go if you want to really dance.
Cercle Odyssey made promises in the marketing of this event that suggested that they cared about creating and curating a great dance music experience. Perhaps I'm dumb to have fallen for the marketing and the hype, especially at the cost of $200 per ticket. That's on me. But I'm grateful for the experience because it's helped me draw a sharper line between magical and muggle dancefloors. I will continue to watch Cercle's excellently produced YouTube videos, but I will never again attend one of their events in person. Cercle simply do not seem to care about (or be capable of caring about) the “dance” part of dance music.
I do have one more concert experience to review before I swear off of them altogether for the purpose of Magical Dancefloors: I attended Phish at the Hollywood Bowl recently and am eager to share some thoughts from that experience. Stay tuned!
THE SCORECARD
All of which makes me more excited for Portola. Onwards to our holy land ( despacio)
I hope that Cercle hears the feedback loud and clear. Moby deserved a better sound and stage. It’s a travesty to have that much lighting power and be that underwhelming. Can Cercle recover from this huge misstep ?