Laneway Reflections

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    Laneway Reflections
    POSTED Feb 04 2015





    A bunch of us were lucky enough to find ourselves at the Sydney installment of St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival on the weekend and we all took a turn at picking our best on ground from the jam packed all killer no filler lineup…


    JON HOPKINS

    The Man had immediate technical difficulties that meant his set dropped back five minutes from starting time which worked in tandem with an overlapping Flylo set to ensure his RBMA stage set was only about two thirds full. The essence of his audio-visual elements was fairly simple – large scale video projection behind him while four to eight thin beams pulsed during the more climactic moments and the occasional strobe. It may not have been layer3 but the desired effect was estimably achieved in that I’m almost certainly 70% of the crowd had already shelved and the bright lights were like, you know, super trippy or something. That said, if you’d have dropped any sort of hallucinogen prior to that said I can guarantee each song would have lasted an infinity because that son of a gun is one patient releaser. Each time you suspected he’d reached the zenith of a beat, he added in an extra layer so as to thicken it slightly further, and an extra, and an extra again, thinning the bassline subtly before releasing it underneath the new additions. I’m not completely sure, but I’m mostly certain that I heard the engineer at the mixing desk yelling “I CAN’T DO IT CAPTAIN, SHE JUST WON’T HOLD!” before he eventually bathed the surrounding crowd in blood when he exploded at the conclusion of Open Eye Signal. It was a set punctuated by extreme gore and extreme sonic structural development. - Tommy


    JUNGLE

    After drifting through Laneway for a good few hours, catching the vapors from some of my faves and trying to override the shitty sound squirting from the PA with good vibes and familiarity, I took the back seat on the friend bus and let them take my ears somewhere new (for me).. Jungle. Jungle are not a band. They’re a groove.. or a mood.. or I don’t know.. some crazy sort of magic. The sun pushed its way past the clouds, the sound guy removed the mattresses that had apparently been strapped to the front of the speakers all day and that beer that I had been aching for somehow seemed like it was in no rush to leave the bar. I couldn’t imagine Jungle being from anywhere but London – I’m not going to say melting pot I swear.. but.. its just a UK sound. You could draw a line from Jazzie B and Soul II Soul to where Jungle reside easily, stopping at Brand New Heavy-ville and Attica Blues on the way..

    Before I saw Jungle live I had no idea what they looked like and, due to how far back I was standing, I still don’t.. But so what.. outside the free flowing back up singers with perfectly timed cut through claps they’re not really a visual act.. they’re a group in a constant groove with snap tight timing and sweet falsetto harmonies. They’re my new favourite party. Sign me up for next time. - Mez


    ROYAL BLOOD

    I’m going to come right out and say it, when I saw Royal Blood at Laneway on Sunday I straight up fan-girled my way through that entire performance. It was bad enough that I waited from about 1pm at the Mistletone Stage to make sure I had a primo position but then I had to go and air-guitar/drum along like my life depended on it. The good thing is though I wasn’t the only one. Royal Blood’s music kind of demands that kind of reaction from you, if you were standing watching the boys perform live and you didn’t head bang, strum an air-guitar or attempt to sing along with the words then I would have to say you are a zombie and there is something seriously wrong with you. They ripped through all the hits, “Little Monster”, “Figure It Out”, “Come On Over”, they pretty much played the whole album but the highlight of course was crowd favourite “Out Of The Black”. Mike started out in typical rock star fashion with a series of long, overdriven guitar strums as Ben stood on top of his drum stool. Meanwhile Mike was seemingly instructing each section of the crowd to “fucking bring it” and boy did they. That riff started and let me tell you I have never seen so many people head banging at Laneway before. It didn’t matter if you were a 16 year old girl or a 40 year old man you went hard or you went home. The show ended with Ben jumping off stage and climbing up on the barrier just staring and high-fiving people like the serious G he is. Royal Blood was without a doubt the highlight of Laneway for me. - Court


    ANGEL OLSEN

    Angel Olsen said this about Joan Baez: “This older woman, and she still had the power of quietening a crowd. Thousands of people. She’s up there. And everyone just shuts up. I thought that was very cool.”
    And that pretty much applied to Ms. Olsen’s Laneway show except she had a band. It wasn’t an easy slot and she might not be a festival act really (unless it’s Green Man) but she ruled it. Just quiet, intense and focused. Fixing us with a hard stare of concentration.
    Her songs are a bit better than most people’s, certainly than most others at Laneway, and the delivery is unflinching.
    It could be alt-country, but it’s a bit more indie rock. Some Mazzy Star and Velvet Underground to go with your Gillian and Joni.
    Strong but calm on the guitar.
    I didn’t get her album, though many people I trust had it in their top 10 for the year. But I probably will now. - Tony


    CARIBOU

    Being a big electronic music fan I usually spend the majority of my Laneway bouncing around the Red Bull x Future Classic stage crammed between a small enclosure of sandstone walls. But this year I managed to venture out of my comfort zone to the Mistletone stage where I was crammed into a slightly bigger sandstone wall enclosure to watch my most highly anticipated set of the day – Caribou. Having been a fan of Dan Snaith’s various music endeavours since my teens (Caribou/Manitoba/Daphni) and his most recent release ‘Our Love’ being my album of the year I was very excited to be seeing him for the first time. After getting there nice and early and managing to get my way to the front (which involved spilling my beer down some agro dudes back) I was ready to settle into 45 minutes of bliss with Dan playing the perfect ratio of old and new material. Highlight for me was of course 2014’s song of the year (I’m not just saying that, In The Mix can back me up) ‘Can’t Do Without You’ which had the whole crowd singing along, almost as if we were begging him to never stop playing.- Jo

    147641
    Tags:
    laneway, jungle, caribou, royal blood,
Submitted by Site Factory admin on Thu, 05/02/2015 - 01:17





A bunch of us were lucky enough to find ourselves at the Sydney installment of St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival on the weekend and we all took a turn at picking our best on ground from the jam packed all killer no filler lineup…


JON HOPKINS

The Man had immediate technical difficulties that meant his set dropped back five minutes from starting time which worked in tandem with an overlapping Flylo set to ensure his RBMA stage set was only about two thirds full. The essence of his audio-visual elements was fairly simple – large scale video projection behind him while four to eight thin beams pulsed during the more climactic moments and the occasional strobe. It may not have been layer3 but the desired effect was estimably achieved in that I’m almost certainly 70% of the crowd had already shelved and the bright lights were like, you know, super trippy or something. That said, if you’d have dropped any sort of hallucinogen prior to that said I can guarantee each song would have lasted an infinity because that son of a gun is one patient releaser. Each time you suspected he’d reached the zenith of a beat, he added in an extra layer so as to thicken it slightly further, and an extra, and an extra again, thinning the bassline subtly before releasing it underneath the new additions. I’m not completely sure, but I’m mostly certain that I heard the engineer at the mixing desk yelling “I CAN’T DO IT CAPTAIN, SHE JUST WON’T HOLD!” before he eventually bathed the surrounding crowd in blood when he exploded at the conclusion of Open Eye Signal. It was a set punctuated by extreme gore and extreme sonic structural development. - Tommy


JUNGLE

After drifting through Laneway for a good few hours, catching the vapors from some of my faves and trying to override the shitty sound squirting from the PA with good vibes and familiarity, I took the back seat on the friend bus and let them take my ears somewhere new (for me).. Jungle. Jungle are not a band. They’re a groove.. or a mood.. or I don’t know.. some crazy sort of magic. The sun pushed its way past the clouds, the sound guy removed the mattresses that had apparently been strapped to the front of the speakers all day and that beer that I had been aching for somehow seemed like it was in no rush to leave the bar. I couldn’t imagine Jungle being from anywhere but London – I’m not going to say melting pot I swear.. but.. its just a UK sound. You could draw a line from Jazzie B and Soul II Soul to where Jungle reside easily, stopping at Brand New Heavy-ville and Attica Blues on the way..

Before I saw Jungle live I had no idea what they looked like and, due to how far back I was standing, I still don’t.. But so what.. outside the free flowing back up singers with perfectly timed cut through claps they’re not really a visual act.. they’re a group in a constant groove with snap tight timing and sweet falsetto harmonies. They’re my new favourite party. Sign me up for next time. - Mez


ROYAL BLOOD

I’m going to come right out and say it, when I saw Royal Blood at Laneway on Sunday I straight up fan-girled my way through that entire performance. It was bad enough that I waited from about 1pm at the Mistletone Stage to make sure I had a primo position but then I had to go and air-guitar/drum along like my life depended on it. The good thing is though I wasn’t the only one. Royal Blood’s music kind of demands that kind of reaction from you, if you were standing watching the boys perform live and you didn’t head bang, strum an air-guitar or attempt to sing along with the words then I would have to say you are a zombie and there is something seriously wrong with you. They ripped through all the hits, “Little Monster”, “Figure It Out”, “Come On Over”, they pretty much played the whole album but the highlight of course was crowd favourite “Out Of The Black”. Mike started out in typical rock star fashion with a series of long, overdriven guitar strums as Ben stood on top of his drum stool. Meanwhile Mike was seemingly instructing each section of the crowd to “fucking bring it” and boy did they. That riff started and let me tell you I have never seen so many people head banging at Laneway before. It didn’t matter if you were a 16 year old girl or a 40 year old man you went hard or you went home. The show ended with Ben jumping off stage and climbing up on the barrier just staring and high-fiving people like the serious G he is. Royal Blood was without a doubt the highlight of Laneway for me. - Court


ANGEL OLSEN

Angel Olsen said this about Joan Baez: “This older woman, and she still had the power of quietening a crowd. Thousands of people. She’s up there. And everyone just shuts up. I thought that was very cool.”
And that pretty much applied to Ms. Olsen’s Laneway show except she had a band. It wasn’t an easy slot and she might not be a festival act really (unless it’s Green Man) but she ruled it. Just quiet, intense and focused. Fixing us with a hard stare of concentration.
Her songs are a bit better than most people’s, certainly than most others at Laneway, and the delivery is unflinching.
It could be alt-country, but it’s a bit more indie rock. Some Mazzy Star and Velvet Underground to go with your Gillian and Joni.
Strong but calm on the guitar.
I didn’t get her album, though many people I trust had it in their top 10 for the year. But I probably will now. - Tony


CARIBOU

Being a big electronic music fan I usually spend the majority of my Laneway bouncing around the Red Bull x Future Classic stage crammed between a small enclosure of sandstone walls. But this year I managed to venture out of my comfort zone to the Mistletone stage where I was crammed into a slightly bigger sandstone wall enclosure to watch my most highly anticipated set of the day – Caribou. Having been a fan of Dan Snaith’s various music endeavours since my teens (Caribou/Manitoba/Daphni) and his most recent release ‘Our Love’ being my album of the year I was very excited to be seeing him for the first time. After getting there nice and early and managing to get my way to the front (which involved spilling my beer down some agro dudes back) I was ready to settle into 45 minutes of bliss with Dan playing the perfect ratio of old and new material. Highlight for me was of course 2014’s song of the year (I’m not just saying that, In The Mix can back me up) ‘Can’t Do Without You’ which had the whole crowd singing along, almost as if we were begging him to never stop playing.- Jo

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