Tomorrow I'll be bidding the old homestead adieu for a couple of days, slinging my well-packed rucksack over my shoulder, and heading over to the Isle of Wight for Bestival 2011. It'll be my first jaunt to Rob Da Bank's annual shindig, the last big UK festival of the year and one that has a reputation for good music and fun. The line-up for this year is a suitably eclectic mix and, as more artists have been announced over the past few months, my excited has been building. Now it pretty much goes without saying that I'm looking forward to enjoying the spectacle of Björk's live set, Brian Wilson's (supposedly) final festival appearance, the shoe-gazing awesomeness of The Cure and the chance of seeing The La's on stage, but here are a few other bands on the bill that I'm proposing are worth checking out...
Magnetic Man
I'll confess that I couldn't tell you what's hot or what's not in the world of dub step but I know what I like and this lot I like very much. The combined talents of Messrs Skream, Benga and Artwork have produced a fine collection of electronic sounds (one of which, Getting Nowhere, tests the speakers in my local fleapit before every film) which should get a packed tent jumping.
John Grant
With Queen of Denmark the ex-Czars front-man produced, to my mind, one of the stand-out best albums of last year. A stirring collection of beautiful songs that ache to be played over and over. I could continue waxing lyrical about how great John Grant is but superlatives can only go so far. Suffice to say that he's very good, so very very good indeed.
Junip
You remember José González right? Had a big hit a few years back with his mellow acoustic cover of The Knife's Heartbeats? Well, before he went solo he was in Junip producing similar, if slightly quirkier, acoustic goodness (if you search the web you should be able to locate most of their 2005 Black Refuge EP, featuring the excellent Turn To The Assassin and a tasty cover of Bruce Springsteen's Ghost of Tom Joad). Junip have reformed and are touring with new material (a sample of which can be found on RCRD LBL). Mellow.
Asian Dub Foundation
Being a complete gig-whore I tend to get asked, on a fairly regular basis, what my favourite gig is/was. After much umm-ing, ahh-ing and general bluster my answer is invariably that time I saw Asian Dub Foundation at The Wedgewood Rooms. It was a hot, sweaty, bouncing, gripping, pounding evening of musical power; if their set at Bestival is even a tenth of that, I'll be happy.
Treefight for Sunlight
Good music seems to fall out of Denmark all the time; from Mew to The Kissaway Trail, excellent sounds have poured forth from Northern climes over the past few years. The latest to hit our shores is Copenhagen's Treefight For Sunlight, an indie pop four-piece producing joyfully upbeat and infectious tunes.
The Bad Shepherds
The idea of taking a known song from one genre and reworking it in another isn't new, but the results don't often produce such mellifluous offerings as the combined talents of Troy Donockley, Andy Dinan and Adrian Edmondson (yes, THAT Ade Edmondson). The chaps rework punk and new wave classics, sprinkled liberally with beer and stringed instruments, to produce a foot-tapping folk sound (yes, folk) that introduces old favourites as if hearing them for the first time. So, grab yourself a beer, hunt out The Bad Shepherds wherever stage their playing, and have fun. Phew, I managed to get through that without mentioning Vyvyan. Oh, arse.
Son of Dave
AKA Benjamin Darvill, late of the Crash Test Dummies, who blends the Blues, beat-boxing and his virtuoso harmonica playing with eye-popping results. A strange, breathless hybrid of Blues and techno, and the 'between song' banter is usually pretty good too.
Jon Hopkins and King Creosote
Not to take anything away from PJ Harvey and her Mercury Prize win last night, but I think these two were robbed.
I could go on (I invariably do) but that'll do for now; no doubt I'll probably not get to see any of the above and, instead, will stumble across one of the many fine artists on the bill that I've not heard of, enjoy what I'm hearing, and lose all sense of time. And, honestly, isn't that what festivals are all about?
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