Thursday is a bit of an odd day for catching bands – there is stuff going on at the smaller stages but the main stages are still closed off and, even as I write this, there’s still actually work going on finishing preparing the Pyramid and Other stages for tomorrow’s shows. I did however manage to catch a couple of great artists, as well as exploring the site at night.
Beat Hotel
First on my evening stint was Joe Goddard, of Hot Chip, over at Beat Hotel playing an awesome set that had quite a funky vibe to it and really got the audience moving. It’s fair to say I’m useless at reviewing DJ sets, not really seeing enough of them to have anything to compare it to, but I think it’s fair to say that the audience, absolutely filling Beat Hotel to the point where getting in was a considerable effort, were there for Joe, and not just to avoid the rain as was the case in a few locations.
After a quick wonder around the site and a quick dinner stop (lamb curry, rice and naan for the costly price of £6) I realised that the William’s Green Launch Party was well underway, and turned up just as the audience were chatting about who could be next; the word on a lot of tounges was “Django!”. Django Django are a band I’ve wanted to see since team 7Bit got pretty obsessed with them at The Great Escape last May, one of the festival highlights of course being Jon Brady saying “Django Django” in a Boris Johnson voice repeatedly on the night bus. I, for all my shame, have actually never heard a single track by the band, and so it was quite a relief to see the rest of the team were right: Django are a brilliantly entertaining band to watch! With the solid bass creating a huge depth to the sound and synth after synth stacked over the top it took no time for me to take to the band. I particularly enjoyed watching the wide range of percussion used, at one time an oversized tambourine being used to great effect. The crowd seemed to adore the sounds being made, at one point the band successfully leading the audience in swaying arms. I found myself finding their sound familiar and yet with a unique charm, the infectious rythmns and collections of sampled sounds exciting my ear drums.
Let’s go outside, let’s go outside, in the….rain
After a bit more exploring, via the fantastic Block9, with its selection of brilliant installations representing urban areas, the most striking being the London Underground, the tower block complete with crashed car and NYC Downtown, the sleazy New York suburb. My walk took me into Shangri La, where I was greeted, at first, by a bright white landscape, before venturing into hell, which eventually led me to Shangri Hell, where I discovered a band new to me, La Fanfare En Petard, a Strasbourg based hip hop/ska band who had four people on various brass instruments, two drummers (one of the bass drum, the other on snare, standing up) and vocals. There was low bass noise which I believe may have been done by their sound engineer. They seemed pretty determined on making the audience dance and jump, the highlight of which being the song ‘Bouges Ton Cul’ (literally ‘shake your ass’) where they asked the entire audience to turn to face away from the stage to show them their dancing behinds.
As far as live bands go that’s my Thursday wrapped up! The highlight to me has to have been La Fanfare En Petard, purely because they were such a good find from just wondering about. The pyrotechnics at the stage pushed it over the edge as well, with flames warming the audience as the rain died down at the end of the day. We’ll be back with more from the festival tomorrow, so make sure you’re following the Twitter and Facebook feeds. Any suggestions feel free to tweet at me and I’ll try and look.
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