We started off with loud stuff (tired from last night) and went into the barn. Spartacus didn't quite get the audience participation going (I am Spartacus!, he shouted. No reply.) but Smilex had it down to a fine art. I was too short to see anything except for three girls in turquoise tops giving a guy in a deck chair in the audience in front of me a lap dance, which actually looked quite dangerous (they did have trousers on too), but the music sounded nice. Oh, and the lead singer called us cunts. Or did we call him cunts? I forget. Cunt calling occured.
After that we ran! Like the wind! In order to catch Vic Twenty in the tent (I'm quite fast over short distances) who really are *just right*. Great clothes, smart tunes, rude words, very cute. I want to draw them (though I don't have time right now). Then I walked in circles for a bit. Even at the smallest festivals, the things you like clash with each other, and the things you don't, do too.
But after that there were sweet and dreamy Butterflies of Love followed by Trademark, the first of several bands to look rather dwarfed by the main stage. To be fair, the main stage *was* sprung on them; but the charm of flip-charts, OHPs, studded lab coats and maths breaks had problems penetrating out into a field-full of wind-swept haircuts.
What then? Oh yeah, heh. Lews Tunes & Nobsta Nuts, the Welsh hip-hop band. The only Welsh hip-hop band? Possibly. Certainly unique. One guy in a pink fairy dress with a mate in boxer shorts. Frighteningly talented DJ dressed in green shiny fat man's pajamas. Much crotch-grabbing. Wonder if hip-hop stars suffer a loss of sensation after a while?
Slow right down after that for British Sea Power. I thought I hadn't seen them, but I remembered who they were the moment I saw the plastic heron on stage. They'd also put bits of trees all over the place which slowly dissolved out into the crowd as the set went on. Towards the end, one of the band members made like a monkey and dangled himself off the cross-scaffold of the stage while a man in a red shirt scowled at him and protectively hugged his speaker stack. I'll probably forget that I saw them again, though.
After that the ex-lead singer of Ride had his set so we went and played with the video-projections that run in the tents after dark. The main tent was alternating between pounding beats and technical problems, the chill-out tent was trying to compensate with stuff from the dancier end of trance and video wall projections on the ceiling. But Boy Scout tents (even the big ones) are really too small to dance in, though they had an interesting cityscape/text thing going in the projections for a while.
I can't remember a bloody thing about the Brotherhood of Fish.
For the best results, read with these photos by
mzdt. 