LEVITATION FRANCE

LEVITATION FRANCE is a rock and indie festival in Angers, in Maine-et-Loire. The first edition ran on 20 and 21 September 2013 at Le Chabada. Radical Production puts it on: the Angers firm of Doudou, which also works on Rock en Seine. The meeting is the French edition of Austin’s LEVITATION, the Texas festival once called Austin Psych Fest. It is not Levitate, the Marshfield event. It is not the mother festival in Texas. Here the crowd walks into a musiques actuelles room on the Loire.

The city link was already there. Austin and Angers became sister cities in 2011. Austin-Angers Music and the City of Angers pushed the exchange. In Austin, The Reverberation Appreciation Society — with Alex Maas of The Black Angels and Rob Fitzpatrick — had run Psych Fest since 2008. In Angers a practical fact lined up: the French booker for The Black Angels was Radical Production, based in the same town. François Delaunay, then at Le Chabada, talked about a lasting bridge to Austin’s music trade, not a one-off weekend. Le Chabada is both a publicly funded cultural centre and a private hall. In 2013 it held about nine hundred people. It was the largest venue in Angers.

The first weekend sold out both nights. Reports put the crowd around two thousand across the two days. Eighteen acts came from seven countries. A two-day pass cost forty euros. Two stages sat inside the building. Friday closed with The Black Angels. Saturday brought another run of psychedelic rock and guitar indie. Night Beats and The UFO Club, already seen in Austin that spring, crossed the Atlantic. The format was tight: no campsite, no multi-kilometre field. A boulevard, a room, and a crowd that stood between two stages.

The 2013 bill shows the music. The Black Angels brought the Austin psych rock the Texas festival already knew. Dead Meadow and Dead Skeletons covered the same ground with more grit. Beak>, Geoff Barrow’s project, and Damo Suzuki, the historic Can voice, pulled the indie side toward kraut and improvisation. Tamikrest arrived from the Sahara with guitars that belong to neither Texas nor the Loire, yet fit a psych bill. Mars Red Sky and The Telescopes added heavy rock and British drone. Lola Colt, Camera, Wall of Death, Lonely Walk, Neue Wilde, Elephant Stone and The Blondi’s Salvation filled the remaining hours. Rock and indie are not a loose tag. They are what those two nights sounded like.

Around the stages sat another layer. Philippe Thieyre, a journalist and collector, brought classic posters and albums to the Grand Théâtre d’Angers for a show on the roots of psychedelia in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin. Bob Mustachio, lighting designer for the Texas festival, ran visuals on the main stage. Robin Gnista drew the Friday and Saturday commemorative posters. Les 400 Coups screened When You’re Strange and Easy Rider, with remarks from Delaunay, Xavier Massé and Thieyre. The weekend was not just an imported concert. It was a room, an exhibition and a twin city lending its institutions.

The site tells you how it felt. You reach Angers by train from Paris, about three hundred kilometres away. You walk to the Boulevard du Doyenné. You enter a hall, not a ranch. By day Le Chabada is a musiques actuelles building. By night the two stages force a choice: the big name or the room next door. September on the Loire can be mild or the first autumn chill. There is no field mud. There is a queue at the door and a capacity you feel when both nights are full. Anyone who knows Austin Psych Fest will miss open sky. Anyone who lives in Angers gains a festival that fits the city.

In later years the format left the concrete. There were editions outside Le Chabada, on the Quai and in the venue car park. That was not decoration. It was an answer to a room that, for a growing crowd, had become tight. In 2025 the meeting sat on the shores of Lac de Maine, still in Angers. Reports speak of about five thousand people and a site with a lake, dust and a large stage. The local team remains: Radical Production, Le Chabada and the association Levitation France, chaired by Delaunay. Rock and indie did not leave town. They changed ground: from a hall to a lakeshore.

LEVITATION FRANCE is best read as the French edition Angers built in 2013 with Austin, not as the Texas festival and not as Levitate in Marshfield. Radical Production holds the production. Le Chabada held the first nights. Lac de Maine held the jump in scale. There is no need to cross Texas to hear The Black Angels on a psych bill. Here the ground is an Angers room and, later, a lake. The crowd fits first in hundreds, then in thousands. The story that matters is a September 2013 that sold out two nights and left on the Loire a rock and indie festival with a borrowed name and its own site.