polaroids of androids

Roskilde Festival, Denmark - July 3-6, 2008

Being based in Copenhagen for the last six months means I was perfectly placed to attend this years Roskilde Festival, one of the biggest yet most highly rated on the planet. It's easy to see why: four nights of incredibly solid acts from noon to the wee hours of the morning; plenty of food, drink, stalls and atmosphere; completely rational alcohol restrictions (bring as much as you want into the camping zone, just not into the festival zone); fantastic organisation and co-ordination on all levels; and finally a lack of an abundance of dickheads ruining it all for everyone else.

So on with the brief wrap-up and blurry photos of the acts I managed to squeeze in between scoffing deliciously overpriced food and getting out of my skull drunk on Denmark's finest beers.

Thursday

MGMT

Ths bnd s rlly cl. Thy ply wsm prty msc. ll th kds lv thm. Thy r pssbly th bst bnd snc frvr. Thy hv mr thn 2 xcllnt sngs. Thy wll b rnd fr rlly lng tm bcs thr msc s vry dp nd cmplx nd lyrd nd wsm. n cs y cn't tll 'm bng srcstc.

Radiohead

...are Radiohead.

Friday

Polarkreis 18

German indie pop. A little heavy on the drama, but altogether pretty nice. Lead singer is way camp.

Mugison

Icelandic blues/metal/pop/everything else guy. Completely confusing. Completely fun.

Santogold

Her DJ played for 10 minutes before she got on stage. She then played for about 25 minutes. Fuck you.

Mogwai

Fucking Loud.

Grinderman

Bit of a slow start. Didn't play No Pussy Blues 6 times. Slightly disappointed.

Holy Fuck

At the risk of going the completely obvious route while also being entirely accurate: Holy fuck this was good. The recorded stuff never really did anything for me, but the live stuff was brilliant. Show of the festival.

Battles

The sound wasn't quite right on the bigger stage, which is pretty crucial for the precise nature of the music, but they were still plenty awesome.

Yeasayer

Huge disappointment. Lacking in energy, precision and charisma, and all seemed generally off their game. Hopefully just caught them on a bad night.

Saturday

Wildbirds & Peacedrums

Interesting Swedish rhythm based outfit. Touches of Snowman, but with a slightly softer edge. Find of the festival.

A Kid Hereafter in the Grinding Light

The band currently has three incantations and counting. This is their grind-core version. Hilarious. Vicious mosh pit.

Tokyo Police Club

A friend said after the show that half their songs are good, and half sound like they could have been written by any generic emo band. Pretty much sums it up.

Cadence Weapon

His intelligent indie approach to hip hop is lost in translation in a live setting due to the fact that he is forced to scream and chant the hooks to his songs to get the crowd involved like every other mundane hip hop act in exactly the way he seems to be avoiding on his records.

Solomon Burke

Sat in a throne and had his back up singers wipe his sweaty forehead and help him unbutton his shirt because he is too morbidly obese to do it himself. So yeah, awesome.

Neil Young

Was expecting to not know enough songs, but the man has his roots very deep in pretty much all the good music being made to this day, which made for a pretty enjoyable nostalgia trip.

Liars

A bit loose in a live setting, and maybe played one too many Drums Not Dead tracks, but altogether a damn good way to close the festival.

Unfortunately I couldn't hang around on the Sunday, but it would have been nice to catch the likes of Dan Deacon, Cat Power, Fuck Buttons, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Jay-Z. From all accounts the rest of the festival went down nicely without me. If I'm still around next year I'll definitely go again, and would recommend that if you you ever get the chance to attend to grab said chance by the balls and never let go.