Essentially this year’s Hurricane festival wasn’t as exciting as that in 2004 or 2006. If it hadn’t been for Arcade Fire and my friends I probably wouldn’t have gone. But with both of them there it was fine anyway. I thought the line-up was a bit unfortunate. Not only in that it contained many bands – especially among the headliners – which I wasn’t interested in or even actively didn’t want to see, but also in the scheduling which managed to cram all the stuff I liked into the Saturday and thus made for a somewhat dull Sunday.

I also have to remark that the festival has grown even further. They extended the capacity not just in numbers but also in campgrounds and facilities and they didn’t fully sell out which made for a reasonably relaxing camping experience with queues even at the proper toilets not being too much of a problem unless you really wanted to go there at ten in the morning. They also moved the second stage outside the main festival area, thereby enlarging it quite a bit but also making things much less crammed and solving the problem of music from both stages overlapping.

Other things that were different: there seemed to be more police around that there were previously; drinks prices rose even further (I think 2,50 to 2,80 but don’t take my word for it) making you wonder what exactly having the beer and soft drink industries sponsor your festival improves…; and talking about sponsors, they made much more effort on emphasising their sponsors as well. Enough for it to be annoying and overdone. They even played overly loud and distorted commercials on the screens next to the stages in the breaks between the concerts. But hey! I learned loads about shower gel and some band the industry wants to promote now… if just I hadn’t forgotten their names.

In total the festival has become more ‘civilised’ as well. I think they started forbidding crowd surfing a while back (which was a real annoyance in 2004) and this time they had two crowd barriers at each stage, probably making things quite safe and putting even more distance between people and the bands. The frontmost section, which people often had to queue to get into, seemed somewhat poorly managed, unfortunately. At many times it looked as if it was only 80 or 90% full and that with people still being eager to get in. The guys handling the security there had strange ways of doing their job. Ways that mainly consisted of deciding that it’s ‘full’ at some stage and then saying they won’t let anyone else in. Rather than actually counting the number of people in there and operating on a one-out-one-in policy once the capacity was reached. Not only would that have let more people get in, but it would also have been reasonable and easy to understand rather than some security guys playing their random games.

Many things remained the same. The Asian food stalls made surprisingly bad food, but crêpes (or crépes as many of the stalls prefer to write) and burgers were tolerable. There were cameras driving in front of the bands all the times and I still didn’t enjoy camping or the rain although I look like a real camper when compared to other people.

But the main take home message of this weekend is that Arcade Fire rule. Big time.

After Saturday’s flood of good bands and the breathtaking Arcade Fire gig, I didn’t expect much for Sunday’s programme. Most of the bands they scheduled didn’t particularly appeal to me and my plan was to just get out of the festival without too much harm or rain. No rain came and just my feet hurt towards the end, so that was great. Around noon we packed up our tents, so we could leave quickly at the end of the night and then we went to have some food and see some bands.

The first were Juliette & the Licks whom I wasn’t too impressed of. On the other hand, I was able to get some crêpe for lunch while they were playing, so I wasn’t particularly unhappy. This kind of collateral listening is nice and relaxing (or would have been if I could have sat down on the ground).

Then came the only gig I really wanted to see for the day: Kings of Leon. I quite liked their first album and its two successors had at least a few good songs on them as well. Yet, I thought they were a bit too cool when seeing them at Haldern three years ago, so I wondered where that had gone. In total I thought they were better this time, though still very stiff, particularly their singer. And they didn’t play my favourite songs, yet again!

Then the Editors came on. Just as last year I thought they were all right but not overly exciting.

Afterwards: Sonic Youth – another band, household name band if you wish, which I never really got into and who sounded quite old fashioned.

Then I went to see The Five O’Clock Heroes. A band whom I hadn’t even heard about before. But I liked the T-shirts they were selling, so I decided to watch them in the hope of getting an excuse to buy a T-shirt (ah rejoice for silliness!). They are quite young and played a fine gig. Not sufficiently my type of thing to go for that shirt, though.

The next gig we saw was Placebo’s. I used to quite like Placebo many years back but somehow that wore off. And I found their newer albums a bit dull, with one or two decent songs at best, so I wasn’t that enthusiastic to see them. But they played all right – much better than three years ago – and also included many of the older songs. Kudos to Brian Molko for actually saying a few sentences in German to his audience rather than the garbled ‘Dankeschön’ which is the best that many other people can do.

And things went downhill from here. First we saw Pearl Jam whom I completely couldn’t relate to and then German hip-hop act – I dare not say band as I couldn’t make out much music there &ndash Deichkind played. They played some electronic beats and spoke repetitive not-so-funny lyrics to it. All right I just don’t like the whole hip hop and beat thing. And their ‘entertainment’ with people on stage wearing tetrahedral helmets and rubbish bin clothes while others use trampolines or pogo sticks to jump around is mildly amusing at best. But that wasn’t even my main issue. The really bad thing was that loads of people really dug it and they were all jumping around. Like I’ve been at a festival where a number of good and great bands played and everybody was civilised to the extent that they seemed bored. But once a band that I’d locate more in the realms of trash TV comes on, people are going nuts. Made me think I was in the wrong place.

Half way through their gig we rushed to the car so we wouldn’t be stuck in the traffic jam of everybody else leaving and at least make it home by midnight.

Next: Roundup

The big day! Somehow the festival organisers decided to cram all the good bands into the Saturday. Which made the day very exhausting. But – first things first – we had to drink instant coffee because my friend had brought the cooker and the filter but had managed to forget the filter coffee (among other things) that goes with it. Another omission was the pan and the eggs, both of which make getting up in the unpleasant situation that is a campground a lot more tolerable. To start this day off extra miserably, it was quite chilly. And it was raining. Which is where the party tent came in handy as we could at least be in there rather than crammed into tiny tents.

As noon came near – and damn me do these hours of discomfort last long with the only pleasure being an iPod with speakers that had made it to the campground somehow and prepared us for the day – the weather improved and there were even a few minutes of sun. Finally we moved out of the safe tent and first had to grab some food. I picked a Chinese stall and the food was easily the worst Chinese food I ever had. Yucky, greasy, disgusting and making me feel sick. But at the same time good at fighting a hangover which was a main objective of that plan.

And then the music started for us. First with The Bravery playing, whose music always seems a bit too poppy to me but is charming enough to make you smile and cheesy enough to put on at any party. And I guess their gig was enjoyable. I still have to make up my mind whether the ‘real’ setup on stage which made them sound less slick and synthetic is a good or a bad thing. While that slickness is a big part of their music, I still lean towards the former.

Next on were Virginia Jetzt. I always thought their music was quite charming – particularly their first EP – but also a bit too nice to be great. They played a number of their charming songs and a few of the duller ones and their singer really liked talking. Very few singers are good at that. Very few. Still sort of enjoyable and with a nice logo behind the stage.

Next on were The Sounds. I sort of enjoyed their music at Hurricane last year but found it a bit disappointing on CD afterwards. And they didn’t disappoint, the music was enjoyable again when coming from a stage. Even more enjoyble even while sitting down. But hey – look at the screen in the back!

Slowly things were starting be more serious and Mogwai came on next. I like Mogwai and their music is great. So dedicated to noise. And in a very serious and unironic way (give or take a knitted woolen hat). Not many people make this kind of effort. And go on stage without silly jumping around or at least having some lead singer type of person. And make people like them! Seriously cool, coolly serious music. Best enjoyed loud and close to the stage. Which I made an attempt to do, thus noting that the volume levels were very reasonable at the festival – loud but not painful.

Once Mogwai got going I saw that there was a queue to get into the area right in front of the stage for the next gig. And that the queue was quite short. With Arcade Fire being the next band to come up, I did a bit of queueing (in their somewhat random/idiotic system) and watched Mogwai more from the side for a while. Because, uh, Arcade Fire were the main reason for me to come. After seeing them in Köln two years ago I just needed to see them again. After standing through a bit of rain there next to a bunch of very vivid tiny Italian girls and after (this really sucked!) the set up for the band needing 15 minutes longer than it should have, the band came on.

When seeing them in Köln I had fears that their music wouldn’t translate to an open air stage. A fear which turned out to be completely unwarranted. So this time I wondered how they’ll do on a huge open air stage. I actually was quite optimistic about that. And even that didn’t do them justice. And nor could any description of mine. Their music and their gig were just fantastic beyond words.

I’ll leave it at that. The problem was that they really ruined (well not quite ruined) the rest of the day for me because any other band just seemed old-fashioned, boring, dull and lifeless in comparison. For example Modest Mouse whom I saw afterwards (after just missing Tokyo Police Club, unfortunately) and who weren’t at all bad, just seemed dull to me. Even the crappy photo I took of them didn’t want to be in focus.

With things overlapping a bit, I still managed to see a few songs at the Bloc Party gig. I think they’re an OK band and certainly did well and a good show. But that’s about it. One thing to learn from the kids there: If you are standing way bac and don’t really see the band, look at the huge screens. If you want to take a photo of the band, just take a photo of the screens. That doesn’t make terribly much sense to me. But it works.

Next on at the second stage were the Manic Street Preachers. I never really got into their music but I know a few people who are absolutely crazy about it. I also figured that getting in at the front would ensure me having a good place for seeing Bright Eyes afterwards. Afterwards I have to tell that the Manics surely have dedicated fans. But that I’ll not be one of them. And their bassist has a bit of a problem with thinking he doesn’t get enough attention it seems. It seems mostly unnecessary to jump around like hell when playing bass – which is four strings, pretty much one at a time, the last time I checked. On the other hand, their keyboard and second guitar player were hidden somewhere at the back of the stage. Uh? At least I took what is pretty much the only decent photo of the weekend during the gig:

Bright Eyes came on afterwards with a whole orchestra and all of them were dressed totally in white. I was a bit disappointed by that. And I think it was overdoing it and killing the ‘whiney boy with guitar’ charme you usually associate with Bright Eyes. Things became a bit better when the orchestra left, but I still wasn’t persuaded to stay all the way to the end – I was supposed to meet my friends anyway.

Somehow we didn’t manage to meet, but I got to see a bit of Marilyn Manson instead. While the guy seems to be funny and all, I’m just not a friend of his music. And the whole thing seems to be about the persona anyway. More an ‘act’ than a band or so. The show looked quite elaborate but it definitely isn’t my cup of tea.

I was keener on seeing Aerogramme anyway. Their ‘The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it’ shirts at the merch stall amused me when I saw them (but weren’t pretty enough to actually get one) and I enjoyed their Story in White album. I was shocked to see how old the band are – having thought they’d be much younger. The music was all right, although I thought it lacked some of the lightness I had perceived in their album.

The final gig of the night were Interpol. I have a bit of a mixed relationship to their music because I always think I like it but I’m sometimes disappointed when I actually hear it. Still, their gig was solid and if I hadn’t seen Arcade Fire before, I may have even though it was great.

After that gig it was two o’clock. I had been running around in rubber boots which are two sizes too large all day and because of the mud everywhere I pretty much stood all the time. My feet were aching like hell and all I wanted was to lie down and get some rest. Which I almost got but I made the mistake of drinking a lot of water before going to sleep and not having had enough alcohol to be able to just ignore the noises from the rest of the campground.

Next: Hurricane Sunday

The beginning of this year’s festival was a bit chaotic. Of course my friends were late, thanks to both their organisational skills and the wonders of traffic. After we finally arrived, we settled for the first camp ground possible which was still reasonably empty and not even that far away from the grounds. Getting our stuff there from the cars and putting up the tents still took a while though. Luckily I could borrow my mum’s garden ‘party tent’ which should protect us from rain soon after. And which our camp ground neighbours were a bit jealous about. Unfortunately all these formalities meant that I missed The Rakes whom I would have quite enjoyed to see.

Actually things dragged out quite a bit and I also missed Snow Patrol (which I could handle as I didn’t think their current album is too impressive) and also Jet (who seem a bit one hit wonder like anyway) but instead had a barbecue before leaving for the festival grounds. And as nice as the idea of bringing your own barbecue is, it probably just doesn’t make much sense as it means extra carrying, costs a lot of time and with the meat which you can ‘store’ for two days on a campground isn’t significantly better than stuff you buy from the food stalls.

But I digress… Another problem was my camera’s broken screen which means that all the photos I took were taken in ignorance of the camera’s setting and without being able to manipulate them. That’s all right at day time. But as soon as the light isn’t perfect, you just need to tweak the settings to have a chance of getting photos that make sense. Well, I didn’t. So I’ll just put absurdly bad photos here.

The first band we saw were Die Fantastischen Vier who are some ancient German hip hop act. While everybody – including myself – knows some of their songs, I never liked them (or any other hip hop, rap or whatever). So yeah, possibly nice show but I predictably wasn’t impressed.

Next I went into the little tent, which thanks to the festival growing a bit seemed much larger and essentially a Coca-Cola ad. Cold War Kids were playing there. And they were all right. But they didn’t impress me more live than when being played from media. Which isn’t all that much. I thought I could ‘get’ what the buzz is about. Oh well.

Before going back to meet my friends again, I also spent some time with The Good, The Bad and The Queen who were ‘all right’ as well. And a bit dull / old fashioned. And whom I also didn’t ‘get’ on the occasion. Hm, this isn’t shaping up too well, is it?

Despite my general despise of Hip Hop I didn’t mind seeing The Beastie Boys a bit later. I’m not a great fan of their music but they certainly have loads of clever ideas and aren’t to be underestimated. I guess I still like their videos better than seeing them live though. Good videos.

The evening finished off with Queens of the Stone Age playing. Again, they are a band which I can respect in some odd way but which I don’t really like. I guess the best QoTS songs I ever heard was the cover version of No One Knows which Divine Comedy played with an orchestra in Haldern in 2004.

And that was the first day already! Luckily I had enough to drink to find falling asleep easy as the big day was going to be Saturday.

But what I enjoyed most, was the quietness of the recordings. While MTV couldn’t resist cutting to a different camera every second or so, there were significantly less cuts here, giving you a chance to actually see what’s going (except in the Strokes gig where the strange lighting apparently made it impossible for the cameras which weren’t kicked down to focus properly). The benefit of public rather than purely commercial television, I suppose.

First, The Raconteurs playing about 30 seconds of Hands (click inside the image to start playing and hope that you have a sufficiently new version of QuickTime):

Then, Element Of Crime playing 90 seconds of Vier Stunden vor der Elbe:

And 20 seconds of Sigur Rós playing Hoppípolla:

All this topped off with a wonderful sequence of the end of the Sigur Rós gig:

Finally, the camera recording the wet and flashy outsides while I was driving home (which does look harmless on screen, though):

There are plenty of other films of a similarly good quality on the net. If you’re interested, look in the Hurricane forum for an overview of photos and videos and possibly some more. See Hard-Fi play Seven Nation Army, and be sure to watch arte on 27th of July.

I found that in some situations it makes sense to turn on the flash even when you’re far away and it won’t actually light what you’re taking the photo of. But having the flash on fools the camera into thinking there is more light and go for a shorter exposure time. That way you look like an idiot for using the flash where it doesn’t make sense just to ‘work around’ the camera’s cleverness. Oh well.

Unfortunately I also resisted making photos of all those crazy sunglasses people wear. It would have been a great collection. But just as I wouldn’t like people taking photos of me, I thought that taking photos of people I don’t know just isn’t the right thing to do. Still a shame…

Also have a look at my Hurricane photos on flickr which are a slightly different and larger selection. Or, even better, look at the Hurricane 2006 group I made there for everybody to put their photos in because the festival’s name makes it hard to locate the related photos only in flickr’s tagging mess. If you have some more photos, be sure to join and add them!

The camping ground at night:

… with the mysterious light they gave us:

Team South Africa, close to our tents:

A bin full of onion peels next to the burger stall:

And some views from the ground… with some cool blurry softness to them:

Wir Sind Helden’s Judith on screen while some guy was preparing the lowering of that screen:

The half empty parking lot shortly before I reached the car and the rain started pouring:

See tomorrow’s post for some bad films.

And this was a seriously good decision. As soon as I had reached the car and started making my way out of the field that served as a parking lot onto the small road it started raining. And a few minutes later the rain turned into a massive downpour. The kind of downpour that makes you stop the car at the roadside because you just can’t see where you’re going. And even after that downpour had peaked and I could continue driving slowly, the rain was still strong and it kept going.

I felt quite sorry for the people who were still at the festival then, as this was more than just a bit of rain. And while listening to a song of the upcoming Thom Yorke album on the Underground show on BFBS Radio 1 (hooray for the British ‘forces’ in Germany who bring us this bit of British broadcast accents into the radios), I thought it was a shame to not have a camera with me. All the rain, the road, the lightning that kept on going with the sky being lit and the landscape clearly visible for almost whole seconds, the flashes striking into the ground not too far a way. A very cool and threatening atmosphere, that’s probably hard to create without a storm coming along.

According to the news I could find, Muse didn’t play because of that storm and the campgrounds and parking lots were flooded with many of the tents being broken and cars having difficulties to get out. But it sounded like people tried to stay as cheerful as possible through this.

stern, Die Welt, Police, Die Zeit.

Enjoy more photos and some films (including one while driving through the rain).

After the exciting Saturday, the festival’s final day was to be more relaxing. It wasn’t all that relaxing though as the day naturally included packing up the tent and everything else, running around to get stuff back into the car, cleaning up and starting to be a bit weary of being all dirty and sandy and with a generous lack of sleep. That said, after all the chores were done, we were in for a relaxing festival day with a few gigs and generous hanging around.

• Pale
• Pretty Girls Make Graves
• dEUS
• Two Gallants
• The Cardigans
• Apocalyptica
• Wir Sind Helden

Pale (12:50, Germany)

I accidentally ran into this gig while walking by. Pale are on the Grand Hotel van Cleef label, which has a cool name and generally seems to be considered a cool German record label. Unfortunately I tend to find the label’s bands (like Tomte or Kettcar) to be a bit on the boring side, and Pale didn’t seem to be out of place in that scheme…

Pretty Girls Make Graves (13:30, USA)

I went to see Pretty Girls Make Graves first on the ‘third’ stage which was in a tent. While it was hot already at the time, luckily the tent wasn’t as hot as I feared it would be on the inside. The band was really good live. From the songs I heard off records, I had the impression they were a bit slow and boring, but not so live!

In fact, I’d say that their singer deserves a rating of around 80% on the female bandleader awsomeness scale (aka the Karen O scale).

dEUS (14:00, Belgium)

I haven’t been a big dEUS fan in the past, but I happened to pass their stage while they were playing…

As it was quite hot by then, water way being sprayed on the crowd during the gig. It looked like the refreshment made people more enthusiastic than the music. Not necessarily because the music was bad, but rather because it was so refreshing.

Two Gallants (16:00, USA)

I saw a Two Gallants album at the record store the other day and thought I’d check them out at the festival. Unfortunately a trip of carrying stuff back to the car took longer than expected and we only saw the last song they played. So I still have no good idea about the band, but I got a really bad photo instead. Hm.

The Cardigans (16:30, Sweden)

After some more refreshments and ice cream, The Cardigans started playing. I didn’t even know they still existed. Not really my music but easy to enjoy when sitting in the sun .

While hanging out for a while after this we heard and saw the band ‘Live’ play from a distance. Their gig was eternal and quite lame.

Apocalyptica (19:15, Finland)

When being at Hurricane the first time in 1998 Apocalyptica were playing as well. While it may be a bit freaky to emulate metal music on Celli, it sounds surprisingly good. Still not exactly my type of music but quite entertaining.

Wir Sind Helden (19:45, Germany)

As the final highlight Wir Sind Helden were playing. And, again, they’re just great and played a great show for us, with a little too much talking perhaps (but who’d complain when Judith does that?).

After Wir Sind Helden, Gnarls Barkley were playing. I thought it’d be nice to see what all that hype is about. But many other people must have thought the same and as the gig was in the comparatively small tent, it was fully packed and there was no way to get in. So I skipped that. And, to close the festival, Muse were booked. I’m not there biggest fan, but there are some pieces I like and I thought I’d stay for that. And then we saw dark clouds coming up, which had me running for the car as I figured that having a pretty much perfect festival without Muse would be better than getting seriously wet. Read more about the drama around this tomorrow…

This day was also going to be absolute highlight of the festival. With too many rather than too few great bands playing it was impossible to actually see all of them. But an effort could be made and it was absolutely worth it with:

• The Sounds
• Skin
• The Kooks
• The Raconteurs
• Nada Surf (sort of)
• Hard-Fi
• Mando Diao
• Adam Green
• The Hives
• Element Of Crime
• The Strokes
• Sigur Rós

Holy shit! This still reads mouth-wateringly good when writing it down now…

The Sounds (12:20, Sweden)

We meant to start the day by seeing Skin on the main stage and we were a bit early for that. So we heard The Sounds play on the secondary stage and introduce us for the first bit of Swedish goodness of the day which made us stay there for a while. Enjoyable music from bands you’ve never heard of – just what you hope to find in those lunch-time festival gigs.

Skin (12:50, UK)

Next we headed on to see Skin play the main stage. After I had seen her in an interview on telly lately, I wasn’t too impressed and thought she was rather lame. But Jean wanted to go anyway. And it was worth it as she was much more powerful stage and there were many bits of Skunk Anansie goodness all over it.

The Kooks (14:00, UK)

I recently listened to The Kooks and ended up liking their album, particularly for its clear sound acoustic bits. Their live performance was disappointing in comparison as they gave up the clarity in many places for what seemed like a feeble attempt of being more noisy. Not what I was looking for.

The Raconteurs (16:30, USA)

The Raconteurs are another new band which deserves a little attention for being with Jack White and Brendan Benson alone. Which deserves a lot of playing for being kick-ass great. And which deserves being looked at for its nicely drawn letters.

And as luck has it, all of those points held for the gig they played at the festival. Their music was fantastic. Jack White – despite having a facial colour and hairstyle that makes him look like a cross-over between Michael Jackson and Robert Smith – is our guitar god. And they had that nicely drawn R put up at the back of the stage. Absolutely fantastic. More of this is needed!

Nada Surf (17:30, USA) [sort-of]

I’m not the biggest Nada Surf fan. But some of their songs are nice and I didn’t see them play last year at Haldern so this was a good opportunity to catch up. Except that it didn’t really happen as their slot happened to be right in the Germany vs. Sweden match of some football tournament. Apparently loads of people at the festival wanted to see that match and the police said that all of them hanging out at the dedicated football screen was too dangerous or so.

So the organisers decided to show the game on the screens next to the secondary stage… where Nada Surf were supposed to play. Football fans cheered. And if there were any Nada Surf fans, they weren’t too vocal. The organisers said that Nada Surf were great to see the need of the game being screened and gave up their slot for that… while the band’s singer said something along the lines of it being strange that at first they were cancelled and then they were asked to play four songs in the middle of the game. Trying to make the best of it I suppose…

While I didn’t watch the game, I still was in favour of Sweden all the time. After all they sent many of their great musicians to play for us… but it didn’t help.

Hard-Fi (18:00, UK)

While the football went on, Hard-Fi played. While I found their album quite addictive after seeing them last summer, I don’t think they’re all that great. Particularly seeing them play the main stage after The Raconteurs was a bit of a shame. As the same space that had seemed vivid and brilliant and before, suddenly looked quite empty and a bit lame – particularly when seen from a distance. At least they played their cover version of Seven Nation Army.

Mando Diao (19:30, Sweden)

With this gig Mando Diao reclaimed the ‘most seen band’ status with me because it has been the fourth time I saw them play live. I still like their music, but now I’ve seen them grow from being unknown to a headline act at a large festival. Which means that seeing them play just isn’t as much fun anymore (or that I’m old…). Still nice to see them again, just from a certain distance this time.

Adam Green (20:45, USA)

Mando Diao’s status in my list of most seen bands didn’t last long. Counting a Moldy Peaches gig back in 2002 and two others, the wonderful Adam Green now scores a count of four again. And his gig was absolutely fantastic. While he sometimes seemed a bit sleepy or neglecting his excellent old songs in former gigs, none of that happened this time.

In particular there was a lot of audience participation. I’m not entirely sure I got this right, but it sounded like the singer of The Scorpions (who are from near by) was present and Adam forced him to sing a bit of Wind of Change with him to start off the gig. Later on he had an attention-seeking guy from the audience up on stage with him and they sung and danced a song together for us.

After some more great songs, he finished with Dance With Me, having two girls wearing paper bunny ears dance with him on stage. Great entertainment, just as in his early days. The best of his solo gigs I have seen.

The Hives (21:15, Sweden)

While this would have been a good opportunity for a break, we quickly moved back to the main stage where The Hives had already started playing. We didn’t have the best viewing angle, but could see them all wear suits and pose a little too much as usual – including a really cool moment where they all just froze on stage in mid-song. I can pretty much stick with what I wrote two years ago: great music, a lot of power, too much posing. Particularly their singer looks like he’d love to be Mick Jagger. But he’s neither cool nor ugly enough for that. Talking a bit less might be a good first step, though.

Element Of Crime (22:30, Germany)

It’s only been a few weeks since I saw Element of Crime play live, but it was great to have a (short) look at them again. Their music was a soothing break – Wo die Neurosen wuchern, möcht ich Landschaftsgärtner sein… – and a short one because, knowing that I’ll see them again at Haldern in August, I gave up the end of their gig (which included an ultra-long version of Across the Universe) for the next one…

The Strokes (23:00, USA)

I just love The Strokes their newer albums may not be able to match the fantastic Is This It and they may just be a little too cool for their own good when playing live, but in total it’s still enough for some serious ass-kicking.

Their set-list was great, including my favourite song The Modern Age and many others which are frequently neglected. The lights they had on stage were strips of lights which could change colour and all and are meant to go with their current album cover I suppose. I thought their lights were a bit too bright – shining too much into audience – though, which made it a bit hard to actually see the band at numerous times. And while I’m complaining, let me mention that my camera claimed its battery was empty after I took a single, really bad photo of the band. The camera took another 50 photos with the same battery an hour later, though. Argh!

Sigur Rós (0:30, Iceland)

And sometimes, just sometimes, when you’ve got everything you would have asked for, someone will come and offer yet another thing you really like. And at this festival Sigur Rós were that thing. Finally I got an opportunity to see them. And while starting to be exhausted after a day full of gigs this was worth every minute of standing in the night.

Not only did they play their beautiful music with eight people on stage, including an electric bass, electric guitar, drums, a strings and keyboards, with all those high pitched sounds actually being sung by a guy – the music was complemented by a simple yet stunning video projection on the back of the stage which was the only ‘decoration’ they used.

Great Stuff! And I was completely knackered after that day of extreme musical goodness.

Next up: Hurricane Sunday