Under The Influence

Mica & The Cluster

The band themselves were very South London. Dirty grimy beats. Pretty cool. At the end Mica(?) did the cutest little ukulele ditty. Still stands as one of the highlights for me.

The Invisible

Another UK group. Really really tight performance. I'd like to hear their studio work. Reminded me of both Seal and P.J. Harvey. Possibly a bit safe. Worthy of investigation though.

James Holden

DJ set. Kind of how my mate described it - "the guy's sexually frustrated". Pretty fitting. I thought it was generally a good set, it would crescendo without ever quite getting to the punch-line.

Beastie Boys - Instrumental Set

Goddamn I'm glad I got to see the Beasties doing an old school instrumental set. They only played tracks off the first few albums. Lots of stuff off Check Your Head which suited me just fine - it's my favourite.

Haswell & Hecker

I was trying to get to Sunn O))) but I completely screwed it up. Anyway I'm glad I did. Possibly the pick of the festival for me. Intense beyond belief - my hearing is still suffering. A single laser sat in the middle of the stage pointing back into the crowd (as seen above). The music is constructed by feeding footage of disturbing scenes (the Madrid bombing for example) into computer software. The sounds created were so intense that a section of the roof came down - plaster everywhere. Loved it.

The Executives

I have a DJ set of theirs around here somewhere - I need to dig it out to give it another listen. Very funky, 80's electro beats.

Accu

Finland 80's electro power pop revived. These guys were fun. Great image, great tunes. Cheesy keytar goodness. I'm desperate to get more of this.

Richie Hawtin

I have friends who have been banging on at me to see this guy for years. Glad I finally did. Technically he's an absolute genius. The basically just used the turntables as simple sound generators and then created the songs out of layers of effects. Very cool. Still too downbeat for a good dance as far as I'm concerned.

Dizzy Rascal

He's slipped a notch in my books now. When I first heard his stuff I thought it sounded fresh and interesting. Watching him play was a bit disappointing - very much like any other Hip-Hop act. Should I be concerned that he too now performs with a plaster on his head?

C2C

French turntablist perfectionists. Hell of a display - very well organised. Amazing to watch 4 guys knocking out a song in perfect sync on 4 different turntables. Lovely.

All in all I had a really good time. There was certainly a huge variation of music to listen to - that is what I love after all.