Field Day live review
Field Day’s chequered past over the last two years (mile-long queues for both bar and bogs in 2007; terrible sound and no provision for torrential rain in 2008) make this year’s event something of a “third time lucky” affair: this time around, the organisers are desperate to be talked about for their brave and dynamic line-up, not the lavs.
And third time lucky it is. Everything goes to plan, more or less: There is an overstaffed, underpopulated bar round every corner and tiny loo queues, and when apocalyptic weather soaks East London for four solid hours, the site stands firm. The main stage is still blighted with sound problems – most notably when The Horrors’ wall-of-sound shoegaze sounds like it’s being amplified by a Roberts Radio – but these are intermittent.
Errors’ early set on the main stage suffers no such sound issues, however, and their teutonic synth-driven post-rock is ideal for the lunchtime gloom. It’s a hard act to follow, as the charisma-free Final Fantasy discovers. He scrapes through a couple of numbers before telling the dwindling audience, “here’s where you call me a cunt and wanker”. Maybe fortunately for him, no one’s listening to hear the invitation.
Elsewhere, earnest U2-botherers Wild Beasts serve up some po-faced American indie that sounds nice but hardly inspires anyone to rush home and order their back catalogue, and Little Boots parades through a set of enjoyable but innocuous SAW-indebted Kylie Lite. Erol Alkan follows her with a DJ set of brilliantly rabble-rousing nerd-house with added squiggles that offers a perfect shelter from the day’s worst downpour, and Four Tet’s off-kilter techno sounds beautiful but is disappointingly quiet.
Skream’s DJ set on the main stage consists simply of an MC berating the organisers for cutting their set short over the top of excellent two-step garage, and then Mogwai round off proceedings with a peerless, career-spanning set that is, unexpectedly for Field Day but characteristically for Mogwai, deafeningly loud. It is a hugely satisfying end to the day, and adds further support to the general on-site consensus that Field Day may just have got it right third time.
