Saturday 27/05/06 Day 1 @ Hi: Fi South, Matterley Bowl, Hampshire

The M25 on a Bank Holiday weekend is not the first destination for Gigwise, but we brave it for the sake of music and successfully end up in the Matterley Bowl in Hampshire (the same venue used for the Homelands festival by the way). It's drizzly and wet, but thankfully not a wash out. There are even a few risk takers in flip flops (better to have wet feet than squelchy
trainers).

The best thing about festivals is how you can browse the music. You can drop in and out of whatever takes your fancy, and Hi: Fi is built at on a great dance line-up. Soul of Man were deliciously funky with bass lines verging on dub. They occupy the busiest tent we’ve been in so far at the Air Breaks Arena. Matt Hardwick provides a dry haven (the rains have set in), and a trance-y set that’s a bit too mainstream for my sensibilities. Gigwise’s anticipation for Tiefschwarz was dissipated by the fact their arena was sadly half empty. Maybe their brand of electro was a bit bland for the band of youth reprobates who are desperate to dance- one of whom offers us a Pritt Stick to sniff. Too hardcore for me….

However, the festival also features a live stage with a few more mainstream indie acts to keep the pundits happy. In fact one of the early acts of the day are Kharma 45 who look barely old enough to be out. However they play a pretty funky set, combining dance bass lines and heavy drum beats with more conventional tunes. ‘Sweet Ecstasy’ is awesome, although their look begs the question of whether their mothers’ know that they’re out.

The Go! Team seem to have got away with doing nothing much for some time now, but still manage to pull a pretty decent crowd. There's so much potential in the cross-genre funk-hip-hop-rock hybrid that they are trying to present, but it just goes a bit wrong. So many of their songs just finish and you think, ‘so what?’ Considering how much energy they put into their stylings, they make very little impact, and really lack structure in their melodies. Some of their instrumentals have some funky reggae hits, and their fun approach is always a good thing, but their construction is somewhat array. However, we do spend the duration of the set yelling “Go team!” in a random Northern accent.

We dip into the packed Fabio & Grooverider who are doing a dub like version of 'Goldigger', and then Armin Van Buuren who is mixing up the scuttering beats of fast paced dance. Gigwise then gets dragged back to Mylo. It has to be admitted, that Gigwise was planning to avoid the nicest DJ on the dance scene since he seemed to stalk us from festival to festival last year. However, his set is vastly improved and has lost any of its sluggishness, moving up a cut to a gut-roaring, heavy guitar riff driven set that pushes all the right buttons. Full marks Mr Mylo. And he’s even wearing a Spongebob Squarepants t-shirt.

Anyone who is a regular on the gig circuit will know that Hard-Fi weren’t always the fifty-pound-man targeted middle of the road band they are now. When they were first doing the circuits a couple of years back, they were an anarchic, ****-the-system set of Stone Roses impersonators. They were full of anti-establishment swagger about how shit life was etc. However,
marketing seems to have created a different spin on them and put them forward as a neater version of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Seeing them live shows you the grittier approach to their songs that the band originally intended. They play some new material which largely has a bouncy guitar riff that is not exactly a departure but has good hooks. Their set is not wildly
interesting, and the fact you know that Ferry Corsten, Roni Size and Eric Prydz playing less than twenty metres away does a lot to diminish my interest. Although 'Living for the Weekend' is a great finale, it isn’t long before Gigwise goes exploring.

Scratch Perverts do a fast-moving set, flitting from Nirvana to Jump Around, but are unfortunately plagued by technical problems. It is with Ferry Corsten in the fabulously decorated God’s Kitchen tent that Gigwise finish their night, nattering with some randoms about spending the night drinking tea in their tent and sniffing Vic’s Vaporub (Gigwise has a cold). Considering the odd thing Gigwise has been asked to do today (blow a man’s horn – no a real horn, offered lots of gum by an endearing man in a red cowboy hat), the Vaporub seems like a mighty sensible option. Go team.

Photos by: DJ Webb http://photography-of-rock.com
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