Review // Beacons Festival

I've been lucky enough to review Beacons Festival the past two years, this being my third, the angels at Crack and I Like Press allowing me to return for a weekend of raving, losing half of my life in a field, sampling some very nice ales and- of course-a whole load of babes and amazing sets. You can scroll down or click over here to catch it!

Review // Beacons Festival

Über hip gatherings on the capital’s durable green spaces. East Anglican, poetry-heavy weekenders that the Dads go crazy for. Surreal boutique festivals with mind-blowing stage productions. It feels like the UK festival market is more competitive than ever, doesn’t it? Beacons, which is in its third year and is set in the idyllic Yorkshire Dales, looks as if it could snatch the driving seat from many of its larger, more corporate contemporaries due to an amazing line-up and its presence in the conversations of many young music obsessives all year round. 

 Our weekend started on Thursday evening, with us immediately learning that there’s no better ice breaker between fresh-faced Northern folk than with the hilarious concept that is hip-hop karaoke. The contestants ranged from a mother joined by an infant wobbling under the weight of their rainbow-coloured earmuffs, to the local neighbourhood G giving Forgot About Dre his best shot.

Evidence of the demand for hip-hop acts at UK festivals emerged on Friday, with Irish rapper Rejjie Snow gathering an audience while performing tracks from his Rejovich EP alongside prospective album teasers. Action Bronson’s headline set on the Noisey stage drew one of the biggest crowds of the weekend. And as the Queens rapper delivered on-point, animated renditions of witty Blue Chips 2 tracks 'Silverado' and the Tequila-nabbing 'Pepe Lopez' to a rapturous response, the decision to host NYC’s biggest man in one of the smaller Noisey tent led to anxieties about safety, with photographers opting to climb the stage rigging rather than shoot in a spewing pit.
 Switching over to Daniel Avery’s three-hour mission on the Resident Advisor stage, the Drone Logic highlights and stand-out techno stompers such as Ondo Fudd’s 'Coup d’Etat' forbid the audience to stay still. Phantasy head Erol Alkan also swung by to blow-up the stage a day later, with the gnarly essence of Randomer’s 'Huh' calling us into a bottomless pool of uninterrupted bangers, as the acidic tinge of 'A Hold On Love' – transformed with a female vocal not present on his original Illumination EP – closed the tent in dramatic ecstasy. Under his Daphni alias, Dan Snaith also spoiled us with the track of the summer – the extended mix of 'Can’t Do Without You', which we heard played out five times over the course of the weekend.

Serving up performances from Joy Orbison, Wayward and Boiler Room’s Tasker, the Red Bull stage – which was complete with bar, couches and was housed in a converted shipping container – allowed DJs to veer away from structure thanks to its intimacy. Reduced to just one member for their Sunday set, Psychemagik treated the multiplying audience to both slow-burning (yet brilliantly housed-up) versions of Fleetwood Mac’s' Dreams' and 'Everywhere' which were made with the intention to light-up these kind of festival fields. As Hurricane Bertha blew in from the Pennines, Have you ever kissed the sunshine on Ditongo’s 'Walk Between The Rain' was contrasted with rumbles of thunder coming out of the speakers, bringing the air-punches high to the sky.
 As Sunday’s storm progressed, both the Argyll and East Leeds FM stages were cordoned off, and with the punk don of dance Andrew Weatherall’s ‘Love From Outer Space’ project being cut short, morale was dipping by the evening. Ever the professionals when the show must go on, the team rescheduled Cate Le Bon as Neneh Cherry braved the biblical mud with her Rocket Number Nine band. Cherry’s defiant enthusiasm saw her take the to fangirl side-of-stage position at Darkside – who followed and closed the festival in spectacular fashion for 2014.

And what about the culinary highlights? There was a whiskey tasting over lunch with blue-haired waiters, all shoe-less, that turned out to be surprisingly educational – not to mention tasty. Then there was the fabulous Dough Boys and Patty Smith eateries that had tongues wagging all weekend and county street food from the best vendors in the region. Add a When-In-Yorkshire Tea Room complete with homemade cake, reggae in a blanketed corner and the chance to have your tipple in actual china, and you realise that these little luxuries really go a long way. Installing interactive art to support the independents including fresh, digital projections from Manchester’s Mary Naylor also illuminated the after-hours chills straight out of our bones.
 No matter how much we wish we could stop a classified hurricane dampening our parade, Beacons is one hell of a classy hangout. And despite being in its infancy, the line-up alone confirms that this festival has established itself as the staple of many Northern – and Southern – music fans’ summer.

Words by Yours Truly // Images by Tom Joy & Giles Smith X

Review // Parklife Festival 2013

Hey Sunday, how you holdin' up? The super-talented James Balmont of Three Beams and I ventured off to Parklife over at Heaton Park and had fun in the sun as I mentioned in my last post- we collectively made our notes through the form of selfies next to stage signs and Snapchats, duh, PROFESSIONALS! Our review is now live here at Crack so get clicking on over- I've also included the original, un-edited and more lengthy version below, if you want all the no-holds-barred details...

Parklife Festival 2013 @ Heaton Park

Having made the noble transition from hosting previous years of Parklife over at student Summer hub Platt Fields Park, the ever-growing gratification for increasing renowned artists and DJ’s alike saw this year’s team behind Manchester’s Warehouse Project expand to mecca-site Heaton Park for a two day extravaganza, involving one of the Summer’s most sterling bills of the season. Did they manage to pull off the mega spectacle or was it simply a case of too much too soon, in upscaling?

Boasting an array of stages, tents and pop-up mini settings, there was certainly no shortage of acts to catch, as broad stances from drum & Bass veteran labels and promoters such as Hospitality and Metropolis, bought the hundred-and-one-miles-an-hour pace of unforgiving bone-pummelling sets, right over to Hot Creations infiltrating the air with swathes of funky house- all aiding in ushering in the Summer at an alarmingly exciting rate. The likes of icon in the game Andy C,  as well as fresher faces SPY and Friction, lay down their own personal live improvisations and a whole haul of edits ranging from TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’, over to an eye-brow raising yet admirable drop of Usher’s ‘Climax’ and classic floor-fillers such as Robin S’s ‘Show Me Love’. It seems that not every set was as rigidly set in stone as audiences may have envisioned…and a rife welcome addition across the turntables, at that.

Over at Now Wave’s hand-picked congregation, Four Tet’s re-invention as a modern dance musician might seem a shame to those who thrived on his past albums – once dubbed ‘folktronica’ by the press – but it would be a crime to criticise it as his supremacy is untouchable. With 2010’s anthem ‘Love Cry’ ending the set in euphoria it is easy to see why Kieran Hebden is invited back to the city and to play such heralded slots, so frequently. A similar story could be told about Dan Snaith’s Daphni alias also, as Jiaolong favourites ‘Yes, I know’ and ‘Ye Ye’ divulge the audience with disco-meets-industrial peaks and old school Altern 8 vocal samples bring it right back to the heart of the rave. 

Disclosure topped off the night with a headline performance in celebration of the most astounding of feats – the confirmation that their debut album had gone straight to number one in the UK album charts. And with performances like this they simply cannot be faulted. Boasting possibly the most precise and clear sound of the whole festival, they dominated their audience with a rich and plentiful set that featured collaborations from both Jessie Ware and Sam Smith, with the canvas-topped fun also rolling over into the festival’s second day. Hidden out over at one of the site’s far-flung corners was one of the loudest and messiest stages; both the Drop The Mustard tent and David Rodigan’s RamJam collectively over the two days, placed at the foot of a rolling hill that seemed to serve as a gigantic naughty-step for its tenacious audience. As one of the few scenic and spacious corners of the festival,  it seemed fitting to leave it to a living legend such as the reggae connoisseur by the end of the weekend, although we can’t help but feel that the less than effective ten-out-one-in system overshadowing Dusky’s swelteringly charged set, left many frazzled and faded after queuing just for entry the majority of the afternoon. Yet, it’s not all burnt shoulders when it comes to DTM’s primary local Manchunian pickings, as revellers searching for some of the true blossoming talents of the city couldn’t have done better than to stumble across Sian Bennett’s set inside the appropriately-titled Mirror Mirror tent. The tightly-packed dance space offered a sublime atmosphere in a relentless deep house set that dropped and dropped, ultimately providing itself as one of the festival’s greatest reflections of the city’s glorious nightlife- and Parklife certainly didn’t forget about other local ‘little men’ bookings alongside world-class acts…

One of our favourite LuckyMe Family, Hoya: Hoya residents and strictly all-vinyl femme fatale Éclair Fifi was handed the honourable opening slot over on Hudson Mohawke’s curated stage once the hangovers had crept across Heaton Park come Parklife’s second day- and for a petite blonde bombshell of a figure bopping across her colossal setting to an unfortunately miniature crowd, those wise enough to attend were alleviated with techno Kelly Rowland tracks and high-octane pure pop Cassie cuts, assisting in initialising some questionably feral (yet fabulous) dance moves for a Sunday lunchtime. And the Hoya love didn’t grind to a halt there, as Manchester’s very own dons’ Krystal Klear and Chunky bought the dynamism to stand-out stratums with sudden mixes embracing MK’s II dub remix of Storm Queen’s ‘Look Right Through’, glorifyingly streamlined into Chic’s ‘Everybody Dance’ that within five minutes of entering, have the tent immediately animated with hands-in-the-air classics and foot-stomping vigour, pouring right out onto the surrounding fields from every safety exit viewable.

Oh and those big guns we were referring to? As one of the most hyped acts of the weekend, Jurassic 5 were unsurprisingly triumphant on their first U.K. performance since splitting in 2007. The hip hop troupe paraded around in the most ecstatic of fashions, integrating a comically-oversized turntable prop as much as possible into a hit-laden set that featured the likes of ‘Concrete Schoolyard’, ‘What’s Golden’ and ‘Quality Control’. Also performing a special appearance over the weekend was the honestly candid Danny Brown, rolling out his twanging spits of ‘Blunt After Blunt’ and ‘Lie4’ that propelled him into being noticed as something of a new classic within modern rap- it was just a shame that timetabling errors (which were amended over the festival’s social networking sites yet minimal signal meant that many were left uninformed…) were not highlighted to attendees, with Brown being just one in a long list across the festival’s 48 hours that were switched and changed without reasoning or explanation.

It seemed a great shame that, for all the work put in to making the festival bigger and better, Parklife left behind a shedload of the character and personality that it had in previous years. No longer does it feel like there’s a stage round the corner waiting to be discovered – the mazes of greenery and open grass are abandoned here in favour of an open, singular space, with stages arranged in a less-than-exciting fashion. Despite the multiple problems faced with entrances, organisation and wrongly-advertised stage times that should, due to the festival’s up-scale, have been ironed out; make no mistake that the Parklife Weekender 2013 managed to still provide an excellent event full of rememberable performances and sun-soaked debauchery thanks to top-class bookings and individually-curated bills. This is the music-lovers inner-city festival of the North and not one live set nor performance we saw over the weekend disappointed in the slightest. Here’s to 2014 and hoping that the team will return greater and improvingly formulated run. 

Words by Yours Truly & James Balmont / Images all by Daniel Watson X

Review // Field Day London

Field Day was a BLAST! I had a prom and a half staying in the Big Smoke and finally catching up with Hannah, she was a dream host and the weather was heatwave ridiculous all weekend. My highlight review is now live involving a stunning sunset soundtracked by Four Tet, Karenn hiding away in a tent within a mini forest, finding old college friends during Daphni's amazing set and how the organisers' still managed to retain a boutique, intimate feel whilst putting on a brilliant line-up all day long. It was one of the best events of the Summer so far, so give it a read here! It is also my last week in the city before I move home for summer (Mood? ~emotional~) and I've been going out with a bang involving BBQ's in the sun, leaving drinks with the Factory Family and- oh yeah- I'll be covering one of the best line-ups of the Summer this weekend over at Parklife. Come give me a farewell to remember, Manchester!Words by Yours Truly X