Parklife Weekender – Platt Fields, Manchester – 11&12/6/11
3/5
Ahh, Manchester. So long an integral cog in the machine of British music, so long a producer of some of the greatest artists these shores have ever seen, so long … one of the wettest cities on the planet. Anyone setting up a two-day outdoor festival here was going to have to do many a weather dance to keep the clouds away, and the organisers of the Parklife Weekender can’t have been too happy when they heard that the weekend’s forecast was, predictably, grey and wet. It can’t have lifted many spirits either when, pretty much as soon as the gates opened and the city’s hip young gunslingers began to flood into Platt Fields, some of the biggest chunks of hail I have ever seen began to fall on Fallowfield. This was the sort of occasion where one has to resist the temptation to give ‘Why Does it Always Rain on Me?’ a guilty spin.
Fortunately though, Travis weren’t playing and the rest of Saturday was remarkably pleasant weather-wise (Sunday was another matter entirely). Only in its second year, Parklife appears to have built up quite a buzz in Manchester and beyond, thanks for the most part to the sheer saturation of big-name dance acts that come to play. One was more than spoilt for choice throughout each day as high-profile blippers and bloopers packed out each of the five tents and the outdoor stage, with tents being curated by some top names in the Manchester scene – Now Wave, Horse Meat Disco, Hospitality, Ape and Metropolis to name but a few. Bands, if outnumbered, still held a decent presence, with Two Door Cinema Club headlining the Saturday and appearances from Mystery Jets, Metronomy, Everything Everything and Darwin Deez each given a decent billing.
One would think, with a line-up built predominantly around big beats and chunky basslines, that each tent would be blaring out some unholy racket into the wee small hours. One would think. As it turned out, the sound in each tent was tragically quiet, without exception. Partly due to noise-pollution concerns, partly due to poorly-positioned soundsystems, and partly due to the close proximity of each tent, levels were kept low enough that you could find yourself in the crowd for a dubstep DJ and still be chatting away quite comfortably with your mates while catching a snippet of the main stage act wafting over during the quieter parts of the set. If you were in the front few rows it didn’t pose too much of a problem, but any further back and you’d find your enjoyment curtailed somewhat. For quite a few sets it spoiled the fun entirely, and if the organisers bring the festival back next year they absolutely must find a solution to keep punters from feeling a little short-changed.
Some of the biggest draws on the bill suffered noticeably from these problems. DOOM, an artist with a hit-and-miss live reputation as it is, was barely audible for much of his slot, and Mount Kimbie’s considered sound was lost in the ether of the Now Wave arena. Other acts disappointed for various reasons – Egyptian Hip-Hop, admittedly given a difficult slot on Sunday afternoon, simply hadn’t the energy to compete with the dancier acts, and Mark Ronson’s DJ turn, though crowd-pleasing and at times pleasantly surprising (Breakage and Newham Generals aren’t the first artists you’d expect pop’s slickest producer to drop), suffered from the heavy rain that fell pretty much constantly on Sunday afternoon.
The worst culprit, however, was Jamie xx. Despite being one of the biggest draws of the festival, he came up with a decidedly middling set. With no interaction with the crowd save an unsmiling wave at beginning and end, he spent far too long shunning his own productions in favour of some deep cuts of house, techno and funk. Though his track selection in this regard was excellent, his decision to only thrice delve into his plethora of festival-ready tunes was perplexing to say the least, especially when ‘I’ll Take Care of You’ and ‘Rolling in the Deep’ elicited rapturous responses from the crowd. He needs to be careful – he has garnered a reputation for not playing his own tracks – and if he doesn’t redress the balance then people could start to turn on him. It’s fair enough if he wants to mix in other work with his own, but his disappointing set and disinterested demeanour bare all the marks of an artist who simply doesn’t care about his audience. All of his own doing, the crowd was noticeably thinner by the time ‘Rolling in the Deep’ was dropped to close the set.
However, most of the artists present over both days were on good form. SBTRKT and Sampha combined stark beats and ethereal vocal turns to spellbinding effect, and Emalkay cranked out a set that kept the brittle bass hooks coming thick and fast. Hercules and Love Affair’s headline turn on the Now Wave stage came off as a sleek mix of euphoric disco, and over at Resident Advisor Simian Mobile Disco showed some of the young pretenders lower down the bill how festival dance music should be done. Boys Noize, though performing about seven hours earlier than he’s used to doing in the dank clubs of Berlin, was determined not to be thrown by the twilight washing into the Chibuku tent, and gave the sizeable crowd a good hour of chugging, high-calibre techno. Many people braved the mud-bath that had formed around the main stage for the Skream & Benga/Chase & Status one-two that closed the festival, and weren’t left disappointed by either. Chase & Status even wheeled out Tempa T to a predictably manic reception.
On paper, Parklife is a dub-head’s wet dream. In reality, it’s still pretty much that, but several creases need to be ironed out by the organisers if it’s going to stick around. With such a high concentration of big-hitting acts, it meant that at points certain artists suffered by playing to smaller crowds as punters dashed around trying to catch every performer at once; the aforementioned sound problems will surely prompt a serious rethink; and perhaps the band/DJ ratio, though not necessarily being made 50:50, could be redressed so as to offer a healthier union of guitars and decks. Oh, and by Sunday night the rain had turned Platt Fields into the Somme, but this being Manchester there was nothing to be done about that. In a lot of ways, the sight of barely-coherent students mud-wrestling only added to the fun.
Given the smiles on most of the punters’ faces as the gates emptied and people trudged off into the Northern night, Parklife 2011 can probably be considered successful. No doubt it’s going to stick around for a while. But if it does, a bit of work needs to be done before next time out. Still, not to take anything away from a festival still in its teething-stages – at under £60 a ticket for the weekend, a line-up of such quality in the heart of a major city is going to be a draw for anyone with a decent pair of ears. That is, if they turn the sound up.
Artists in this article: Mount Kimbie, Egyptian Hip-Hop, Jamie xx, SBTRKT, Hercules and Love Affair, Simian Mobile Disco, Boys Noize, Skream
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment