Field Day
Victoria Park, London
06/08/2011

They can smell her fear. Eyes bulging, hands trembling, the clarinettist of the Farnborough Concert Band shudders with apprehension as she faces down an achingly poised east London crowd. Someone has put her up to this, and she’s not happy about it. But when she leads the big brass band through some kitsch-pop covers, her look of horror turns into one of quiet triumph, as the onlookers start jigging and a-giggling to Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ reimagined as a James Bond theme tune.

With its village fete theme and customary egg and spoon races, it’s this spirit of silliness that Field Day has tried to keep at its core, despite doubling in size since its birth five years ago. The chronic sound problems the festival is perennially plagued with are no laughing matter, however. At the Village Mentality Stage, the wonky alt-pop of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti is simply lost upon the ether. Which is a shame, because Pink, looking very much like Dougal from the Magic Roundabout, does his level best to deliver a selection from his Mighty Boosh-meets-Beach Boys ‘Before Today’ album, only for the echoey vocals of ‘Fright Night’ and beach-funk of ‘Beverley Kills’ to disappear amidst some smoke-kissed synth swirls.

Over on the Bloggers Delight stage, the obtuse dream samples of experimentalist Oneohtrix Point Never are an intriguing demonstration of technical skill, but not enough to motivate a crowd to do anything more than chat amongst themselves. Twin Shadow instead gets a full-blooded reception with his amped-up live incarnations of his normally muted electro-indie, but even here sound niggles mean concentration is needed to hear his pitch-perfect performances of ‘At My Heels’ and ‘When We Were Dancing’.

Field Day simulates that big-festival-feel better than other London day festivals, if only because no one seems to know where or when anything is, enabling punters to get nicely lost. But that does mean there’s a chance of stumbling into the sunlight only to encounter John Cale wailing “I CAN’T KEEP LIVING LIKE THIS ANYMORE!”over some dire death blues, reducing the more chemically enhanced punters into quivering wrecks.

Harmony is restored by Jamie Woon, who soundtracks the sunset with his sultry ‘Night Air’, before namesake Jamie xx draws the biggest crowd to the smallest stage with some staccato remixes that set the scene for standout act SBTRKT. Adept at adding just enough vocal layers to carry a rhythm, the man behind the tribal mask finally gives the crowd something to dance to with a sublime dusk set of two-step dubstep.

Headline act Wild Beasts bring an eerily pleasant end to proceedings, but don’t provide the pay-off that the crowd seem to be baying for, with droves either leaving or retreating to the Bugged Out tent for Carl Craig’s celebration of Detroit tech-house. Symptomatic of the fact that if just a little more attention was paid to the programming and ironing out sound problems, Field Day could become something more than just a parade ground for East London.

Michael Bennett