Saturday 19/07/08 Altern-8, Daedelus, Youthmovies @ Truck Festival, Oxfordshire

Opening the new Truck main stage, DP had flown in from Hong Kong to metaphorically smash the bottle against the ship. What is it with two-pieces and their colour schemes? DP were even more regimented than The White Stripes, the drummer in black and the singer/ bassist in white, head to toe. The naked drummer toes were in a perilous position, drawing a hell of a thump from the bass drum. 'Uranium Man' was a modern, rock take on the blues. Bluesmen used to sing about wives leaving, dogs dying, this was an instrumental possibly named after Litvinenko with a few hours to live. They never had radiation poisoning to worry about in the old days. Going for a wander, there was some other good drum n bass blaring out of a tent, but the different sort, High Contrast's 'If we ever'.

Fonda 500 had some heavenly harmonies, sounding like The Beach Boys, if their hanging out with Charles Manson and indoor sandcastle-building behaviour had filtered through to the music. The messed-up human beat-boxing and jabbed keyboards were quite schizophrenic, but in a good way. The singer was initially cheeky charming, holding up a 'You will buy our record in 30 minutes' sign... "That's a subliminal message for you, I'm gonna make you get your tits out later." Later he spoiled it by calling us “losers” and “****s”, but the music was more than good enough to bring forgiveness.

Green as a Primary were voiceless, instrumental, but semi-instrumental in that the beats were pre-programmed in the laptop. They were high bpm's, but for much less than a m(inute), then low bpm's, again for a short time. These scattered beats were more soothing than you might expect, especially allied with the tickled bass guitar. The laptop ripping noises were beautifully off-set with twinkling keys. Some lush techno finished off this classy set.

Obake wasn't instrumental, but might as well have been, given most people probably didn't understand his rapping in French. It didn't matter, given his tight flow and heavy beats over free-jazz. It was almost a parody of serious with his eyes shut rapping and later using a rolling pin to scroll down his lyric sheet. Penfold Letters was the other end of the serious scale. Knob-tweaking and live synth techno with ultra-low wobbly bass and a Billie Jean sample. The tent was packed with everyone dancing and a some amateurs breaking. Pretty good for the most indie of festivals and before 5pm, too.

After Penfold Letters, part of the Crossword records showcase, it was a little walk to Jonquil, the founders of Crossword. Some of the dance had seemingly rubbed off on the band, 'Sudden Sun' being cranked up in speed. Singer Hugo Manuel told us Truck is better than Latitude, which they played yesterday. The love was reciprocal, as the tent over-flowed and 'Lions' brought a heart-warming sing-along.