Field Day

Field Day.

A day spent in Victoria Park listening to music is a perfect way to spend a Saturday in June. I was present at Field Day, a one day music festival bonanza in East London, featuring many bands, many stages and many people looking like they'd dressed for a jumble sale.

It was a great day. As soon as I arrived, it was beers, pie and chips. It's a long way to Mile End, and it's an enormous queue to get in. Once fully refreshed, I decided to head straight to the tent at the back of the park where Errors were playing. The tent atmosphere seemed so much more powerful than the open air venue, where the music just seemed to drift away.

I had also wanted to see Summer Camp perform, and they splendidly performed with some 80s influenced beats. Lead singer Elizabeth Sankey announced that she wasn't well whilst performing, but you would have never guessed. Tracks like Down and Better Off Without You were storming renditions, and I think we'll hear more from them in the future.

Highlight of the day was the act following Summer Camp. Adam Bainbridge and his band; better known as Kindness, played a quite amazing funky set. I wasn't sure what to expect, but they left me in no doubt that Kindness are the band of the moment.

Songs like Cyan, with an amazing bass riff, and That's Alright are excellent. During the performance of the euphoric House, he jumped into the crowd yards away from me to sing the lines. The forty minutes they were on stage for I was blown away. I am sure that he is destined for bigger things.

Metronomy played for an hour on the main stage, and hit the mark too. The sound mixing wasn't quite right, and the organ wasn't clear throughout, which was a shame. I think the open atmosphere also didn't help. I still love how many people in the crowd were on other people's shoulders during The Look. I so wish they would play more from their album "Lights Out" though.

I then took part in a Beirut mosh-pit dance of sorts, as the sky turned to darkness, and as it just started to pour. That was our cue to get out of there and head home. I saw all the bands I wanted to see, and whilst acts like Kindness and SBTRKT were so powerful and perfect, other acts like Toy and Metronomy had the sound levels all wrong. I hope next year that they can sort that out. Obviously with so many different people making changes, it would be impossible to get it quite right.

But, we still had a good time.