Further to the review of the Lowlands festival in the Netherlands, here's
mine of the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium last weekend. Pukkelpop was a
5-stage event with a main stage (headliners Sonic Youth and Nick Cave & Bad
Seeds), a marquee (headliners Supergrass and dEUS, although Prong and Korn
played too), a dance hall (!) (with 808 State, Lamb, the Aloof, Eat Static,
DJ Dave Clarke and Tricky), a skate-stage (with really really crappy bands,
except Rocket From The Crypt - skatepunk by a orchestra with horns and
ballroom outfits), and ... a very very small stage called the club with UI
and Tortoise (!).
Friday the 23th had Meat Beat Manifesto scheduled, but they pulled out the
hop on the ENIT tour, so I decided not go that day, although Ken Ishii
played.
Saturday the 24th started out with fairly interesting guitar based stuff
(Girls Against Boys (do I hear Joy Division in them or what)), Prong (jummy
industrial ala Ministry), Korn, ...). The day really started in the dance
hall with 808 State who sounded awful ! The only acceptable thing they
played with an updated version of Pacific State. They ended with a violated
version of Cubik (one of my favourite 808 tracks) which they fucked up
completely. Thumbs down all the way ! I did not catch Lamb, but pretty well
enjoyed Eat Static (an hour of 4 to the floor thumping, although a jungle-y
thing crept in once in a while). The Aloof sucked in a very major way, they
sounded like very lame Happy Mondays most of the time, a waste of time IMO.
I did not stay for Dave Clarke as DJ, as I heard him spin once before. I
went to see Sonic Youth (yuck, not idm at all you might say) instead, they
were great as always (my 4th time) and should consider making an
guitar-based ambient record just using their outro's. After that it was
Tortoise time. About 25000 people showed up for the entire festival, I
guess only about 500 watched Tortoise, which did not bother me a bit. They
were great in a jazzy-improv way, part krautrock, part Eno, part
I-not-know-what ! A friend of mine just gave me two Tortoise cds to listen
to and to my surprise I liked them. They gave me a new appreciation of a
xylophone ! The last thing I saw was a great Nick Cave & Bad Seeds (5th
time), after having spent 5 minutes listening to Tricky live (bwark !).
There you have it : not much idm, but still I was glad to see Tortoise
although they only played for about an hour, which is of course the trouble
with festivals. BTW, I was listening to Djed not so long ago and the last
6-7 minutes with the droney drummachine loop reminded me a lot of
_Mussolini Headkick_ by Cabaret Voltaire. Very good indead !
dv8 (sorry for taking up bw)