Field Day 2016 review: Skepta, Deerhunter, James Blake play day one of London festival
The people who go to this festival aren’t the kind to let a little bit of rain spoil their good time
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Your support makes all the difference.Nothing says British festival season more than a girl decked out in thrift store finery, bindi and eyeliner immaculately applied, wearing a bin bag with cut-out arm holes to combat the rain.
They come in their droves for the first day of Field Day, filling Victoria Park in Hackney with soggy hipsters to give a hero’s welcome to Skepta, North London’s grime artist of the moment.
The Tottenham rapper starts with album title track “Konnichiwa” followed by “That’s Not Me”.
The crowd are word-perfect, doing Skepta’s hard work for him while the speakers splutter and boom.
No sooner has the song finished than an engineer appears to switch mixing desks. “Would be my set wouldn’t it,” Skepta grumbles.
Sound fixed, he takes a trip through the back-catalogue of his grime crew Boy Better Know, ending with the Queens of the Stone Age sampling “Man”.
A side-step away from the main stage in the Moth Club tent, the frontman of Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band is showing the hipsters how to dance to their Thai disco-rock. He flaps his hands in time while a 74-year old in a leather flat-cap and aviators picks out melodies on a khaen, a giant bamboo harmonica.
Back on the main stage, Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox does some Egyptian dancing to entertain those assembling while his soundman prepares for their set.
The cantankerous frontman has been improbably cheery while touring new album Fading Frontiers, and executes a generous set of some of their poppiest material, ending on the summery funk of “Snakeskin”.
In the Shacklewell Arms tent, Girl Band start with their cover of Blawan’s “Why They Hide The Bodies Under My Garage?”, an eight minute stomper that features the title as its only, screamed lyric.
This Dublin outfit sound like a noise band trying to make techno music. Some teenagers are overcome and start hurling their damp bodies into the crowd and screaming, to the polite amusement of those nodding round the side.
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By the time James Blake closes day one, the drizzle has abated but the site is a swamp.
Blake says what a pleasure it is to play to a home crowd, executing ballads old (“Limit To Your Love”) and new (“Love Me In Whatever Way”).
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he says after a grime collaboration with an MC called Trim, who has featured on Blake’s recent Radio 1 show.
Hands rise, silhouetted against neon lights, during the disco outro to Voyeur. Bin bags are cast aside.
Stumbling out through the sludge, Field Day feels like a triumph, if only because the people who go to this festival aren’t the kind to let a little bit of rain spoil their good time.
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