Bestival Robin Hill, Isle of Wight 11-13/9/09
5/5
By: Dickon Stone
I feel sick.
I am sitting on a platform at Portsmouth Harbour statin writing this and it is currently 8.10am. I am not allowed on a train until after 9.30am. I forgot this. I am freezing. Typing is wholly necessary to warm my extremities. I am going to have some difficulty conveying just how fekking wonderful Bestival was, but I will do my best to recall the ins, outs, ups and downs... it all began on:
Friday.
I jumped on a train on Friday morning (everyone else on Earth had left on Thursday, but I had work so I had to travel with the stragglers). The ferry was far less of an event compared to my only other previous trip to the Isle of Wight when I was 10 for a school adventure weekend. Yet I felt the same degree of excitement nonetheless.
I had a strangely overwhelming desire to see a red squirrel. I didn't see one, as it happens.
After 20 minutes crossing to the island, I was straight into a taxi with a load of mental Welsh girls who talked in what sounded like Klingon and plied me with alcohol and high spirits and didn't stop talking for a second.
On site things really became the spectacle I had heard about after missing Bestival for several years while friends have raved on and on about it. I was concerned that this hype talk could only bring me a disappointing reality; how wrong I was.
[65 DAYS OF STATIC]
Arriving late was a pain in the arse. I didn’t put up my tent, I just bunged it in a friend's porch and rushed off to the main stage to catch the end of 65 Days Of Static.
65 Days... are flipping mental. And a relatively early slot didn't deter campers in the slightest. With big-noise-riffage, Mogwai-toned shoegazey metal was seamless, and set standards pretty high from the outset.
Huw Stephens filled the gaps between acts with a dainty selection of party bangers to keep us all amused while we waited for Passion Pit. The Boston falsetto fronted pop-fest performed a set that blew us all away; funky, poppy tracks that every girl on site stuck her hands in the air sang along to.
[FRIENDLY FIRES]
This was a suitable warm up to the next act. I know, I know, I know I basically w*ank over this band every time I mention them, but Friendly Fires are so hot right now. Pretty much playing the same set as they did when I saw them at the Roundhouse during the iTunes festival they still managed to lift the roof (off an open air arena...think about it) and get everyone – and I mean everyone – bopping about like Huey Lewis, with hip gyration making the ladies swoon and sexy, sassy beats ensuring the afternoon mass was sweating buckets in no time.
A melee of hits; ‘Skeleton Boy’, ‘Lovesick’, ‘Jump In The Pool’, ‘Paris’, and new single (another one i suffered a premature sex-wee to whilst reviewing for Rockfeedback a while ago) ‘Kiss Of Life’ just made me want to grab a drum; hit it, grab a girl; kiss it, and take off my shoes and groove about like a mentalist.
What ther f**k were the Mercury Prize people thinking!? Let's not go there. You aren't ready for another tirade from me on that subject...
Jack Savidge is a god on drums, and with an extra percussionist, small brass/woodwind section making all the difference to the level of soul to the set, Ed Mcfarlane making every straight male here consider their sexuality and guitarist Edd Gibson ending by using a portable vacuum cleaner as a plectrum... there really is no better big live act around that can set a room/field on fire like this band can.
After a little while drying out and rubbing the inevitable sweat-salt off my eyelids, I heard Florence and the Machine... from the press tent. It sounded alright. I'm not really a fan of that wailing thing she does, and live it just sounds like a hungry gull chick screeching for some fish... nice dress though.
[SOULWAX]
Having only just managed to get the last of the perspiration to evaporate from my back I was then treated to Soulwax. Now, this is a band whose music I have listened to for some while, and I also play it out from time to time when DJing; but I was not ready for this live set. I have never seen anything like it; unlike a lot of bands who love to chat between tracks Soulwax treated it more like a DJ set; with live mixing throughout... PART OF THE WEEKEND NEVER DIES.
Oh my lord; dropping favourites such as ‘Robot Rock’, ‘NY Excuse’, ‘Dominator’, and LCD Soundsystem reshuffles, as well as my personal favourite; ‘Theme From Discotheque’...
“DRUGS, DIRTY DANCING AND POUNDING TECHNO MUSIC.” - Blimey. With taglines on tracks like that, you really can’t go wrong. Mental crowd, mental performance; they were clearly loving it; the drummer looking like Animal from The Muppets and giving all the charisma in the world to the massive crowd gathered around the main stage. I was upset when it was over; but watching Soulwax while the sun set on my first evening at Bestival gave me a shit load of enthusiasm about the rest of the weekend. Mind blowing.
I stumbled into a small tent somewhere around night time and Nick Grimshaw was playing. I left.
I was on the way to trollied when MGMT were due to be on the main stage but were taking their bloody time like a bunch of divas, so I danced a bit to some classics that were booming from the main stage PA.
[BEARDYMAN]
It was only after a little while that I realised I had been listening to Beardyman; and everything that id been dancing to had been made live from loops of his voice. I looked about and was fairly certain at least 70% of the crowd gathered had no idea this was the case. Concentrating a little more on his performance i was totally blown away; Beardyman was on several times over the course of the weekend, mostly acting as a host/between-set filler, and yet I couldn't help but think he deserved more credit. An unsung hero of the weekend for sure; the ability to do an entire set, seemingly mixing records when there were in fact no records, using only vocalisations (like the annoying ADHD kid that you didn't want to sit next to at school) he emulated beats, bass lines that were so familiar and then rapped or sung or imitated brass over the top of what had suddenly become every party hit of the last 20-30 years. He’ll definitely make my top acts of the weekend chart at the end of this due-to-be-lengthy review.
MGMT were awful. Uninspiring, bland, weak... basically proving that they are just another stain in the sick-bag of big-label regurgitations. And probably one of my top 5 disappointments of the weekend.
[MASSIVE ATTACK]
Definitely in my top 5 disappointments of the weekend however, were Massive Attack. Massive Attack are one of the bands who introduced me to good music. At age 10, I owned 2 Celine Dion albums on cassette. And knew every word to every song on Levelling The Land by The Levellers.
Then BOOM. I was introduced by a lodger to a plethora of bands and DJs who changed my life forever. one of these was Massive Attack. On Friday night, however, I would rather have listened to The Levellers (not Celine, Christ...). Not only did they diva it up and arrive over a half hour late to the stage, but then they started rather unconvincingly with a single 4 bar synth loop which didn’t do anything for about 5 minutes.
By this point I was already losing interest. Then a drum beat started. Then Daddy G came on stage and I couldn't hear what he was saying and watching him on the big screen he just looked bored. I want charisma from a front man. If you give me good vibes I will give them back. Massive Attack fell wide of the mark.
After the dreaful synth loop, which seemed to go on forever, they stopped. Apparently that was the first track. I felt like I was missing something. Maybe this was an arty way to start a set? I wasn’t sure. Surely headliners should play stuff people know? Not self-indulge with new material they aren’t sure about just because they haven’t done a gig for a year and now they’re starting a new tour? I wandered off after a few tracks. The crowd was littered with 30 year olds. They looked like they loved Oasis. I didnt want anything to do with it.
£6.00 for a cheeseburger.
From my perch across the main arena a few minutes late I heard ‘Inertia Creeps’ blasting out and almost got up to go and listen to it, but then I realised I was still sour at Massive Attack for being so f**king shitty for the first half hour of their set and would actually rather wait 'til they apologised.
I didn't notice them finish.
The rest of Friday night is a bit of a blur. I missed 2Many DJs which p*ssed me off in the morning; but not as much as realising I still hadn’t put up my tent and had spent the night huddling in a friend’s porch having semi-lost my voice after stumbling about the site shouting incoherently at people and now had a blinding headache... and the queue for water was longer than Hadrian's Wall.
Saturday/Sunday
£6.00 for breakfast.
I put on an XL black wife-beater, some tiny black schoolboy shorts and a black blanket as a cloak. It was dressing up day, and I was 'The Intolerable Emptiness of Space'. Okay, so I didn't have much time to think about my costume. I was sunburnt within minutes.
[GOLDEN SILVERS]
First on the day’s roster for me was Golden Silvers... perhaps on a bit early? A funky breed of pop which sounded a lot like a host of classic popular hits; ‘Let's Dance’ by Bowie among many of the no-wonder-they-are-so-catchy sound-alikes. A receptive crowd looked after them well cheerfully singing along to most of the tracks which I didn't know. I suddenly felt like a dad at a school disco and began freaking out about my age. I am 22.
I spoke to the band afterwards but my dictaphone broke at some point on the way from the festival site to Portsmouth train station on Monday morning. They were nice, intelligent, chatty blokes. I asked if they minded being on so early and they admitted that although they had been offered a later slot in a smaller tent, they really liked the idea of sharing a stage with Kraftwerk. Good boys.
Saturday then really started to get going... (I say Saturday, but at this point the remainder of the weekend became blurred and hazy. It could have been Sunday... cider and spirits and all the other bad things that make your head spin came into play and for some time I was in a muddle...)
Trojan Soundsystem were next on the list; absolutely legendary reggae superstars that just couldn't be missed. As expected they filled out a several thousand capacity tent in mere minutes - albeit with white middle class arty types - and went through not only a melee of their own back catalogue, but also some crowd pleasers including that one that goes "No no no-oooooooooh, you don't love me and I knowww now" and of course, the never-gets-old 'A Message to you Rudi'.
I left the tent towards the end of Trojan Soundsystem's set to head down to a tent which was due to house some of the finest acts in dance music of the contemporary scene; first up was L-Vis 1990; a young, talented producer whose "Dubbel Step" rhythmic breakaway has got the London underground pumping with timbale ooze of late. L-Vis dropped a torrent of dancefloor bombs and within about 4 tracks the tent was wriggling like a maggot packed steak left out in the sun.
I rushed off to another smaller tent to catch Raffertie, another young producer skating his way up the slidy-ice-covered wall of dirty house music notoriety; his energy packed set of dancefloor fillers ramped up to A MILLION BPM ensured that gurning kids were throwing themselves about with not a thought for water or "saving energy for later”. With songs we all forgot existed pleasantly surprising us at warp speed, blasting forth from the oversized speaker stacks, Raffertie proved conclusively that the youth of today have no time for 3-4 minute long songs; they want 30 seconds of something they know followed swiftly by something else they know for a fragment of time, followed by something new and filthy followed by yet another hype tune... Generation ADHD.
Next stop was Boy 8-Bit; someone who i look up to like Moses looked up to Yahweh. The big, cool, ginger locked genius just bopped about whilst friend and contemporary Fake Blood - clearly off his t*ts - played with his hair, whispered in his ear, and continued to swig on a litre bottle of some spirit which he kept sticking back into his jacket before continuing to harass the DJ. I danced til my body hurt. Then I danced some more. Tunes I have loved for years were being woven into each other with more skill than a Persian rug maker; ‘Disco Sirens’, ‘The Cricket Scores’, ‘Baltic Pine’ to name but a few got an over filled tent mashing arms, legs, heads, torsos around the place in a sweat-fest that continued relentlessly for over an hour.
At some point I saw a bit of Buraka Som Sistema which was immense. Then I interviewed Riva Starr for an hour and a half but as already mentioned that material is lost forever. Feck.
I was shattered. And there was more to come.
Leaving the tent I made my way back up the hill to Hidden Disco to see Foamo; hoping on the off chance to hear him blast out a tune by my good friend TLGB. For 2 hours I put up with the onslaught of unimaginative wobbles and wubs, as Foamo tip-toed in and out of dubstep crossovers and back to bassline house. I heard 'Jack Beats - UFO Riddim' for about the thousandth time; what a load of tripe - before his set ended with no TLGB.
Disappointed I left and made my way to see some friends who were chilling out near a helter skelter and a ferris wheel that was going dangerously fast. It looked as though if it stopped suddenly, like some Final Destination sequel, everyone on board would be flung into obvlivion.
All of a sudden, and with a huge clamour, a parade began. We were sitting unawares at the side of the path which would take this colourful mess of noise and costumes to wherever the hell they were going... It was like watching the evacuating refugees of Tatouine trundling their way into the unknown, but at least...away from the Imperial army...
I found the whole thing a bit intimidating. Some of the costumes were f**king terrifying. And the people who had such outfits knew it, and really played up to the fact that if they got in your face with their horrid mask and stilted arms that made them look like deformed freak-aliens that you might just let out a tiny whimper.
I had a go on the tobogan ride. It was cool. I nearly died going down it after my friend's hat blew off and jammed under my vehicle sending me round a corner like some stunt double of myself. The adrenaline made me pale.
Around this time we all - everyone at the festival, it seemed - made our way to the far end of the carnival field where a huge wooden stage had been erected and as the light faded we partially blocked out the farcical play that Rob Da Bank played out upon it. Something about an alien coming to earth and not liking it very much, and then he needed to leave again. His rocket sunk into the stage and then it set on fire. Within minutes the whole thing was ablaze and fumes rolled into the sky.
WHAM!
A sky painting of fireworks was unleashed and we all started at the wonderful colours and cackled like children at the whizzes and pops.
It was frickin' exciting. I felt like a child.
By this point I was freezing.
I stumbled about looking for my friend's tent in which I had slept on Friday night. His phone was off. The cold had set in. I ended up spooning another friend of mine for warmth and barely sleeping. In the morning it took me less than 10 minutes to find the tent I had been looking for for over an hour the night previous. I was angry. I later discovered that my friend had been "unavailable", collecting a highly sought after set of "wings". But we needn't delve any deeper into that subject (but good job, Simon).
I am having serious issues figuring out what happened on which night. The cold snap was on Saturday, and yet the fireworks were on Sunday. Whatever.
I made a tw*t of myself by getting a super crush on a girl in the press tent. Of course I was wearing tiny shorts and my XL wife beater. And small talk was constantly interrupted by people far more important than me coming in and demanding her time. I realised I wasn't actually in a film.
God, isn't this epic.
£6 for chili con carne.
Cider.
I had a nap in the sun.
I saw some gorgeous music on Sunday morning; Music From The Penguin Cafe, and The Low Anthem.
I went onstage and talked to scratch DJ JFB on Saturday. Or Sunday.
I asked Scroobius Pip if I could film him, and then just said nothing and held the camera on him. I wanted to see him look awkward. He was really nice. I filmed Rob Da Bank from afar and he looked at me like he hoped I would spontaneously combust.
£6 for breakfast.
Who am I? What is this? What day are we on? Oh god, I have work tomorrow.
Bestival is special. Between people taking plant food instead of illegal drugs, overpriced burgers and confusing September weather lies one of the greatest musical extravaganzas of our time. It felt like a holiday in Neverland.
On the journey home I bumped into Riva Starr again at Portsmouth Harbour. He sat next to me on the train home and we talked about how crap bass line house is. He read my magazine.
I got home and put down my bag. I hadn't worn any of the clothes that had made my luggage so heavy to cart about all weekend. And I hadn't eaten the chocolate I packed to give to a friend. Nor given it to them. I realised I was a total mess, and that I wanted to do it all again. As soon as possible.
Top 10 Most Disappointing Things About Bestival:
- Nick Grimshaw existing
- Sun-burn days with exposure nights
- Jack Beats - UFO (K-Hole Riddim)
- My Dictaphone
- My failure to not look cool in front of a cool and gorgeous female
- MGMT
- Massive Attack
- Food Prices
- Main stage sound
- Missing 2ManyDJs
Top 10 Best Things About Bestival:
- The girl in the press tent
- Kraftwerk
- The Low Anthem
- Trojan Soundsystem
- Riva Starr
- The weather (NOT A DROP OF RAIN!)
- Soulwax
- Boy 8-Bit
- The firework display
- The ease of getting to and from it
Artists in this article: Florence & The Machine, 65 Days of Static, huw stephens, Passion Pit, Friendly Fires, Soulwax, Beardyman, MGMT, Massive Attack, Golden Silvers, Trojan Soundsystem, L-Vis 1990, Raffertie, Boy 8-Bit, Riva Starr, Foamo, Rob Da Bank, The Low Anthem
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