_______________DISTORTION DISCO______________

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Roskilde Review

So another festival has seen its ending. This years Roskilde Festival was in my oppinion nothing less than great. The weather was really good, with only some heavy rain on monday 3 days before the actual music.

As is tradition RF featured a pre-festival stage upon which the local nordic talent gets a chance to shine. I visited it only once, to see Danish band Nordstrøm, which didn't rock my world, but did put on a decent show. I still rank Berlin as one the best Danish singles for a long time.

On thursday, following some heavy drinking, Pillaging, and football, I went to see The Editors. I hadn't really heard any of their tunes beforehand, but I was pleasently surprised to hear their Interpool/Joy Division brand of dark rock. Probably not a band that I will spend ages over, but all in all they were a pretty interesting band. From there it was on to music-geek darlings Who Made Who at the Metropol stage.

Wearing full body animal suits Whomadewho delivered an excellent party - Amazing how many people still love Satisfaction!
After the delightful disco-punk of Whomadewho I listened to a bassheavy gutkicking dj-set by Distortion Disco favorite Justice, the obvious crowdpleaser was of course Never be Alone, the devasting dancefloor bomb that can't and won't die:

Justice vs. Simian - We Are Your Friends

The big dissapointment was Guns'n'Roses or maybe I should say, the Axel Rose Freestyle Jazz improvisation class 101. It was really that boring.

The following day featured some decent concerts from vinyl maniacs Birdy Nam Nam and Swedish indie rockers Shout out Louds. Lady Sovereign delivered an excelent concert, highlights being Random and new song featuring heavy use of the F-word.

After Sov it was on to Morrisey who delivered a sunbathed feelgood concert?!?!

Happy Mondays gave wonderful flashbacks to a Madchester seen which I wasn't part of. Especially Bez is just amazing. In a perfect world every good band would have guy running around with no apparent function, but to get the crowd going

The Streets and The Scissor Sisters delivered an effective 1-2 combo of party pop! The Scissor Sisters concert probably being the absolute highlight of my festival. I cannot stress how much I am looking forward to hearing the new album!

Josh Rouse gave me goose bumps and Primal Scream kicked Rolling Stones butt.

Tiga of couse was pure techno mayhem - A jubilant set for his many fans. I was amazed at the chants of 'Tiga Tiga' before the concert. He should've played some more of his own tracks, but thats just a very minor imperfection.

Phoenix fresh of from watching France beat Brazil in the WC delivered a jubilant set, marred by a lousy sound, but putting a nice ending to yet another fine festival day.

The final day, sunday, was kicked of with the toddlers Arctic Monkeys who actually rocked a completely packed Arena stage. As a friend of mine said: "Had I only been 18 this would have been the greatest band in the world!"

One of the surprises on this year was the performance by The Strokes, so much grit and anger coupled with a rather talkative Julian Casablancas.

A superb showing, if only they had done that 3 years ago... After the New York cool it was onto the Glasgow cool of Franz Ferdinand. This being my third concert with them I admit being rather sceptical, but they delivered like pretty much everything else.
Pretty much, having the exception of a cooked out Alison Goldfrapp, which meant their show was cancelled. Way to handle stardom miss Frapp.

The final concert of the festival, cut short because I wanted to go before the crowd, was Roger Waters performing Dark Side of The Moon. Actually it sounded really well and the quadrophonic speaker thing was really good. The people I knew who staid behind said it was on of their all time festival highligts!

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Final grade on a scale from 1 to 10

9 - Great festival, great weather, great people, but not much innovation on the music scene.
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So to top of this hastily written Roskilde recap, here's a few tunes from some of the more memorable artists of this years festival:

Tiga - Far from home (Digitalism Remix)
Buy it here

Franz ferdinand - Outsiders (Isolee Remix)
Buy it here

Primal Scream - Kill All Hippies
Buy it here

Lady Sovereign - Hoodie (Basement Jaxx Radio Mix)
Buy it here

posted by Niall Quinn @ 9:43 AM

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