RockNess 2010

Booka Shade

Booka Shade arrive on stage to welcoming cheers and striking lights to debut their latest album material. Their near vocal-less performance is a well polished affair, driven by heavy percussion and laced with banks of effects. The result resonates well with the heaving tent, but the one complaint seems to be that Booka Shade’s sound should be allowed to flow continuously, instead of stopping and starting for each new song. A small quarrel but one that halts dancing feets momentarily.

Jesse Rose

A special mention must go to Jesse Rose whom you probably missed as he played out to only a handful of people while broadcasting live on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show on the Friday night. Having not been billed in the official programme lanyards at the event, there really was a sense of discovering buried treasure amongst the few people in attendance as he took them on a journey from upbeat minimal such as Marco Carola's Party People through to funky tech-house creating a party mood that set people up perfectly for the weekend as they scurried off to see him again at the Rizla Stage later that night.

Sensu

Lashings of deep, soulful house throughout Sensu's tech laced, percussion driven set. It's heavy on both funk and rhythm for the duration and gives the Arcadia Afterburner stage an even darker edge, with the dancefloors below moving constantly. Laptops, bongos, effects units and Allen Heath 3D mixers are employed as the weapons of choice to create a unique live sound that is a real early evening treat.

Optimo vs Subculture

The finely selected tracks from Jonnie Wilkes' record bag never fail to delight and this evening the crowd are a mixture of Optimo fans getting a fix and the dregs of the crowd who simply refuse to go back to their tents. Wilkes' stint behind the decks is slick, featuring tracks familiar to anyone who attended his club. Things take a slight dip as he hands over the reins to Junior who lets Johnny Dangerous' track Beat That Bitch With a Bat loop into infinity and the whole event loses a little steam.

Admiral Fallow

Glasgow based ensemble Admiral Fallow had an early start on the Strongbow Stage on Sunday morning however will have been pleased by a strong turnout to whom they delivered a short yet sublime set which brought the smiles rushing back to the faces of all in attendance on a soggy Sunday morning. They even made a special effort to thank the stage's light technician towards the end of their slot, who then showed his gratitude to the band with a particularly over-zealous strobe light display during their final number.

Soulwax

Soulwax are on what seems to be a never ending tour and it was facing a severe risk of getting mighty old in spite of the fact that it is always a great spectacle to behold. Thankfully, this year they have switched things up for this leg of their tour with a mixture of fresh material, classic tracks and samples of their favourite songs that will be familiar to anyone who has ever come across a 2ManyDJs set. Flashes of Altern8’s rave classic "Frequency" close Soulwax’s set to feverish cries of joy and requests for an encore that never materialises.

Boys Noize

Saturday saw the return of Boys Noize to the Clash Arena where he made his Rockness debut two years previously. The contrast between the small gathering that witnessed him then and the "Tent Full" sign blinking at the entrances to the very same stage were a testament to his meteoric rise in popularity in recent years. Those who managed to get into the tent were greeted by the familiar sight of skinny cap and monobrow sporting German delivering a slightly refreshing set containing less of the familiar old tracks from his earlier releases and more of his newer material from recent album Power.

Club 75

Joining Boys Noize in the Annie Mac presents Arena were electro dream team Club 75, an all French DJ collective consisting of Cassius, Xavier de Rosnay (the one that looks like a chimp from Justice), Ed Banger head honcho Pedro Winter, aka Busy P and his golden boy DJ Mehdi. On paper Club 75 looks pretty exciting however it manifests itself as seeming like the drunken idea of four egotistical DJ's down the pub on a Friday night. There was little cohesion between the members of this so-called "collective" with tune selection often failing to flow. This was hampered further by the highly evident gulf quality between the members of Club 75 with weaker DJ's like Busy P noticeably failing to keep up with the flair of the more talented elements such as Justice's de Rosnay.

Gary Beck

The Afterburner stage was a bizarre yet wonderful concoction in the middle of the arena at Rockness. A DJ booth suspended in a thin, high spike with three platforms emanating from its base and intermittently spewing flames into the muggy Highland air it had something of the look of a crashed space ship about it. Regardless of this alien look however it was a local act who lit it up on the Saturday night. Paisley born Gary Beck delighted onlookers with a delicious set of his finest deep minimal sounds that have seen him signed up to labels such as Soma and Richie Hawtin's M-nus in the past few years. He will also play T in the Park's Slam Tent this year, a more prestigious venue, however he will really have to go some to re-deliver the spectacle of tearing up Rockness' odd little Afterburner Stage.

Hadouken!

Hadouken!, arch purveyors of the demonstrably awful 'nu-rave' phase that lingered like a beer fart in an elevator (we still haven't forgiven you, music press of 2007), have toiled to transpose their excitable brand of electro-punk onto a second album For The Masses. And it's a whole lot worse than you might have expected. Without exception, this is a travesty of a show; frontman James Smith actively incites the crowd to "do The Whirlpool" and "The Wall Of Death", elaborate moshing exercises that only serve to imbue the whole sorry affair with an entirely artificial sense of occasion. Smith engenders something of a siege mentality onstage, railing against anything and everything that happens to be on his mind: most of all, it seems, the music press: "this isn't for the journalists, the reviewers or the hipsters." Nor anyone over the (mental or actual) age of 13, it would seem.

Vitalic

An ostensibly difficult choice between Bloody Beetroots Death Crew 77's show at the Clash arena and Vitalic's 'V Mirror' at Radio Soulwax is made somewhat simpler when taking into account Pascal Arbez's superior catalogue. While 'V Mirror' itself feels like a self-conscious (and rather superfluous) inclusion, given the current vogue for audiovisual DJ shows, it's a largely incidental distraction to a set that seldom relents in its capacity to excite. Crowd pleasers like Second Lives and My Friend Dario provide the cues for the plethora of lager javelins, but the most admirable aspect of Arbez' show is the dearth of lulls here, despite a set that seldom tears through the 120 bpm barrier. No need for fancy tricks when you're this good.

Dananananaykroyd

Dananananaykroyd are the perfect wake up call on a bleak and damp Sunday afternoon. Taking to the stage in a blaze of screams, high pitched yelps and daft patter, the Glasgow six-piece are now down one drummer. Skin hitter and screamer John Baillie Junior has ditched the drum kit for this performance and joins Calum Gunn in spearheading the vocals as the group showcase fresh material to a sizeable crowd given the time of day. The lack of a second drum kit doesn't affect their ability to deliver a tight, honed and energetic performance as they play a fantastic but regrettably short half hour set.

Aeroplane

Belgian duo Vito De Luca and Stephen Fasano, two of the finest party DJs in operation at the moment, are closing the Arcadia Afterburner stage for this year's festival in style. Given that The Strokes are playing just two minutes away they successfully manage to attract and keep a large audience entertained for the duration of their set. The black spikes of the Arcadia Afterburner stage, which looks like a combination between a Mad Max film set and a Rammstein live show are a stark contrast to the obscure records and nu-disco edits that Aeroplane are playing, but by the time the duo play their remix of Breakbot's Baby I'm Yours, nobody minds at all.

The Strokes

Closing the festival in style on the main stage were The Strokes. With rumours that this may be the last chance to witness the band on tour together, there was a feeling amongst the crowd that something special was in the offing and they did not disappoint. Revellers were treated to an hour and a half of classic tunes spanning all three of their current studio albums. The band were rewarded with a rapturous reception from the crowd after every song, most notably favourites such as Last Nite, Some Day and Juicebox. However the biggest cheer of the evening was probably reserved for lead singer Julien Casablancas as he declared the 30,000 or so congregated on the banks of Loch Ness to be "the best crowd ever," regardless of the fact there was a feeling amongst the more cynical among us that he probably says this to all the crowds.