Lovebox was our first stop at Victoria Park, a place seemingly built specially for events like this... A large grass area where the festivals set up shop in different layouts. Lovebox was well spread out with around 7 stages of varying sizes. The main stage was not operating on Friday, the largest one being the Gaymer's which was host to the bands on the afternoon. Other stages included Rinse, NYC downlow (more on that later), and the Bacardi Get Together.
First up we caught the end of Architecture in Helsinki, an 80's synth band that seem to be all the rage at the moment, some nice catchy tracks that swapped between a female and male lead singer. Wasn't really sure what the drummer was doing because the percussion was highly electronic. Recommended though.
Ed Sheeran was next on stage, and suddenly the crowd expanded massively, mostly late teenagers, attracted by Ed's chart status. He went through a few of his average album tracks to start off with then moved into A-team and Little Lady, during which he brought out his collaborator Mikill Payne. I was very impressed with his acoustic tracks, really showing off his choirboy vocals.
Staying by the Gaymer's stage we then caught Beardyman who was the most incredible act I have ever seen, a beatboxer that uses complex equipment to loop and distort the sounds emanating from his mouth. His set list included loads of well known tracks with a bouncy beat behind all of them. The video below is an example of what goes on during his set:
We then went off in search of other music at the smaller stages, Rinse didn't really catch out attention and it was far too close to the Relentless stage, the sound clashing - and not in a good way. We then spotted the Bacardi stage that was built in the form of castle with the DJs in the centre and what looked like a VIP section around the back. Jaymo and Andy George were playing, nicely warming up for Aeroplane who started at 8pm. We caught a small amount of his funky set before heading off to find out where Flying Lotus was playing.
This is where it started going a bit wrong. The NYC downlow stage was a old dilapidated building with a familiar yellow NY taxi crashed into the top of it. The queue to get in stretched right across the park from the entrance that was guarded by a fence, bottlenecking it. Once we got closer, almost inside there was a sudden crush to get in, we didn't see exactly what happened but it seemed that people were coming from the side as well as coming our way. Security dealt with it well but then closed the entrance which was very annoying - having waited 30 mins in and then being not let in.
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Later on that evening we hit Plastic People for Huntley and Palmer's Audio club for Its a Fine Line with Ivan Smagghe and Tim Paris, they were playing all night which meant they could really stretch their audio legs running through a variety of genres ending up with some pretty awesome electro at the end. Couldn't name one tune that they played but thats fine by me!
Plastic People was everything it promised - small and intimate with a great sound system, I will definitely try and get down to both the venue and the night again wherever it may be. The only criticism may be that it finished far early at 3am!
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