Primavera Sound 2008 Part 1

Well what you going to do if you are pretty much sick of festival in UK, same-old-shit line up, price has gone up in regular basis and did not match up with the excitement? Don’t want to suffer with bad weather and sleeping with mud (hello Glastonbury)? Go to festival abroad! Even though you may have to end up spending fortune for flight and probably hotel. If you never try, you never know how much you enjoy it even though it may cost you a lot!

Seeing lots of my friends have been to oversea festival and they all enjoyed the experience. So it is about time I am doing one! My music taste has changed a lot on past few months and I want to go to a festival without too many money-grabbing-commercial-overrated-multi-media hyped-crappy average bands, I want to go to the festival without pissing down or baking to hell, sunny mixed with breeze is perfect for me. I want to go to festival that I am not afraid to go alone even though knowing little second language. Only one applied to me, and that is Primavera Sound.

The festival itself is take place in Parc del Fòrum, which located in the seaside of Barcelona, Spain. It start from one day festival and with public demand and more sponsor the festival expended to three days event and moved to Parc del Fòrum in 2003 (I think). Now its 8th year running. With weekend ticket you can also attend pre-party festival and post-party festival and don’t have to pay anything extra!

I missed out first 2 days of pre-party as I arrived to Barcelona on Wednesday at 8pm. As soon as I left my luggage in the hostel I ran off to La Pau and search for Apollo Venue, I walked to the wrong direction (instead I randomly found a strip club) but eventually I discovered Apollo Venue. It is a very cool venue, similar decoration like Bush Hall. Choice of beer isn’t much there but Spanish more preferred wine and spirit. Saw Matt Elliot last couple of songs on his set, first one like mental electronic, second one is Spanish folk style, so diverse and random. I stayed on for last band of the night - The Clientelie. Less diverse this time, more mainstream and mellow, they really reminded me Belle & Sebastian mixed with Teenage Fanclub mixed with Absentee, it was a good thing though. Even though their first two songs sounded abit dodgy (techincal fault mainly), later on they overcome that problem and got the confidence on stage, as a result the performance was getting solid. I like their last song of the set, instrumental with beautiful melodic piano sound. They were very good and I like them a lot. Shame they are just warm up, they might be on proper lineup next year you never know.

Day 1
After spending late morning in the hostel and early afternoon walked around Grácia, I headed off to Fòrum. There was no queue for wristband but I will get one anyway, they gave out a wristband and a festival card, you need both of them to get in or you won’t be able to access the site. Also an envelope contained timetable and site map and yellow highlight pen, and the massive programme contained 270 pages about all the band participated this year festival and brief history of Primavera Sound. Forgot to say they were free with weekend ticket.

Maybe it was still too early, it was empty in the site. The site for different stage are spread out, Auditori is outside main entrance, CD Drome on the cover roof, Vice Arena is near the seaport but you have to walk along then stairs down. Good thing about that was even you are at the back you can still have clear view for the band on Vice, ATP and Rockdeluxe because there are stairs around those stages and it is down slope.

MGMT started at 7:30pm , despite the hype, I like the band as they have their own sound and original. That was the first time I have seen them, they were good. However, the crowd…probably still early to the majority of the crowd, dired till they played Time To Pretend . I really like the set though, the guitarist pulled few brilliant riffs that ideal for air guitar. The highlight was Andrew took the rug with writing “who deserve bad karma?”, flicked on the other side of the rug it said “Vampire Weekend”, that made me laugh so hard. They were much better than I expected and I wouldn’t mind to see them again in the future.

I stayed at Rockdeluxe arena and watched The Notwist, indie band with electronica influence. I have heard their latest album The Devil, You + Me and one of my top5 album this year and that along with their previous effort Neon Golden convinced me to see them. They had some techincal difficulty on few songs, but still pulled off an epic and beautiful an hour set. They maybe electronica influenced but they are stupidly loud on the whole set. They have a guy who did the programming by holding remote control like a console. Pilot was my highlight, wasn’t too long on record but live was like 10 minutes but it was an awesome enjoyable 10 minutes, its was unbelievably epic. I recommended people to see them live, The Notwist are wonderful to watch.

Public Enemy next, it was 10pm by then. They are celebrating 20 years anniversary of releasing “It Take A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back”. They attracted a massive crowd tonight and kicked start their set with Don’t Believe The Hype. I don’t into hip hop but Public Enemy are legend and much respect on them. It was an entertaining set by the old skool hip hop. The performance from Chunk D and MC Flavor Flav rapping were brilliant, the band itself got the crowd going. My surprise they were enjoyable to watch, really I respected them a lot more than I used to.

I always wanted to watch Portishead, by the time I am allowed to go to gigs without getting grounded they decided to take a long break after self-titled second album. 11 years of waiting, they are back with equally awesome third album. Silence was a perfect song to start their set, Mysteron was ace with Geoff made some utterly brilliant record scratching. I like their set more than anyone as they fully used of light effect and projector on the background, make it look like a proper show and worth of money. Beth vocal was purely beautiful with mixture of soulful and emotion, I really can’t think of any British based female vocalist have a brilliant voice like Beth. Machine Gun, oh how much I loved that song, I was worried that it sounded average like Coachella set, but not one bit tonight, completely flawless! Made it better, Chunk D came on and did some rapping make it so special, what a pleasant surprise! Machine Gun was definitely my highlight along with Wondering Star (tender but beautiful). In fact the whole set was brilliant, not disappointed one second. They definitely made a triumph return to Barcelona (12 years since the last time they played there!), anyone want to top Portishead performance tonight has to do something very spectacular. After what I have seen, I did not make my mind for a split second and decided go to Auditori tomorrow and see them again

Day 2

As soon as I got up I went straight back to Fòrum for day 2 of the festival. I thought Portishead reserved tickets on sale at 12pm. Actually didn’t start until 3pm! Of course, being stupid come in too early, I got myself a ticket.

Now head back to Auditori and queued up for Holly Golightly and The Brokeoffs. They were meant to start at 4pm but it has been delayed and they were half an hour later than the schedule. Holly admitted that they missed out the soundcheck but from where I seat (8th row), sounded perfect for me. The Brokeoffs, was awesome, performed like a one man band with his guitar while hitting percussion with his foot pedal. I like their songs involved domestic violence, children scared of escalator and train, very funny. The best one, was the Eurovision song joke, it made the crowd giggled. They were very good and their set made me happy. One day if I get married and becomes millionaire, I will hire them to play my wedding for sure!

There were myspace acoustic set near front entrance around market area, saw McEnroe was playing but it was very dull so I went elsewhere. To ATP, MV & EE with The Golden Road were playing, after two songs I got bored with them, they are not rubbish, just nothing special at all, on the book it said Sonic Youth influenced and I expected better. So I went to Rockdeluxe and caught up Grande-Marlaska. Pity there were only 100 people there, to be honest I think they deserved better than that. Yes they are Spanish and obviously I don’t understand a word of what they are singing. I really like the tune and the sound that made you danced on the concrete floor! I hold little expectation on them but they really surprised me.

Back to ATP, MV & EE with The Golden Road are still playing, well I rather stay to watch them till Pissed Jeans on. When Pissed Jeans came on stage, the singer introduced themselves then kicked start with very aggressive sound. By the third song on their set, the guitarist has broke his guitar and ended up heavy bass sound and the noise of drumbeat while getting new guitar to plug in. Forget about the tune, I think the performance alone was worth watching. The singer really cracked me up, he tried to do some dance move but all you can see was his wiggling belly! Loud, aggressive, comedy and of course awesome!

Off across the other side to see No Age, unfortunately I only can see them half a set as I have to queue up for Portishead at Auditori. I like their record, but the live performance, I have to give them another chance. Not overly great from where I stood, I can hear the instrument but vocal was like hit and miss, little bit disappointing but amazed me that how can one guitar made that much noise, that alone will give them little merit for that

Seeing Portishead again, this time was held at indoor. They played in front of packed crowd in Auditori. Same set as last night. Yet again projector screen on the background played the part of it and it was bloody awesome. Performance was as good as last night. Except no Chunk D rapping on Machine Gun this time, and after Cowboy they left the stage to tease the crowd. They came back and played Thread, Road and awesome We Carried On. Toward the end of the song, as soon as Beth came off the stage and walked toward the audience the crowd went mental. Then the unthinkable thing started with few people up on the stage, few seconds later it ended up a massive stage invasion! I don’t think I have ever expect to see Portishead stage invasion, well I witnessed that, it was a brilliant scene with around 100 (maybe more than that) people on stage. They better hurry up and tour again soon!

Nearly midnight, I am still not tired yet. Time for more acts! Back to Rockdeluxe to see Cat Power at 1am, I always admired of what Chan Marshall has done, Jukebox is an unbelievable wondeful cover album, herself and the backing band played fair few off that album as well as her own effort The Greatest. Chan was a great singer, also a great performer. Dancing and moving around the stage made the cameraman very busy indeed. Her voice was heartbreaking and yet brilliantly soulful. Her performance delivered what I expected of her, very unique compared to other female artist.

Head to something different, this time I went to CD Drome around 3am for Ellen Allien. She didn’t play any off her own record as it was DJ set not live set. She brought on few records and produced an hour non-stop mix. What I like about her was that her innovative and creative work, and tonight it didn’t disappoint me one bit. Her mix was full variety: Electronic, upbeat, progressive and chillout. I went fucking crazy when she played Portishead Machine Gun. How she pull that out I have no idea but it was unbelievable. After an hour of dacning in my own little world, look at the watch, 4:15am, time to go…

To Vice arena and see Holy Fuck, by that time everyone was drunk (included myself), so the crowd was more friendly which was surprising. Electronic music with synth and tape machine (WHAT!) and it was incredibly loud. That tape machine with the guy pulling film out was weird, how did that thing work I don’t know but I have never seen that before. Fully of creativity and noise was purely brilliant! It wasn’t enough to witness one stage invasion tonight. There goes another, this time for Holy Fuck. Very funny that seeing drunken people started climbing up the stage from concrete floor, I thought I am going to have a crack with that and actually it wasn’t that hard to climb up! Quickly it got full up with 50 audience on stage with the band, absolutely crazy stuff! Holy Fuck chants after the set from the audience was brilliant and that will live in my memory for a long time. Put Portishead aside, Holy Fuck is probably band of the weekend.