The 1234 Shoreditch Festival East London 9/7/11
3/5
By: Spencer McCloud
As someone whose idea of cutting edge new music is the new Paul Simon album, I feared that The 1234, a festival feast of indie favourites-to-be, would be akin to being beaten around the ears with a tightly rolled copy of NME. So, to get into the hipster spirit of things, I turned up horrendously late - just in time to see Throwing Up run through a series of accurate yet pointless Riot Grrl impressions on the main stage. Moving swiftly onto Artrocker's new band stage, the really, really badly named Clout! at least had some ambitions for experimentation as they attempted to convert the atmosphere-free white tent into some kind of space-rock mothership powered by saxophones and ring modulators. Concessions toward melody were scant but this lot looked very young, so there's still hope.
Two seconds walk away is the Rough Trade tent, where Echo Lake's insipid jangles drew an inexplicably decent-sized crowd. At least Echo Lake have one thing going for them: they're not Forms. They were next up on the Artrocker stage, though judging by the lack of information anywhere on the four piece I'm beginning to think they were some kind of hoax or practical joke by the festival organisers. The bare-chested singer looked like he'd just spent five minutes matching footage of Iggy Pop with the sound muted, and sounded like a fucking tramp. The guitarist soundtracked these bizarre grunts with searing Slash-esque leads which was clear evidence that they'd actually been practicing and were supposed to sound like this.
From the ridiculous to the sublime - well, at least to the not jaw-clenchingly offensive - I returned to Rough Trade's tent to see Fair Ohs charm another good-sized crowd with their bouncy, yelpy indie. Yes, they've had a peek at Vampire Weekend's exam paper, but a bit of familiarity can work wonders at an event like this - definitely one of the best bands of the day. A subsequent sojourn to Bad Life's dance tent found Becoming Real valiantly trying to breathe life into the legs of a sparse crowd, with his glitchy yet tuneful electronica.
Next up were a couple of legends, out to prove they could still shake it with the cool kids - first up Lydia Lunch, whose rock warblings were so ineffectual as to eventually melt into muzak. So much so that the faint sound of ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ bleeding over from the dodgems, made me sit up and take notice.
Back in the Rough Trade tent, Krautrock hero Damo Suzuki had a much better time of it with an hour long improv-aganza backed by his randomly selected Network, as well as members of Japanese noisy buggers Bo Ningen. Whilst they battled sound issues throughout, the ten piece (I think) collective did remarkably well to create some interesting sounds and rhythms out of the din and confusion, and Suzuki looked like he was actually having some fun.
A heaping plate of Pad Thai later and the day had almost escaped me. There was just time to catch headliners Black Lips show the new bloods how it's done with a crowd-pleasing flurry of jaunty punk singalongs, leaving the assembled musical hopefuls to muse whether they'll still be cool enough to play next year's 1234.
Artists in this article: Black Lips, Bo Ningen, Damo Suzuki, Lydia Lunch, Becoming Real, Fair Ohs, Forms, Echo Lake, Clout!, Throwing Up
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