Field Day is a cool festival. It’s one of
those festivals that you’ve never been to, but your mates who are much, much
cooler than you have. Whenever you hear them talking about it in January and
they ask if you’re up for it, you say yes, definitely, feigning excitement
because you know that, when the time comes to buying tickets, you’ll be able to
pretend you’re busy doing something infinitely less cool than going to Field
Day Festival.
The one and a half day event takes place in
Victoria Park in Hackney. There is no overnight camping, which is pretty much a
given when you imagine how well ten thousand young people, on twenty thousand
different variations of class a drugs, staying in a park in East London would
go down with the council. And Field Day isn’t just a cool festival because
those Fashion Hunters from the Topman blog take pictures there. No, it’s cool
because of the absolutely eye-watering line up they’ve managed to put together.
I mean, if you can scroll all the way down the lineup without releasing out
some sort of audible squeal then you should be applying for The Marines. DANIEL
AVERY will be a must after his of-the-year good 2013 debut Drone Logic,
and if you can bring yourself to listen to trap music in the afternoon on a
Saturday, which I don’t think has ever been done since records began, head over
to Ellesmere Port’s finest son EVIAN CHRIST’s DJ set. ‘Can U Dance’, the new
live collaboration between Numbers boss JACKMASTER and Standard Place curator ONEMAN
will certainly live up to its name, with neither DJ’s shying away from the
concept of ‘bangers’ in their DJ sets. Canadian producer RYAN HEMSWORTH’s
recordings flirt with hip-hop and UK Garage, but his sets are an altogether
different kind of beast, as he whips his favorite hip-hop and trap tunes into
some kind of fucked up electronic music tornado to the point where you won’t
know what the you’re listening to, but for some horrible, unbeknown reason, you
can’t stop your fingers turning into the shape of a gun. And not many people
can claim to have danced to SOPHIE - the Glaswegian producer responsible for
the astonishing single Bipp last year - so you’d be a fool to miss that
one. For those more partial to chin stroking than fist pumping, don’t miss
ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER, who’s 2013 masterpiece R Plus Seven will be
deconstructed during his performance early Saturday evening.
If you’re looking to avoid tinnitus or you
know, severe arthritis in your later years, SKY FERREIRA and BLOOD ORANGE will
provide perfect respite from the barrage of kick drums and baselines, whilst
Melbourne’s COURTNEY BARNETT and her deadpan, disinterested drawl will provide
one of the most earnest performances of the weekend (if you need anymore
convincing stick on Avant Gardener and thank me later for your new
favorite tune). Liverpool’s ALL WE ARE will go down nicely with that first beer
of the day, and it will be intriguing to see what the guys have been working on
since signing to Domino earlier this year.
And of course, there’s TODD TERJE. If
you’ve been to a party in the last two years without hearing Inspector Norse,
then you need to reassess the kind of people you’ve chosen to socialise with.
Add that to the likes of Delorean Dynamite and Strandbar, both
taken from his breathless debut LP It’s Album Time, you will need an
industrial strength vice to unlock your jaw from that smile by the end of his
performance.
What’s most impressive about the line up though,
and about how Field Day presents itself in general, is that it straddles
electronic, guitar and pop music absolutely seamlessly. It has one of the richest arrays of DJs and producers in the UK, but you wouldn’t call it an
electronic music festival in the same way you would say Gottwood, or
Creamfields. And similarly, some of the best and most sought after guitar and
pop acts this year are making rare appearances, yet you’d never suggest it is anything
near a mainstream festival. I could write about the lineup for another three
thousand words (I’ve not even mentioned the Sunday, which sees THE PIXIES,
FUTURE ISLANDS and DRENGE attempt to nurse ten thousand hangovers), and I’m
sure once the schedule is announced I’ll be crying into a clashes inspired
suicide note. And now in its eight consecutive year, you won’t find a more
clinical and better-organised festival in the UK all season. The festival ends
at eleven on the Saturday, but don’t worry, there are after parties in pretty
much every corner of London to guide you slowly towards insanity as morning
threatens to arrive.
Mike Townsend
@townsendyesmate
No comments:
Post a Comment