Festival Review - Mainsquare Festival, France - DAY 1

For me, Day 1 of the festival had the most promising line up with many bands who are considered “major” in the UK (Green Day, The Prodigy and Biffy Clyro among them). Each act’s slot was around an hour, with a 20 minute to half an hour overlap where both stages would be live. The day threw up some revelations, with some of the bands completely disappointing me, and others totally surprising me.

Early performances came from Candide, Twin Forks, Balthazar and Rival Sons, the latter of which did the best job in shaking awake the subdued audience. By the time Haim stepped onto the Greenroom stage much of the audience had collapsed onto the grass. It was clear that Haim are not well known to the French but they still received a good response, particularly when they had an impromptu jamming session to a Led Zeppelin number, with “Falling”, “Don’t Wait” and “Forever” receiving the best response, as expected.


Over on the Main Stage Biffy Clyro, again apparently not well known in France, put everything they had into their set, pulling off a fantastic performance despite the fact that much of the audience stood motionless, moving only to enthusiastically clap between tracks. As they powered through “Sounds Like Balloons”, “That Golden Rule”, “Bubbles” and “The Joke’s On Us” it was abundantly clear which sections of the audience were British, because they were all busy partying and moshing for all they were worth. A comedy moment and the first hint of the sound issues came as Modestep, who had struck up on the Greenroom stage, drowned out the end of one of Biffy's quieter tracks. Before launching into the next track Biffy's lead singer, Simon Neil, declared, “We’re gonna play this next one really loud to drown out that feckin' shite!” And so the first sound battle between Biffy and Modestep commenced, confusing the ears of those standing directly between the two stages.

Crossing over to Modestep, the dubstep fans in the audience were not disappointed, and the band was well received as they spat out track after track of bone shaking dance fodder. It was clear throughout the weekend that the sound on the Greenroom stage was much better than that on the Main Stage, although some of the Main Stage’s issues were caused by the sound bouncing around the buildings in the square. Obviously the sound of the Greenroom stage really suited Modestep and every opportunity was taken to drill sub bass through the bodies of the dancing audience.

Back on the Main Stage, the start of Thirty Seconds To Mars’ set was kicked off by four people in suits and coloured balaclavas beating large drums. The band started off well with “Hunter” and “Search and Destroy” among others, and there was a great audience response. A few songs in lead singer, Jared Leto, asked, “Where are my dreamers?” He then proceeded to ask the audience (in both French and English) to chant the name of the band’s new album, “Love Lust Faith + Dreams” before completely overdosing on saccharine, wrapping himself in a flag, declaring his undying love to the audience and France, and sweeping from a Rock God to a sycophant in a matter of moments. There seemed to be a mixed response from the audience, with some lapping up everything the frontman was saying, and others wandering away shaking their heads.

Bloc Party were next up on the Greenroom stage, starting with a rowdy version of “Banquet”. Drummer Matt Tong was notably absent from the line up but replacement Sarah Jones (New Young Pony Club/Hot Chip) did an absolutely blinding job of filling in in Matt’s absence. Bloc Party are due to go on another hiatus, so rumours that Tong has already left the band are rife. Nevertheless the band crashed through some of their best known hits, including “Flux” and “One More Chance”, breaking them up with more subdued tracks such as “Truth” and “Waiting for the 7.18”, before bowing out with a blistering rendition of “Helicopter”. I felt a bit sad that this might be the last time I would see Bloc Party if they do not return from their hiatus.


Over on the Main Stage Green Day received the best response of the day of any band, violently wading through their back catalogue to the obvious glee of the packed arena. They threw in an intro to AC/DC's “Highway To Hell” and a mad sax rendition of "The Theme From The Benny Hill Show" amongst hits such as “Basket Case” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. It was a truly mental, but utterly brilliant set, which was topped off by a stunt they have employed before where they pull an audience member up onto the stage and have him sing and play the guitar before giving him the guitar.

Enter Shikari’s assignment was a mammoth one. They were tasked with following up Green Day’s performance over on the opposite stage and were also on immediately before dance titans The Prodigy. Despite the pressure, the band’s brand of dubstep fused rock measured up to the task fairly well. Now that darkness had set in the audience seemed more willing to mosh, although they were not quite fired up enough to do the usual epic crowd surfing fest that normally occurs during “Juggernauts”. Still, the band did a great performance in what must have been a daunting slot.

To the opening bars of “Voodoo People”, The Prodigy began their quest to bring the Main Stage to a close. The set started well, with the band throwing in “Poison”, “Breathe”, “Omen” and classic “Firestarter” amid MC Maxim’s usual chants about warriors (although he did come unstuck a bit when he tried to change his chant up to “Where are my French people?” Erm…what?). But it was at the start of “Spitfire” that things started to sadly unravel. Netsky had started his closing set on the Greenroom stage, and he was absolutely drowning out The Prodigy.

Yes, really.

The audience started to leave the Main Stage in droves because they simply could not hear properly, and Netsky’s more contemporary sound seemed to become irresistible draw. I guess Hospital Records (to whom both acts are signed) will not be troubled by that, but it must have been galling for The Prodigy to see their audience drifting away and being powerless to stop it. It was the first time I had ever left a set by The Prodigy disappointed, and I have been following them since 1991.

Meanwhile, The Prodigy’s loss was Netsky’s gain, and he and his entourage received a fantastic reception to the great set he was playing, which was enhanced further by a live drummer. Most of the remaining audience was dancing, and he seemed to manage to lift the disappointment left by the previous set, closing the night on a high.

Click below to see the intro, my reviews of each day, and my verdict of the festival as a whole.

Mainsquare Festival 2013, Intro

Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 2
Featuring Mike & the Mechanics, Klink Clock, Local Natives, Kodaline, Saez, Of Monsters & Men, The Hives, Asaf Avidan, Sting, Alt-J, Sting, deuS, C2C and Madeon

Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 3
Featuring Feini X Crew, Charles Bradley, Left Boy, Volbeat, La Femme, Puggy, Lou Doillon, Stereophonics, Kendrick Lamar, Archive, Wax Tailor and The Dusty Rainbow Experience and Indochine

Mainsquare Festival 2013: The Verdict

Festival Review - Mainsquare Festival, France - Intro

Arras, France, 5-7 July 2013

Britain’s unpredictable weather is usually a fleeting consideration for those booking tickets to one of our many legendary music festivals. Most people expect at least a bit of rain at some point during the proceedings, even making cursory preparations for the odd downpour by taking a festival poncho and digging out their obligatory festival wellies, and maybe taking a blow up dinghy just in case.

But last summer was different. No one could really have predicted how wet the entire festival season was going to be. It is one that will go down in Britain’s music festival history as decidedly soggy.

At the Isle of Wight Festival many were stranded in gridlocked traffic, unable to reach the festival site. Those who did manage to get onto the site were met with a deep quagmire and the prospect of spending the entire weekend sleeping and dancing within a deep sea of mud. It was much the same picture at T In The Park and Download, and Creamfields even closed a day early, cancelling performances by the likes of Tiesto, Deadmau5, Richie Hawtin and Paul van Dyk.

With last summer’s water logged escapades still fresh in my head, I decided to book tickets further afield in a bid to go to at least one rain-free music festival this year. So off I went to Mainsquare Festival in Arras, France, the little sister of Belgium's Rock Werchter Festival.

The site, as the name suggests, is set around Arras’s main square, with the Main Stage in the square itself, and the Greenroom (or second stage) in the adjacent park. Both stages were open and very close together, leading to the first two issues: lack of any suitable shade, and terrible sound clashes. The only real shade was cast by a line of trees and a church in between the two stages, but standing there meant you could hear both stages at the same time (something which had a devastating effect on some of the bands). So to have any chance of only hearing the stage you were watching you had to stand in the blistering sun on the far side of each of the stages.

I know, I know, I wanted sun, so it was my own fault…

Click below to see my reviews of each day, and my verdict of the festival as a whole.

Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 1
Featuring Candide, Twin Forks, Balthazar, Rival Sons, Haim, Biffy Clyro, Modestep, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Bloc Party, Green day, Enter Shikari, The Prodigy and Netsky

Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 2
Featuring Mike & the Mechanics, Klink Clock, Local Natives, Kodaline, Saez, Of Monsters & Men, The Hives, Asaf Avidan, Sting, Alt-J, Sting, deuS, C2C and Madeon

Mainsquare Festival 2013, Day 3
Featuring Feini X Crew, Charles Bradley, Left Boy, Volbeat, La Femme, Puggy, Lou Doillon, Stereophonics, Kendrick Lamar, Archive, Wax Tailor and The Dusty Rainbow Experience and Indochine

Mainsquare Festival 2013: The Verdict

GIG REVIEW - Bloc Party, Earls Court London

Earls Court London, 22nd February 2013
Support: Old Men, The Joy Formidable

Having already completed 20 dates in the US, Japan and Europe this year, this was the final date of the European leg of the tour before Bloc Party embark on a 14 date tour of Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific. The gig was their largest UK performance to date (aside from any festivals), playing at the 19,000 capacity Earls Court One venue.

Kicking off to a backdrop of lasers and a huge halogen logo from their latest album, Four, the band threw themselves into the first 13 track first set with a frantic version of And So He Begins To Lie, immediately followed by the ever popular Hunting For Witches. Frontman Kele Okereke was on top form, bantering with the attentive audience and introducing each track by relaying the sentiment behind it, including Waiting For The 7.18 which he described as being “about public transport”, prompting a huge cheer from the crowd. This was followed up by a fantastically tight performance of both Song For Clay (Disappear Here) and Banquet, to the obvious glee of the crowd who sang and jumped around like their lives depended on it. At this point I got slightly distracted. It was extremely dark in the venue, with the only light coming from the stage, making the lad directly in front of me look like some kind of cross between a body popper and the Churchill nodding dog due to the strange type of jigging he was executing. It amused me so much that I almost missed some very interesting screenshots of the crowd that were being transmitted from the large screen either side of the stage (the crowd were, at that point, frantically moshing to Coliseum).

The band performed an impressive array of tracks from all four of their studio albums, with selected songs being performed in a frenzy of lazers and strobes. The end of the first set was marked with “something different” in the shape of One More Chance, and Octopus. The band then disappeared without a word, to the bemusement of the audience, before reappearing a few minutes later to open the 4 track “Round Two” with Kreuzberg, which Okereke dedicated to his parents. Finishing the set with an absolutely blistering version of Flux (preceded by the intro to Rihanna’s We Found Love), the band once again disappeared.

The first track of the encore was a new one, Ratchet, which Okereke confirmed had not even yet been recorded, and had only been aired live for the first time in Missouri on the US leg of January 2013’s tour dates. The track itself has the unmistakeable Bloc Party sound, and features an interesting pitch-bending guitar riff, which the crowd eagerly embraced. The following track, Truth, had been the subject of an email to their mailing list a few days beforehand, where the band encouraged the crowd to download an app to their iPhones and film footage of the track being performed, and this footage would be collected via the app and a video made from the best bits. Okereke seemed a bit uncertain about this concept, but nevertheless asked the crowd to record the track as it was being performed. The final track of the night, Helicopter, was performed amid an array of lasers to the partying crowd, before the band took their final bows and left the stage.

Although the venue was not sold out it did not deter the band, who performed a great mix of old favourites and new material, and at least this gave the crowd more room to dance. The gig did perhaps suffer slightly at times in terms of atmosphere due to the size of the venue, but overall the band and crowd had a good rapport. Once again the band showed off their great musicianship, and the tightness of the band really shone through.

My review score: 8/10

FULL GIG REVIEW - Bloc Party "Bloctober"

O2 Academy Birmingham, 15th October 2012
Support: Theme Park

When I last saw Bloc Party at the Reading Festival in 2009 it was the first time I'd seen them live, and I was completely captivated by them as they strobed, stomped and frantically strummed through their set on the main stage. I vowed to go and see again as soon as I could, but they thwarted my attempts to by going on a 3 year haitus. And that was that.

So imagine my glee when I saw that they had made plans to tour in 2012 for what they called "Bloctober", following the release of their latest album, 'Four'! I couldn't wait to part with my money to get the tickets, although not quite quick enough it seems as I could only get balcony seats. As it turned out, this was probably a blessing in disguise...

Bloc Party were ably supported by Theme Park, who I'd not seen live before. After a tentative start they soon got into their stride with 4 of the 5 band members swapping jobs from song to song, like they were sharing a bag of pick 'n' mix. One band member in particular had his work cut out, multitasking between synth, guitar, vocals, and a baffling array of pedals, although this threatened to be his undoing at one point as he struggled to regain control of a rogue foot pedal that was evidently not supposed to be playing an escalating synth sound. However, apart from the more pronounced midrange of the song, he seemed to get away with it, and you could almost sense his relief as he pulled the plug out of the pedal at the end of the song. Overall, though, their set was reminiscent of the Friendly Fires kind of vibe, with happy, quirky, jig-inducing songs which were ever so slightly cheesy but in a good way. And they were the antithesis of the set that was to follow by the main act, which was a stroke of genius by whoever planned the gig.

From the moment they began, Bloc Party absolutely blew the roof off the venue. Kicking off with 'Octopus' from the new album, they pounded through their set like James Bond being chased by an angry herd of rhinos, but with more pace and precision. Matt Tong thrashed the drums with such fervour that at one point a technician had to come and revive a bit of kit that he'd killed. By the time they got to 'Hunting For Witches', I was regretting being stuck on a seat on the balcony rather than jumping around like a thing possessed on the floor below (although, due to a neck and shoulder injury it's probably just as well). The pace continued with the band concentrating mostly on the tracks from 'Four', supported by some old favourites from their other 3 albums. But with each new stomper the mood in the mosh pits got increasingly more alarming. By the time they broke into the truly mental 'Coliseum' the fists had started flying and I could see at least 2 people with blood all over their faces. I will never understand why some people think this type of behaviour is acceptable at a gig (or anywhere else for that matter). It was clearly spoiling the enjoyment of the gig for the gig goers that inadvertently got embroiled in the action at floor level, and from my viewpoint on the balcony I could see a lot of people on my level being completely distracted by what was unfolding below (myself included).

Despite the mentalness of the moshpit, the band delivered sparkling performances for every single song. They succeeded in bringing things down a notch with 'The Prayer' and 'V.A.L.I.S.', only to bring the set to a shuddering climax with 'We Are Not Good People', which sent the troublemakers in the moshpit into an absolute frenzy.

All too quickly the first encore was upon us, with a few of their more subdued songs being thrown in before the mighty 'Helicopter', which was my absolute highlight of the gig. They deployed a genius trick of turning the lights off and on with military precision in time with the stops and starts of the song in the run up to the chorus, which added perfectly to the tension of the song. Of course the musicianship of Russell Lissack, Gordon Moakes, Kele Okereke (the lead singer) and Matt Tong really shone through, and it showed what a fantastically tight band they are.

Finally, for the second encore, they dusted off 'Ares', one of only two tracks played from their 'Intimacy' album. The bass drops absolutely shook the venue. They finished on a slightly odd choice, 'This Modern Love'. At that point I'd have prefered the final song to be something like 'Banquet' or 'Talons' (both of which were played earlier in the set). But all in all it was a truly fantastic gig, marred only slightly by a few mindless, lairy thugs who seemed intent on getting fisty in the moshpit.

My review score: 9.5/10

Did you see the gig? What did you think? Leave your comments below...