The Best of Field Day 2017

Live Review by Claire Francis | 10 Jul 2017

Year after year, Field Day repeatedly offer up impressive line-ups that balance rising talent and bands-of-the-moment alongside a few special vintage acts. This year features the same quality roster of talent, and in addition the East London festival has taken on a new format, with the traditionally two-day event condensed into one sprawling Saturday of music. The site layout reflects this configuration with the inclusion of The Barn, a huge specially-built club stage designed to host the superstar dance outfits on the bill.

Add that the sky is clear and the sun is shining, and the festival organisers have a winning formula on their hands. With so much to see over the course of the 12-hour event, Field Day can often feel like a taster-offering, and many festival-goers can be seen studiously consulting the programme and scuttling from one stage to another across the course of the day. Here, we offer a round-up of five key performances that deserve to be singled-out from the myriad of mind-blowing moments on this sunny June day.

Dr John Cooper Clarke

The ‘bard of Salford’ may be pushing 70 years of age, but John Cooper Clarke still embodies the punk poet spirit of his youth. A mid-afternoon highlight and a point of difference from the rest of the Field Day lineup, Clarke jokes, cackles and curses his way through an immensely entertaining showcase of his spoken-word poetry.

For a man who openly admits to a life lived to excess (speaking about kicking his habit, he quips “now I can’t go back to Manchester, where the use of drugs is practically compulsory”) he possesses remarkable verbal dexterity. With lightning-fast delivery he debuts some new material, including the brilliantly weird Shave Off about "the pitfalls of a chimpanzee butler" and works in plenty of asides that have the crowd in stitches ("less is more", he advises soberly, "unless you're Phil Spector, when more is more").

The beloved Beasley Street draws fervent applause, but it's the closing double kicker of Evidently Chickentown and I Wanna Be Yours (the latter of which was refashioned by Cooper Clarke fan and Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner on their album AM) that seals this iconic performance.

Sinkane

Field Day can always be relied upon for throwing up a few wild cards, and our pick of the lesser known acts on the bill goes to Ahmed Gallah, aka Sinkane. The Sudanese-American musician and his super-tight backing band are on The Moth Club stage, which out of all Field Day's options offers the most eclectic range of artists.

The group’s exuberant playing is the perfect antidote for the mid-afternoon energy slump, combining prog rock, funk, jazz and electronica into a freewheeling and infectiously danceable show. The outfit show off their musical nous by frequently swapping instruments throughout the set, and Gallah’s affirmative messages of peace and love in the wake of the Manchester attack are a unifying call-to-arms in what is one of the day’s most genuine performances.

Whitney

Of all the acts to appear on the main stage, Whitney are perhaps the most divisive. They certainly don’t appeal to the dance music set, but their ‘country-soul’ aesthetic has won them plenty of devotees, and scores of indie kids have settled in on the grass to bask in the Chicago group’s winsome melodies.

They’re a perfectly chosen group for the 7pm timeslot, providing a moment of respite and reverie from the festival chaos. Fresh in from Primavera, frontman Julian Ehrlich confesses the group are running on zero sleep, which might account for some of his rambling stage banter. But the band sound faultlessly fresh as they traverse their debut record Light Upon The Lake, from the bittersweet Golden Days – a song ‘about what you’ve lost’, remarks Ehrlich – to their trump card and crowd favourite No Woman.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

For best psych/fuzz/garage rock conglomeration of the day, it’s a near dead heat between Aussie groups Methyl Ethel and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Methyl Ethel take an early afternoon slot, and see the Shacklewell Arms tent bursting with cheerful, laid back punters revelling in blissful vibes of the Perth three-piece’s cosmic art rock. Their compatriots King Gizzard can be seen side of stage enjoying the show, before their own late evening performance on the same stage.

King Gizzard’s live show is always a psychedelic shock to the senses, and this dynamite performance is no different. The seven-piece have seemingly managed to pack half of London’s Aussie expat population into the tent – people are shimmying up the tent poles for a better view – and they motor through an explosive, energising set. It’s hard to single out a stand-out track from such a frenetic performance, but we’ll go with Gamma Knife; Field Day has surely never seen so much simultaneous head-banging in one space.

Aphex Twin

With the likes of Fatima Yamaha, Nina Kraviz, Hunee, Flying Lotus and Âme making up the dance music portion of this year’s line-up, electronic music lovers are truly spoilt for choice. But whether your preference is techno, house, disco or trap, you were likely to be one of the thousands squeezed into The Barn for Aphex Twin’s long-awaited London comeback.

Richard David James’ top billing is the undeniable drawcard this year, and the industrial scale venue is so full that despite its near-15,000 person capacity people are being turned away by security. Just as his two hour long set begins, a sudden burst of rain and squalling winds bears down. It seems that even the weather is worked up by James’ seismic set, which throws everything at the ecstatic audience – acid beats, jungle rhythms, straight up techno, a pulsing, strobing light show and a visual smorgasbord with screens projecting images of the crowd interspersed with distorted faces of politicians and royalty.

Aphex Twin does the cavernous Barn space justice, and then some, and provides an unsurpassable finale to one of Field Day’s best editions yet.

http://fielddayfestivals.com