Saturday 11/08/07 Field Day Festival @ Victoria Park, London

Were you to ask the majority of attendees what they thought of the inaugural Field Day festival (an event lest we forget billed as, ahem, “London’s new psychedelic Summer fete”) their likely response would be a series of agonised palpitations, the aforementioned attendee dribbling over their Panda Bear t-shirt as they begin a series of affronted rants, gabbling about queues longer than the list of people lining up to smack David Cameron in his fat face, the resultant agonising wait for alcohol and the paucity of veggie burgers - not to mention the hi-fi bedroom quality of sound slowly rendering even the most tantalising of live artists (Battles = one long drawn out sigh) into unintelligible echoes of their regular selves. This isn’t so much part of the review, but one big incontrovertible fact: of Gigwise’s army of friends, half had disappeared long before Justice had pressed play on their big shiny CD player of a DJ set.

Which is all undoubtedly an utter shame, because the philosophy behind Field Day was built on some pretty sturdy ground. An excellent line-up, nifty promoters (e.g. , Eat Your Own Ears, who have previously put on the likes of Beirut and Animal Collective in our fair capital), and Victoria Park in the sun were makings for a one-day festival in London built for once not on lowest common denominator-friendly mobile phone sponsorship but a copious supply of candy floss. And tug-of-war. The tug-of-war was fun to watch, yep. But before the moaning really began there were the bands.  

First on Gigwise’s radar were the consciously-intellectual GoodBooks, one of many bands today ploughing a rich stream of electronics-influenced post-punk. If the later Foals are tight and shiny (their mathematical riot is wiry and tastefully arranged, with set-closer ‘Hummer’ something of an urgent-disco masterpiece), and Late Of The Pier messy and bleepy (‘The Bears Are Coming’ is the sound of Hot Chip phoning in a pastiche of early 80s hip-hop whilst playing Pac-Man, and is almost the festival highlight) then GoodBooks, despite their songs about World War One and obscure characters from Kafka novels, are the most pop-orientated of the bunch. Despite the embellishment of disjointed guitars and keyboards influenced by the most downbeat Cure records GoodBooks live lack any discernible edge, the songs shorn of any pointy bits or danger. Before introducing ‘Turn It Back’ singer Max Cooke playfully urges us to buy their rather fine debut ‘Control’, before wryly adding that the only place that it won’t be available is Tesco; it’s to the band’s credit though that of all their contemporaries it is GoodBooks you could imagine nestled in-between packets of cookies and copies of ‘A Weekend In The City’.

Although The Aliens are comprised of two-thirds Beta Band, their sound is more reminiscent of the Stones and The Doors: a surprise to anyone expecting (nay, hoping) for ‘Dogs Got A Bone’, and an aspect that means in effect they’re actually the most ‘psychedelic’ of the line-up in the MOJO-reader’s “proper” sense of the term. A man in a purple robe stands at the front of the stage as one extended jam bleeds into another, though it’s little more than window dressing to conversations about ice cream and the weather (did we mention the pathetic sound levels?). Archie Bronson Outfit, over at the Homefires bouncy castle, are similarly repetitive in their approach, though closer to the bludgeoning discordant brilliance of, say, Grinderman. Their dirty, propulsive rhythms and stabbing trumpet feel wrong in the hazy weather, but that’s probably the point.