Tag: SG Lewis

Festival review: Wild Life 2017

Three years in, Disclosure and Rudimental’s south coast weekender continues to show just how much music organisers can cram into a minute airfield, even if it does start to feel like three festivals in one.

Originally published in The Edge

Boarding a train to Shoreham-by-Sea whilst running on about two hours of sleep and with only two-thirds of a malt loaf for company, it’s fair to say that the only tangible spurs of any modicum of festival spirit within me on the way to Wild Life were the bizarrely resplendent south coast weather and the promise of the musical goodness to be found within its fenced-off portion of Brighton City Airport. Eventually, mid-afternoon merriment did make itself known – many a Corona-grasping young person joined the service to the point that I assumed the beer bottles were the festival’s answer to wristbands, and within five minutes of walking from the station the more wild side of the crowd had made itself known by urinating into four separate bushes – but where the festival spearheaded by Disclosure and Rudimental flourishes is certainly in its performance offerings, fitting four substantial stages into a very compact layout. Continue reading “Festival review: Wild Life 2017”

Festival review: Saturday at Lovebox 2016

We bear witness to an exclusive London return from LCD Soundsystem.

Originally published in The Edge

Even after two of the finest hours of my life standing in Victoria Park listening to 14 of their choicest cuts, it’s impossible to tell which component of LCD Soundsystem I adore the most. Perhaps it’s the vigour with which James Murphy and co. merrily strike cowbells throughout their sets. Perhaps it’s the sheer number of folks ambling around the stage’s setup of baffling synth equipment having mid-track conversations, sipping glasses of wine, and, at Lollapalooza, whirling out power tools for on-the-go repairs. Perhaps it’s the way they seamlessly incorporate ‘Someone Great,’ a harrowing tribute to a deceased therapist, directly between ‘Yeah,’ a frighteningly intense display of positive affirmation, and ‘Losing My Edge,’ their 2002 bow of spoken middle-aged rambles on the bastard youth (“I’m losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties”). Perhaps it’s that their farewell five years ago seemed so utterly definitive with its guest spots from Arcade Fire and Reggie Watts and its subsequent DVD (Shut Up And Play The Hits: The Very Loud Ending Of LCD Soundsystem) and rush to the heart of the sun at a time when nothing of the band appeared to be deteriorating that made the very suggestion that I would ever experience it live so absurd and overwhelming.

“We are retiring from the game,” they said. “Gettin’ out. Movin’ on.” Continue reading “Festival review: Saturday at Lovebox 2016”