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FKA twigs and Caribou set the scene for Field Day 2015

Catch up with DIY’s highlights from Saturday, including Rat Boy and Sophie.

7th June 2015

It takes minutes for Field Day to go from peaceful haven to people-filled madness. A handful of stages - showcasing heady techno, buzz bands and big names aplenty - isn’t everything. Turn any corner and you’ll find something different, like impromptu sack races and human pyramid games, or eagle-eyed punters noting down stage times by staring up at a gigantic board. With every year that passes, the festival appears to be seizing its own unique identity.

Opening up day one is Hooton Tennis Club, a group who’ve quickly sprung out from their Wirral beginnings. As it stands, their song titles (eg. ‘Kathleen Sat On The Arm Of Her Favourite Chair’) are as long as their existence, but word’s spreading fast. Nods to Pavement and Parquet Courts are obvious, but there’s an extra sense of flair in how Ryan Murphy and James Madden share the berserk, shout-centric lead roles. Bassist Callum McFadden is also something of a maverick, standing centre stage in a flip-reserve of regular band duties. There’s something oddly unfamiliar about Hooton Tennis Club, and this slightly reserved early afternoon set all the more affirms it.

There’s a packed-out tent assembled to see Tei Shi. She’s visibly beaming as she dances around the stage with her arms out like a human jet plane, flying between centre-stage, and a desk full of various twiddly buttons and sampler pads. She’s translated her complex, genre-hopping music to the stage seamlessly, and live, she’s pop dynamite. As the jerky, angular lines of closer ‘Bassically’ twist out into soaring high notes and screams - interchangeably - Tei Shi clearly doesn’t want to leave the stage. Field Day doesn’t want her to, either.

Photos: Formation and Hooton Tennis Club.

Across the park, Tei Shi’s remixing pals HONNE kick off an understated but polished set. Peddling futuristic spacey soul, Andy’s rough-hewn voice sets the duo miles apart from other aspiring Marvin Gaye channelers, as does their introspective stage presence. As for HONNE’s live drummer, he’s an absolute lunatic behind the kit, flailing madly around and somehow producing slick, crisp jazz licks out of the mayhem.

Before turning a helping hand to Caribou’s headline set, Owen Pallett takes centre stage with a mid-afternoon slot. Each of his albums - from the Final Fantasy moniker to last year’s ‘In Conflict’ - are heavily conceptual, often dark beasts. Live, his music is more of a celebration. A gloomy church or firework-lit skies might be a more fitting location, but that doesn’t stop the songs from arching up and lifting off on their own beautiful, twisted journeys.

When enigmatic producer SOPHIE’s set gets going - all heady bass and even the odd, deformed ‘drop’ - he’s not that dissimilar to an everyday DJ. Every other aspect, however, is a game. The PC Music-affiliated producer seems to set himself a challenge of redefining dance in every way imaginable - from the stage set-up to the visuals to the way his fragmented songs shoot up like dynamite-stuffed popcorn. Nothing’s normal, and that’s the fun part. Half of the enjoyment comes from seeing how the crowd watching on tends to react. One second they’ll be bopping to ‘Bipp’, the next they’ll be cheering ecstatically at a giant image of a baby pig being projected behind the producer. While moments of his set feel excitedly tangible, the appearance of QT most definitely does not. Mimed product placement with an alien, year 3000 spin, it’s a tongue-in-cheek close to a set that lives up to its beyond-weird promise,.

Photos: Honne and Owen Pallett.

There are two sides to Essex newcomer Rat Boy’s live game, in 2015. One has him guaranteeing stage invasions by tweeting things like “I’LL GIVE YOU MY GUITAR” to the first punter willing to break through a security barrier. It works. The next admits that despite the rush of attention, he remains a relative unknown when it comes to lesser roles. He recently toured with Circa Waves and Gengahr, winning over hundreds per night, and his sternest test arrives later this summer with a big slot at Reading & Leeds. At Field Day, it might take some convincing as the jagged, trigger-happy indie rolls in, but the likes of ‘Carry On’ and ‘Sign On’ are instant charmers. Some bands take months to win over a small pack. Rat Boy has this immediate appeal, one that can’t be underestimated.

Everywhere that Merrill Garbus takes her playground pop, an all-out party shortly follows. tUnE-yArDs’ brash, explosive musical paint splat of odd-pop never relents. It’s easy to forget how intricate her music is, because live Garbus makes the quickly shifting rhythms, and the vocal splicing look like child’s play. As she bounds across the stage, the energy’s infectious. Today, tUnE-yArDs means ‘Bizness’.

The other side of Victoria Park, Shura has her own tent under some kind of swimmy hypnosis. It’s the most confident set she’s played to date, and as she yells “Fieeeeeld Day!” between songs, her music suddenly seems to become a more extroverted force, too. ‘Indecision’ swoops and whistles with the welly of a thousand muddy festivals, and ‘Touch’ - with a playful extended introduction of cascading bleeps - hits it’s bittersweet pop mark just perfectly.

Photos: Rat Boy, Shura, Tune-Yards, Jack Garratt, LA Priest.

“Excuse me for that being the worse segue between songs ever,” says El-P, brushing off a slight hiccup towards the end of Run the Jewels’ Field Day set. Rustiness? The first signs of cracks starting to form in the duo’s game? Don’t count on it. Ever since ‘Run the Jewels 2’ burst out of the 2014 mainframe with politicised, drastically on-point accuracy, these two have been on a roll. Every show they play is like a victory lap. They absorb each moment like it might be their last. But there’s limitless stamina to the project, which is rocketing by at an unstoppable speed. ‘Love Again’ has innocent kids shouting the dirtiest of chants, while ‘Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)’ remains a rallying cry in an army of them. Nothing can get close to Run the Jewels when they’re on form - and it’s only for a split-second that they even threaten to stumble.

For the past year, FKA twigs has been refining her live show to the point where she’s now able to put on one-off spectacles, where the emphasis is on performance, not just the music. It’s more dangerous ground in festivals, where the resident East Londoner doesn’t have everything in her control. And control is the be-all-and-end-all of twigs, from her commanding ‘LP1’ to the meticulously crafted imagery. Closing out the Saturday, tonight she faces one of her sternest tests in both living up to a big billing and achieving her own finely-tuned goals. What follows is an exercise in restraint and otherworldly force. Her pop can pendulum swing from dank minimalism to sweet, synth-backed ecstasy in seconds, and every vogue-nodding move follows suit. Not everything turns heads and hushes down casual, wide-awake chat tonight, but ‘Two Weeks’ remains a powerful shock to the system.

Before the release of 2010‘s ‘Swim,’ Caribou’s odd-ball electronica struck people as many magical things - a ready-made Saturday night festival headliner, though, was probably not one of them. Just look at him now.

Under a blaze of strobing lights, and red smoky washes, Dan Snaith is a slick operator guiding his live band - complete with two competing drummers - and he hits a rare electronic sweet spot in the process. Caribou might pull his noises out of circuit boards, but set standouts ‘Can’t Do Without You’ and ‘Odessa’ are at their heart, songs about love, and Snaith makes his screeching samples and jittering beats sound alive and human. As golden sunray lights beam out of the stage, and an absolutely epic ‘Sun’ closes, it’s a euphoric end to the first day of Field Day.

Photos: FKA twigs, Run the Jewels, Sylvan Esso.

All photos: Emma Swann / DIY. Words: Jamie Milton & El Hunt.

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