Once again Field Day must have sacrificed a family of fluffy gosling from the Victoria Park Lake to the weather gods – the forecast to this weekend’s Festival is looking to be as warm as it has been over the past few years. 2014 was the first time the festival was a two dayer, with Saturday featuring music for the young people and the Sunday the slightly older. It’s a format that worked rather nicely, and will be repeated this weekend with grime, PC Music and a lot of slick pop on Saturday, June 6th and more guitar-orientated fare on the Sunday, headlined by returning men of the shoe Ride. The average age of the Quietus reviewing team on Saturday is, indeed, at least a decade lower than that on Sunday. We shall, of course, be all over the site in pursuit of hoot and reviewing favourites from The Quietus main stage and beyond. Below are tips from tQ’s intrepid crew and here are our collated preview features. Saturday Field Day is sold out, but Sunday tickets are still available here.
Caribou
Dan Snaith will be on his third live run of ‘Our Love’ (2014) by the time he plays Field Day. The four man, two kit machine he’s assembled for this album were tight from the start, playing just a few feet from one another in the centre of stages that grew steadily larger. By now, Caribou is a ballet of a band, so limber and precise that left turns through the military pounding of ‘Mars’ and the twisted romance ‘Can’t Do Without You’ seem effortless. Don’t let that fool you: Snaith is one of the finest dance music producers the UK has ever seen – and he’s never sounded better. – Hazel Sheffield
Patti Smith
There aren’t that many living legends still worth seeing, but Patti Smith is definitely one of them. I must’ve seen her perform a dozen times since the mid-90s, and she never disappoints. Every show still blazes with her characteristic fire, wit and spontaneity, while right-hand man Lenny Kaye remains a sparkling guitar foil. And at Field Day Patti’s playing her classic debut album Horses in its entirety; a record that also never ages. How can such an influential LP still sound so timeless and modern and like nothing else, forty years from its original release? Find out on Sunday evening. – Ben Graham
Clarence Clarity
"Eye’m the melting face in the pixel avalanche. Eye write a press release as a youtube commenting parasite. Coz eye’m as 2D as u. Eye’m clarence clarity." So reads the glitched-out electro-funker’s bio on label Bella Union’s website. Doesn’t say much, does it? Look past all the bong smoke and low-polygon mirrors, though, and you’ll find Clarence makes some of the catchiest and best-produced pop music today, informed as much by early 2000s radio R&B as Warp Records’ legendary catalog – a knob-twiddling Justin Timberlake for the weirdos who kind of liked it when their Now! cds would skip. Check out ‘Bloodbarf’ and ‘Those Who Can’t, Cheat’. Smooth, bonafide eccojams. – Bryan Brussee
Run The Jewels
Requests for Killer Mike to take on a full-time position as an anti-bullshit dispenser on American TV are rife right now, and with any luck Run the Jewels won’t let a little thing like not-being-in-the-US curb their 20 minute on-stage political speeches. So if you fancy a Field Day sermon, they’re likely to be your guys. They’re also your guys for bonafide party tunes that’ll go down exceptionally in a field; over-the-top protestations of their awesomeness; and the non-misogynistic use of the word ‘clit’ within the context of hip hop. And if you don’t think that the middle patch of such a highly particular venn diagram is worth seeing, then you are an enemy of fun. – Suzie McKracken
FKA Twigs
Coming off the back of her Congregata performances, presented at dates in both New York and London over the last few months, FKA twigs’ headline set in the Crack Magazine tent on Saturday will mark UK audiences’ first time to catch Tahliah Barnett at a festival on these shores, ahead of a summer that takes in dates around the world. It remains to be seen how she will translate her bold, heavily choreographed and simultaneously grand and intimate stage show, such as that glimpsed as part of the Congregata shows, to the festival stage. Appearing at last year’s Primavera Sound in Barcelona though, Twigs delivered a tight, captivating, stripped back set that already hinted at the promise that would later follow in debut album LP1. The performance suggested that her often meditative sound and distinctive manner wouldn’t necessarily be lost on festival audiences (with the obstacles that passing punters can bring), so you can sure count on her turning in something special this Saturday as she comes off the most fully realised shows of her career yet and previews a forthcoming EP, Melissa, set for release later this year. – Christian Eede
Ex Hex
Whilst Sleater-Kinney (quite rightly) sit at home and take stock of their recent international victory lap, Mary Timony’s Ex Hex will be playing to the assembled hungover on Sunday lunchtime. Given that Timony worked alongside two thirds of S-K in Wild Flag and fronted seminal indie band Helium, it seems slightly unfair. We called Ex Hex’s Rips "35 glorious minutes of lo-fi, stripped-down, power-punk jams" when we spoke to Timony last year and that assessment still holds up after fifty-or-so listens. Think of this as a hero-worship warm-up for Patti Smith’s set later on. – Alex Robert Ross
Mumdance
"Weightless is not a specific style… it’s just a feeling" explained Mumdance on Resident Advisor’s Exchange podcast recently. He was speaking about an umbrella term that he and Logos coined for a number of, seemingly unrelated, productions. As Jack Adams’s definition suggests, weightless tracks don’t necessarily share a tempo, audience or even genre – what they have in common is a sensibility. It’s a concept that reveals much about Adams’s intuition for finding links between sounds that might not immediately seem to belong together. His Fabriclive mix, released last month, attempted to draw a hardcore continuum between early jungle, noise, grime and ambient that made it an intriguing, if not always coherent, statement of intent. Adams’s sets work on this same principle, serving as a fascinating insight into the disparate sources of inspiration that inform his own productions. Field Day should be no exception. – Adam Bychawski
Savages
It’s been two years since Savages released their supremely good debut album Silence Yourself, and almost as long since they’ve played London. During that period, they’ve collaborated with razing acid-psych merchants Bo Ningen on Words To The Blind and debuted new material over the course of a New York residency this January, with album number two looking destined to materialise early next year. From what their singer Jehnny Beth has said about the record, it seems that the band have been indulging their fondness for brutality. She’s described it as "a hard record… Something very heavy" in an interview with Spin and "very heavy, very mean… It’s evil" speaking to Rolling Stone. In short, excellent news. And, even beyond the fact that this’ll be the first chance to hear the new songs on these shores, it’s worth remembering that a Savages set is always a brilliant affair: the last time I saw them, the band’s steely-eyed, strident post-punk was mesmerising, Beth holding a converted Parisian abattoir’s worth of people captive. Sunday’s set should be a glorious homecoming. – Laurie Tuffrey
Jane Weaver
With so much contemporary psychedelic music focussing on attack as it journeys to the centre of the brain, the subtlety that lies at the heart of Jane Weaver’s sublime oeuvre is a breath of fresh air. Last year’s The Silver Globe album found Weaver breaking through to a wider audience, and deservedly so, for here is music that’s by turns delicate, compelling, oft times fragile, hard hitting and nothing less than beguiling. Though her touchstones are recognisable enough, Weaver’s strong melodicism shines through and recent gigs have seen her grow in stature as a performer of note. If you’re still unfamiliar with her music then make with all haste to catch her here. – Julian Marszalek
