- Entry to a dance music festival on a sunny June weekend is the golden ticket, right? Once I had joined a queue behind a sizable portion of the other 20,000 ticket holders at Manchester's Parklife, though, I started to wonder if a festival run in the middle of a British city would be so perfect.
Party jockey Kissy Sell Out was tonking out his lurid, UK funky electro on the towering main stage as we walked in. The likes of Erol Alkan and Vitalic were lined up in one of the festival's big top tents, with the other two given over to Northern drum & bass/dubstep mega-nights Ape and Metropolis. Lounging on the grass and enjoying the sun seemed preferable for the afternoon, though the central area was soon littered with plastic bottles and trash.
Down in the Ape/Metropolis encampment, formidable performers like Joker and Skream b2b Benga led the charge. Playing in the daylight hours, they were subdued, shorn of their vital grit and aggression. Not that their MC's didn't try: They berated the soundman for the volume restrictions, an obvious limitation at a city festival. High Contrast was more successful at motivating the crowd, with a diverse selection which made plenty of sense in the circumstance. Buraka Som Sistema also did a great job in building a wild, tribal atmosphere with their heavyweight grooves and big stage presence.
I probably should have stayed around these two tents, where it felt like the kind of festival I wanted to be at, but I instead went to check out the Crosstown Rebels tent for a bit. Clive Henry and label boss Damian Lazarus came with plenty of swagger, but totally failed to ignite the floor. There was appetite amongst the people packed into the diminutive tent, and their bare tech house sound was accessible, but it lacked the swing or musical depth to up the ante. A disco influence crept in for the latter stages of Jamie Jones' set, but the Rebels sounded bland and generic today.
The main stage and electro big top were plainly set up to cater to mainstream tastes, but the masses seemed unresponsive. Maybe England's drab performance in the World Cup, shown nearby, soured the party spirit as the sun was going down. Booka Shade got all breathless playing their stadium house tracks, but with the audience acting like they were hanging around with friends at a bus station, the German duo looked pretty daft prancing around ever harder behind their synths and electronic drum kit.
Over in the massive electro big top, Vitalic's played with the toughness and physicality to get people jacking. Opposite the main stage, a small Now Wave tent was set up. Four Tet niftily skipped across genre boundaries, letting his loops spiral deliciously into new concoctions. At another point, I walked in to see Steve Mason, only later realizing he was a one-time member of The Beta Band. I was disappointed to miss most of his band's set, but seemingly happier than Mason himself: He left the stage looking like he'd been slapped. Quite possibly this ambitious and capable musician was disgruntled at being stuck in a diminutive tent, not gracing the grandiose main stage. If so, I'd happily agree that this music festival would have been more exciting had such an imaginative performer been put on a level footing with the big name attractions.
In planning Parklife, the organisers clearly made compromises to appeal to mainstream tastes. Programming such a big party, they probably felt they had to. As I made the long walk across the festival, though, I had to think that this party was too big. We got all the hassles of a festival (big queues for portaloos) along with the restrictions of city clubbing (volume and time restrictions) yet without the exciting diversity and quality of music. Is it really possible to get a festival atmosphere in a city, without asking people to make the effort and travel for the music they love?