2manydjs @ Leeds Festival 2006
By Lauren Strain
I think I'm getting old, or something, because it's taking me longer to recover from these festival things than it used to. Or maybe I'm just drinking more. Erm...
The Hair provide stomp-along, "WAKE UP IT'S FRIDAY MORNING AND YOU ARE HAVING A MASSIVE PARTY IN A MEADOW!" -type riots with Robson's throaty holler bellowing across the land, causing people to look at each other in all sorts of ways that they probably shouldn't be doing quite yet, considering we haven't even made it to breakfast time. Hot, sweaty doses of on-heat barking and thick, bassy dancing are their game; as is destroying drumkits with multi-pronged, -sticked and -hammered attacks. I'll boil your bunny.
Thanks to my tardiness, ˇForward, Russia! and Hope of the States' blasts on the Radio One stage have already been zealously scrawled about; if I may, I'll throw a few yelped words of appreciation into the mix. For ˇForward, Russia!, I reckon: 'Now Famous, Big Style' will do; respectively, Hope of the States get 'Tear-jerking, Jaw-dropping, Megalithic Splat of Transcendental, Skyscraping, Beauteous, Squall-Drenched Melodynoise', which is a bit more extensive and slightly less decipherable, but then, they do have such a knack for leaving you speechless, slobbering, smiling and screwdriven into the floor from the scythes of 'The Black Amnesias' and drooling spittle whilst foaming at the eyeballs for 'Forwarddirektion's metallic rally. When I arrive home to be told they've split up, it's like the crappest end to a festival, ever. Still, they regularly shot my adolescence through with fits of devilish feedback and intensely personal, infinitely intimate concerts, so let's have a bloody big HIP HIP HOORAY, please, for Sam Herlihy and his maligned troupe of soul-searching, heart-scaling, bandaged-up end-of-the-world-ers, eyes a-glaze with blazing fire. Invaluable.
Klaxons were alright. Tent was packed. Crowd near me was godawfully statically boring. But then, the last time I saw them was in a state of Red Bull paralysis, from a balcony, with a chandelier dripping rays of blood-red light onto my face, at 2am, above a sea of churning, glo-stick tossing bodies, whilst the neon-trousered, lightning-footed ones cantered back and forth across a theatre's platform, drunkenly spiralling and colliding into their bits of stage debris, wearing purple caps and pictures of Mickey Mouse on their chests like four dark horsemen of the canary-yellow apocalypse. So I did sort of dread this particular outing ending up a bit anticlimactic, like. Still, adrenaline-rush, rainbow-spotted ecstasy pop never sounded as good as the sirens of 'Atlantis to Interzone', and that's evident even here, at the back, hearing little and seeing less.
The atmosphere for Hot Chip is one of utter uproar and gurning grins. Their slightly lazy, nonchalant hums, beats and swirls of effects swim through the smoky air, dozing and droopily sultry. Quietening down and holding back, so that the crowd can sing 'And I Was A Boy From School' for them, they nod knowingly as the lyrics "We tried, but we didn't have long; we tried, but we don't belong" echo as true as anything amongst a marquee full of spaced-out, happy-faced dreamers, miles away from the city roar and shit workaday chores like bunging the washer on or paying four hundred quid for the car fixing. Who'd have thought that a zip through rhythm-tastic, repetition-obsessed 'Over and Over' - which basically consists of robots singing the mantra "Over and over and over and over and over", er, over and over - would be so damn touching?!
Finally, 2manydjs is a body-bruising, slip-sliding mash-up of crowd-pleasers drenched in melted euphoria (when they swung into Arcade Fire's 'Rebellion (Lies)', anyone?) Some mates squished at the barriers get cocktails poured by perspiring minions into their open mouths; and as the viscous, creamy-fruity liquids dribble down their chins and as we gargle warm wine before churning up the ground and starting conga lines at the Silent Disco, Friday doesn't really end, as such - more explodes into memory loss...
