Field Day
Victoria Park, London | 7 + 8 June
For a fresh pair of eyes, one of the first things to hit you on eagerly entering Victoria Park for the now institutionalised Field Day is the scale. Growing year-on-year for eight of them, the Eat Your Own Ears juggernaut is the capital’s foremost showcase of a difficult-to-pin-together thread of thrillingly bold, contemporary, vaguely ‘alternative’ music. With eight stages including the expansive outdoor focal point of the Eat Your Own Ears stage, this year the expansion stepped up a notch with the addition of a second day built around pretty much the biggest headliner you can get.
But for all the pervasive ‘bigness’, EYOE have managed to carefully preserve that ‘for those that know’ ideal, which means minimal dickheads and conscientiously scheduled acts, two simple premises which are often at a real premium.
But for us, what makes today different to previous Field Days is that this time Crack’s been granted a stage; and a pretty fucking amazing stage at that. Featuring a wide array of artists we’ve featured and celebrated over recent months and a meeting of established names and up-n-comers, it’s a representation of both the festival as a whole, and of the music we love. It’s A Big Deal. So on entering the Field, we hotfoot over to witness these-days-local Thurston Moore jangling and slackering all godlike next to our logo, looking around and pinching each other.
Back over at the Resident Advisor stage, James Holden wastes no time, opting to channel the sensation of lump-in-your-throat euphoria from the first track onwards with fuzzy, bittersweet loops pulsated by a live drummer and decorated with his saxaphonist’s noodly improvisations. Holden spends much of the set plugging leads into a machine that looks as if it was designed in the 50s. We have no idea how it works, but the sounds it generates are making us feel seriously emotional – and it’s not even 3pm.
At the Shacklewell Arms stage, we’re treated to a woozy afternoon set of colourful, psychedelic pop from Finland’s finest tram driver-turned-pop star: Jaakko Eino Kalevi. Granted, if you don’t know many of the songs there’s a good chance they’ll all sound the same, but it’s a wonderful early-doors treat. It’s also already the second time we’ve been exposed to an expertly-wielded saxophone. Much to our pleasure he ends with a smoke-hazed, dreamy rendition of his single No End, sending us soaring into the sunlight with beers in hand.
A brief dip into SOPHIE’s set is intense to the point of overload – cool, though – so we jet back over to the opposing end of the park, where SOHN has the Crack stage bulging. It’s a moving, deeply personal performance, feeling at odds with the sun-drenched party atmosphere outside the confines of the tent, and that he manages to capture such a juxtaposition is testament to SOHN’s effect-dripped melancholia.
Following an upgrade from the Crack stage to face the plains on the Eat Your Own Ears (but we ain’t bitter), Blood Orange presents his highly stylised and enticingly loved-up nu-romantic indie-funk jams, and once you’re in, it’s nigh on impossible to drag your eyes from. Taking in both albums, there’s a sense of arrival for the increasingly Americanised Dev Hynes. He welcomes his ladyfriend, Friends’ Samantha Urbani, to the forefront as his loose and ready band glide into their hit I’m His Girl, before Skepta’s surprise appearance becomes a total highlight. Snapping Dev out of his ecstatic homecoming blur for a moment, he tempers the washed-out dreamscapes and brings some real heavy vibe to proceedings with a disarming but somehow moving rendition of Cupid Deluxe number High Street. No idea how he handled the heat in that massive jacket, though.
It’s with a great deal of pleasure that we can declare Neneh Cherry’s set on the Crack stage a total triumph. Clearly galvanised by the overwhelmingly positive response to her recent album Blank Project, she dances frenetically throughout the Rocketnumbernine-powered set, making frequent trips to the barrier to hype up the multi-generational crowd in front of her.
We then opt for Todd Terje at the Resident Advisor stage over Warpaint and boy, do we not regret it.
While the tent is heaving and takes some negotiating, arriving in the sweatpit towards its front is worth the effort. Although it’s hard to tell quite what’s going on is going on up there, the promised live performance brings the It’s Album Time experience roaring into life, with the record’s camp yet pumping personality balanced with glee. Delorean Dynamite is dragged out for an age, while loungey number Svenk Sås starts out like a supermarket jingle then becomes a big room belter. As his set time sadly draws towards an end, it’s time; we’ve heard countless DJs drop Inspector Norse over the last couple of years, but this feels very, very special. Sections are warped and turn in on each other, every mouth in the tent booms along to the melody, and that key change is … well, it’s totally fucking breathtaking.
Elated, it’s back towards the Eat Your Own Ears stage, where the groggy swells of Jon Hopkins are beginning to leak towards the heavens. That this, or a similar, set has been doing the rounds since the release of Immunity early last year really doesn’t bother anyone. He cuts a minimal figure on the expanses of this stage, in this field, but the sound is anything but. With video accompaniments providing visual stimulation, and swathes of balloons bouncing across the crowd’s raised hands it’s a masterclass from one of the country’s most vital talents, and the obviously amazing tracks are amazing, obviously.
With evening drawn in, there’s time for brief recuperation, thorough hydration and a pep-talk, before the entire Crack team begins burrowing towards the front rows of our namesake stage for the headliner. In doing so, we’re given a massive, and hugely welcome surprise, as acclaimed vocalist (and Prince’s mate) Lianna La Havas joins Tourist onstage for a swansong rendition of their recent collaboration Pattern. It has the potential for disaster, with the set overrunning slightly which means the crowd is now seething with a seriously wired crowd with the sole intention of getting irrationally turnt. But La Havas’s star power wins through with ease, wailing and swooping over the propulsive blips behind her, voice and personality totally beguiling.
On the other side of a lovingly-assembled mixtape from a member of the team (Fat Trel’s Fresh going down particularly well), DJ Skywalker bounds onstage as the imposing opening peals of Waka Flocka Flame’s Hard in da Paint come bursting from the speakers. It’s a pretty foolproof hyping method, and by the time Danny Brown strides onstage, visibly cackling, green hair resplendent, it’s safe to say fever pitch has been attained.
We’d all done very well keeping clean and dry so far; mainly by hiding from the early-morning storms and seeing gentle, lovely things like Blood Orange, but now the time had come to get smelly. As the beer settled on our hair and clothes, and probably DB’s Ramones shirt too, the crowd seethes from side to side, struggling to remain upright amongst the skyward gunfingers. He barrels through an Old-heavy set, conducting the chaos to the chorus of Purity Ring collab 25 Bucks, but it’s on XXX cuts like Lie4, Monopoly and I Will that things go fully ballistic. When the pitched vocal of Dip shows up, everyone leaves the ground at the same time. It’s all over in a blur; an amazing, memorable but unrememberable blur.
We’re assured that Metronomy went big, opening with a 1-2-3-4 of Holiday, Radio Ladio, Love Letters and The Look, but still bug-eyed and on the lookout for something far grimier, we sprinted towards the Shacklewell in order to catch the closing moments of Fat White Family. Their sleazy grind sounds impressively grand and becoming of headliner status as we crane our necks for a glimpse of flesh, but the lights are soon up, and we’re left to join the throngs trying to locate friends on surrounding streets, yelling down phones with no signal or battery that we’ve got no signal or battery.
The rest of Field Saturday-into-Field Sunday is spent at the immaculate Oval Space, where a run of Gerd Janson, a particularly outstanding Daniel Avery, and Jackmaster soundtrack a long and deeply involving evening, night, early morning and morning, the turns of which can be witnessed through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows.
It’s not just us who treat the stripped-back Sunday as a day of recuperation; the event itself feeling more like a massive gig than the carnival ride of the previous day. Despite The Wytches’ most admirable attempts to get rowdy on the main stage, it’s not until the arrival of The Horrors that the crowd begin to slowly unfurl, like pouring water on a sponge, gathering and spreading across the green.
Opening with Chasing Shadow, Faris Badwan’s 100 mile stare is palpable behind oversized sunglasses, his voice assured and depthy. But guitarist Joshua Hayward is quickly becoming the group’s centrepoint; perhaps he already is. His amp rewiring and equipment customisation has come to define the band’s gushing sonic aesthetic, and this early evening, the uniformity of his bleary guitar are the outstanding feature. While an eerily muted crowd still struggle to muster too much enthusiasm for a Luminous-heavy setlist, older tracks like Sea Within a Sea and closing Skying double-header Still Life and Moving Further Away summon a more enamoured response.
As expected, Future Islands are more rapturously received, performing to a bulging Shacklewell Arms stage. Their addictive melodrama is punctuated by vocalist Samuel T. Herring’s drunken ramblings and flailing torso: the simple flow of a sincere glare and fist to the chest into a gyrating booty rotation is a microcosm of the dynamic – the sincerity, the profound caring, is constantly underpinned by a pervasive sense of carefree fun. And the songs are there too, particularly cuts from latest album Singles which are custom-designed to work in this type of celebratory setting. Another rung up the ladder to the big-leagues for the boys from Baltimore.
And so, climactically, it’s on to the Pixies. Some will tell you they’re the greatest band ever, and they blow away even the highest expectations with a 27-song set including quite a few of the finest indie rock songs ever written.
Set against an austere, mirrored background, the foursome immediately sound supreme; Santiago’s skewed guitar lines cut through the balmy Sunday night air, Black Francis segueing from tuneful sighs to abrasive hollers. Paz fits snugly at stage left – no, it’s not the same, but it was never going to be. A steady hand with her own distinguished and dignified sense of flair, her playing is flawless, while her vocals do more than pass muster without retracting from these songs’ timeless identities
Opening with Wave of Mutilation, it’s an onslaught of titanic songs without a word between – U-Mass then tumbles into the unmistakable opening bars of Debaser, greeted by piercing screams and, soon, an ubiquitous clenched fist and howl of “Chien! Andalusia…” By the peerless, staggered solo of Hey, the excitement begins to give way to a realisation of the significance of what Field Day have achieved here. Goosebumps are rife, eyes are wiped.
In the face of a handful of entitled, negative reactions, the new material holds up soundly; a jagged Bagboy stands tall and proud amongst Bone Machine, Mr Grieves and the ever-stunning Velouria. And God bless Here Comes Your Man: a bouncing, swaying triumph which has the thousands yelling along to monosyllables and twisting and turning on the worn grass. David Lovering milks his moment in the spotlight for all its worth in a blissfully silly La La Love You, before Greens and Blues and Indie Cindy continue to fly the flag for the new material. Then, as darkness falls, Monkey Gone To Heaven, Caribou and a closing Where Is My Mind? are pure, peerless, heartwarming/breaking oddball euphoria. The band stay on stage for an age waving and (finally) smiling, before departing one-by-one as heroes.
Continuously expanding, continuously nailing it, the highest compliment which can be paid to Field Day is that they’ve maintained the perfect balance of their own creation: huge and intimate; hands-on and untouchable; social occasion and cutting-edge musical showcase. It remains pretty much peerless, and you just know they’ve still got their eyes set skywards
– – – – – – – – – –
Words: Geraint Davies, Davy Reed, Steven Dores, Billy Black
Photography: Carolina Faruolo
CONNECT TO CRACK
