2009年 Jul 29日 Wednesday, 21:24

TRUCK 12: LET IT IN!
After glastonbury being mildly disappointing i wasn't about to hype Truck Festival. TUrned out to be truely amazing: Small enough to seem very personal, sunny enough to give me a healthy glow, smelling of cows enough to be authentic and cheap enough to leave me with change.
It's meant to be about finding your new favourite band, but a stupid amount of my favourites favourites were already playing. Seeing as i loved pretty much every band i saw this post will be very boring and mostly for my benefit.

saturday

tubelord
filling colour's (rip) giant shoes, tubelord didnt disappoint. Their hideously fun and upbeat set the tone for the whole weekend and although they only played 6 songs the atmosphere was lightning and the crowd all seemed to dig it. THe lighting for tubelord was really well done and gave the show another element along side Dave's "pig mask and jump around in the crowd" thing, (the mask didnt appear to be washed when i wore it in nottingham…xcore). As for songs the newer stuff sounded really immense and the old choons tighter than ever as they get more confident. Night of the pencils was so good it sent shivers down my spine and Azerrad was amazing as a sing along end.
the scholars
Turned out to be some terribly stereotypical oxford "indie rock" band. Not Scholars (without the "The") who are brilliant rocking powerpop. Needless to say we left quickly.
fanfarlo
Amazing band we were barrier for. This five piece was the perfect folk band; easy to listen to and beautifully crafter anthems with clap along beats and tear worthy lyrics. Jeremy Warmsley on guitar and bashing some percussion occasionally was pretty special too.
data select party
DSP have some of the best pop music around right now and were as always immensely fun live. Playing a few new songs was probably a bad idea for a festival in my opinion (maybe just because i wanted the sing along anthems) I was pretty drunk for them and danced my socks off with sara and georgia. good times. Also dan has the best jumper and smile of any person i ve ever met.
jeremy warmsley
Jeremy is a very talented and funny guy. I'm not a huge fan of his indie/folk rock/pop/whatever but live he was really special and had a great energy for just one man. HE came across quite affable, asking the crowd to sit down and then taking cover requests. His 6th verse and one armed scissor cover were definately highlights of the festival.
errors
plagued by some early technical errors (see what i did there) as cables were pulled out on the cramped beathive stage errors still pulled through to put on probably the best performance of the festival. On hindsight it wasnt the best time i've seen them but the set was amazing and they sounded great. They bring something different to the whole "math" thing with their electronica and acid elements. Beautifully worked layers of intelligent guitars and electronics building to dancable breakdowns. Incredible. Toes was great to end on aswell
wild beasts
Due to an arduous queue there was a long wait to get into wild beasts, meaning i missed some of the best of their new album. However the latter songs were just as brilliant, they sound much more erie and atmospheric live and the low lit barn set echoed this beautifully. THey were really beautifully deep and a pleasure to watch, the crowd seemed awe struck and the air still. Hooting and Howling blew me away and penultimate song We Still Got The Taste Dancing On Our Tongues slowed down and more atmospheric live was just incredible (the album version doesnt do it justice)… probably my favourite song of the festival.

After then becoming quite a bit more drunk at the tents we headed back to see some djs at the barn…
DJ Food
THis attempt at "visual turntabling" was pretty poor, the need to find videos that could be easily mixed seemed to diminish the quality of mixing for the music and although they played quite a fun set it seemed quite lazy and uninspired.
Lee Mortimer & Foamo
This was a huge contrast to the previous set in terms of originality and quality. They really produced some awesome mixes and i couldn't stop dancing. Perfect mix of electro, house, dubstep and huge bassline tunes with an odd dash of indie. Good stuff, recomend anyone who likes good dance music to seek foamo out and watch him.
totally enormous extinct dinosaurs
managing to bypass alot of the queue by talking to tim from ttng these guys were playing fairly good indie and dance floor fillers with mixed success. Dwarfed by foamo they were a little underwhelming.

sunday

Talons
Recently signed to bsm i wasnt sure what to expect from this young 6 piece. I hardly ever fall in love with bands just from seeing them live. THe xcerts and errors are two that it has happened with before, and now Talons join their ranks as one of the most interesting and exciting bands to have come along in years. Their brilliant instrumental blend of post hardcore with mathcore and indie exploded on stage: Battered drums and awesome riffs intersperced by 2 violin parts which creates a big sound. They really gave the performance a lot, very energetic in contract to the static crowd, i dont think its possible to do more than drop your jaw at a band like this though. Like grammatics meets 65dos, but its a good thing trust me.
Calories
THe sound for calories wasn't great if i'm honest, and it was hard to distinguish some of their poppy guitar lines as they were overpowered by the drums and bass, but knowing the songs made it good to enjoy and new songs like even steven sounded awesome. Terrible crowd aswell, they didnt seem to get it. Not one of the best performances but still good.
And So I Watch You from Afar
Really good live, thought it lacked diversity and all the songs sounded very similar and with only 3 members perhaps lacking the big sound to make them special. Still very good tight post rock that was thoroughly enjoyable.
The Xcerts
The first time i saw the xcerts was roughly a year ago at dot to dot when i stumbled upon them. Since then they lost none of the energy in their performance. They prove theirs still life left in the indie rock 3 piece band format. The lyrics and sweet scottish vocals clashing with their edgy rock sound to form sing along alternate anthems. Good atmosphere and stage presence too.
The Joy Formidable
Although the barn was pretty packed for them as we turned up, i really was underwhelmed by the joy formidable. Porbably the most disapointing band of the festival, they seemed to be the same uninspired indie that metric was producing years ago. Dull droning guitars and wishy washy vocals at times trying to imitate shoe gaze. Really not my thing.
This Town Needs Guns
We waited a while for this town to come on, well worth it to see 26isdancier as an opener from the front. However the quality of sound and performance was really lacking from the home grown maths boys. The set wasn't helped by the countless 14 year olds dancing/moshing. I can't understand how you can go mental for what is essentially subtley beautiful twiddly guitar music. We stayed for about 4 songs including chinchilla and lemur and if i sit here. Good but we chose to rush off to see if PABH was any better.
Pulled Apart by Horses
Amazing live in any capacity, and although the barns crowd was too thinly spread to make for your average sweaty, jumpy pulled apart gig they put on a great performance. Sporting 2 rolo t shirts (interesting trivia?) their hardcore riffs and shouty/screamy vocals sounded great as we came in on HIGH FIVE (although the hipster crowd wasn't going mental as i would have liked to see), it was still really good to watch the performance. Universal talk box followed by Punched a lion was amazing to finish on.
The Ghost of a Thousand
Now i don't know a lot about hardcore music but my friend do, and they tell me to go see these guys for an awesome show. RIght they were, even the mic check was hardcore (CHEEEEECK!!!!). The crowd disappated very quickly as the band started thrashing out their punk guitars and dark screaming. THe crowd was really the best thing about this band though as those scene kids know how to party. Although the crowd was small and rather tame by the end, (the wall of death more like a wall of slight bruising) they were really fun. Closing on Black Art Number One it was an intense set.

The final musical instalment of the festival was Jack and Paul's dirty dub voiced over orange bioler suit guy's spits. Amazing.
Intervening time was spent annoying band members, abusing joey, finding the monster, dancing to shit dj's, GETTING BEVVED and eating pasta. Good times
Sadly i missed some bands due to laziness and overcrowding like We Were Promised Jet Packs, Sam Isaac avec band (gutted it was too packed), Yacht and Maybeshewill. But really the fact there were so many good bands that i couldnt be arsed with a 5 minute walk to others is a testiment to how brilliant the lineup was (and how drunk i got). CANT WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR