Bestival 2009 - Friday
'Moon And Moon' is a particularly captivating performance, Natasha Khan's voice, with its timid sexuality, swoons around the tightly packed canvas.
A ferry journey and a killer walk to camp mark the beginning of this, the seventh Bestival. Campers were able to set up as early as Thursday morning, and many have, which leaves unclaimed ground restricted to camp sites far afield. Despite tight purse strings, the festival's numbers have swelled once again, this year, to 40,000. Set in Robin Hill Country Park, it's the ideal location for this festival, surrounded by forests on every side of the site.
The crowd is largely made up of teenagers and twenty-somethings. Families are welcomed here and well catered for, but you feel Camp Bestival would suit them better. No matter which corner of the area you go to, you can't get away from the smell of cannabis and the glazed, saucer-like eyes, staring at you straight out of an HG Wells novel. The presence of police officers seems more like a gesture of demonstration and little more. They even seem more occupied with handing out lanyards meant to keep your phone safe than actually clamping down on drug use. Bestival's own florescent-bibbed Gestapo try to stop people from bringing more alcohol into the site from their cars, a veiled attempt to force people to buy over-priced beers and spirits from the bars on-site. As we set up camp, we look across the distance at a makeshift shantytown filled with rat-race refugees.
Friendly Fires walk out to a festival ready crowd, brimming with enthusiasm and anticipation for a set that looked unlikely to happen earlier in the week. Drummer Jack was worried that he wouldn't be able to perform Bestival due to the illness that hospitalised him earlier this week, so it's pleasing then to see all three on stage. Guitarist Edd is compensating for any diminished performance that may be here, completely immersed, his riffs pulling the crowd into their sound. Inflatables bounce across the sea of tin foil misfits and cardboard robots. The festival Gestapo duly confiscate contraband inflatables, the lowly space hopper finding its way lost over the barrier. Sanctioned inflatables are rolled toward the exit and punched back out into the crowd by a larger, fat-knuckled bouncer, side of stage.
The mass, a mixed bunch of the youthful and middle-aged, the former wrestling for position by the barriers, the latter content to nod appreciatively 100 yards back for hit 'Jump In The Pool'. Newest track 'Kiss Of Life', with its trademark vocals and punchy African percussion, is an exertive piece for Jack, which he plays well.
There's a new ground layout this year: the main stage faces the big top tent, and it doesn't work. While it makes travelling between stages convenient, the sound from each stage fights for dominance. Sitting 100 yards from the main stage's big screen, you can't hear the main stage sound. It is a surreal experience seeing one band and hearing another, like gigging with your ipod in your ears.
Florence And The Machine is up next, with her band dressed in emerald green and gold lycra superhero getup. Her set is not as spectacular; her crowd banter repetitive, she runs through tracks from 'Lungs' suffering from the abundance of stage space and her inability to restrain, predictably closing with 'You've Got The Love' and 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)'.
MGMT get the most enviable applause of the whole festival. On stage, they are quiet, but their performances of 'Electric Feel' and 'Kids' shoot energy around the masses. Crunching on the cups of the day's festivities and weaving through bodies, we struggle to enter the big top for Bat For Lashes at midnight. 'Moon And Moon' is a particularly captivating performance, Natasha Khan's voice, with its timid sexuality, swoons around the tightly packed canvas, humming with body heat.
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