Electric Picnic 2008, a MySpace Tour - Sunday
August 19, 2008 by Aidan Hanratty
Filed under Anablog, Video of the Day archive
Sunday’s line up explained, through a MySpace linkaggedon…. Let it be known that I abhor the use of labels, so this was a painful exercise.
[Previously - Friday's acts; Saturday's acts]
Sunday 31st
Absentee; James Ford-produced dark, melancholic indie-pop. Think The Magnetic Fields, only British.
Adrian Crowley; Irish singer-songwriter folk music stuff. Hot Press love him.
Black Lips; Flower punk. Or so their Myspace says. Rough around the edges, and all the better for it.
Candi Staton; She sang Young Hearts Run Free! And You Got The Love! Unmissable.
Céilí House Allstars; The name says it all really.
Chromeo; One half is A-Trak’s brother. The other dresses like Cee-Lo. They sound like Prince with a vocoder and a sense of humour. A bit Marmite, they’ll probably draw a HUGE crowd.
Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band; Basically a Bright Eyes project without producer Mike Mogis, this doesn’t deviate much from his folk-tronica template. Not a bad thing, mind.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYewptydkvE]
Cowboy X; An Irish take on indie-tronica.
CSS; Brazilian flavoured pop-rock turned generic indie whine. If you’ve seen them already (and no doubt you have, you can afford to miss them). If not, they can be good fun live.
Deadmau5; Tech-electro flavour of the month. Pronounced Dead Mouse.
Dengue Fever; Indie-rock with a Cambodian twist. Hence the name, I guess…
Dublin City Big Band; I can’t find a link for these guys, but I imagine they play Glenn Miller and Gershwin favourites. Fun for all the family then.
Dublin Gospel Choir; An Electric Picnic staple, expect these guys to rouse you out of your hangover on Sunday morning.
Emmy The Great; More folk-pop. Seems to be a lot in this vein on Sunday…
Farmer’s Market; Some noodly jazz for your inner beatnik. Don’t be fooled by Famer’s Market on the Picnic website, it’s a typo.
Faust; 70s Krautrock. Important.
Florence & the Machine; Mournful, slightly distorted indie-rock.
Foals; Their Myspace says that they are SNOTTY ART SCHOOL DROPOUTS HUNGRY FOR THE DOLLAR, so who am I to say any different?
Gemma Hayes; Husky-voiced Irish indie-pop darling.
Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly; British acoustic guitarist. Recently covered Justice’s DANCE, with surprisingly good results.
Grinderman; Nick Cave minus The Bad Seeds plus some other guys led Bad Seeds side project. Not my thing, but I think I’m in the minority.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sshpJbeNF4U]
Hadouken!; Their album title, Music For An Accelerated Culture, says it all. Comparisons to Mike Skinner aren’t that valid; think less Streets, more Street Fighter.
Ham Sandwich; Kells-based indie-pop.
Hayseed Dixie: Bar fight music. The sort of thing you’d expect to hear in the bar where The Blue Brothers do Rawhide.
Hercules & Love Affair; DFA-based future-disco. Sexy as hell. Antony (of the Johnsons) won’t be around, but don’t let that put you off. This will be great.
Iarla O’Lionaird’s Invisible Fields; Irish music. I don’t profess to know much about this kind of thing, so I won’t say any more than that.
Ibrahim Electric; Meandering Danish jazz-funk. In a good way.
Jah Wobble’s Chinese Dub; An experimental foray charting what happens when dub collides with Chinese folk music. This could be very interesting.
Johnny Flynn; The blues and country end of the singer-songwriter spectrum.
Leila; Moulin Rouge era-sounding nightmare-pop on Warp. Looks like a definite highlight to me.
Lou Rhodes; Delicate, heart-on-the-sleeve style folk music.
Mahmoud Fadl’s United Nubians; Master Drummer from the Nile. Gives world music a good name.
Martina Topley-Bird; Super-collaborator turned solo artist. One to see if you like your intelligent female pop like that of Santogold.
Mark Geary; Token Irish-American singer-songwriter nonsense. Don’t we have enough of these guys?
Micah P Hinson; Deep-voiced country warblings.
Michael Franti & Spearhead; Revolutionary Californian reggae-soul.
My Bloody Valentine; What can one say? The reason a lot of people are going I’d wager. Your friends will probably mock you if you miss this.
Pivot; Noisy, Australian post-rock-tronica. Nothing like the other Aussie acts in town for the weekend (ie Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy), but a little variety never hurt anyone. Worth a look.
School Of Language; Bizarre vocal experimentalists.
Sex Pistols; Probably only worth seeing if you want to tick them off the list of acts you’ve seen. Unlike MBV, I can’t see any valid reason for them to re/perform.
Sinead O Connor; Again, not much one can say on this front. She’s a bit nuts, she courts controversy, but she also recorded this.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO8JWbG6bVw]
Stephen Malkmus; He was in Pavement. Lots of people like him. Karl talked to him recently, so have a read to see where he’s at these days.
The Congos; More reggae, coming from some guys who worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry and Max Romeo in the 70s. Old school.
The Dodos; Slightly twee indie-pop tempered with a heavy dose of live percussion.
The Gossip; Apparently these guys have been around since the 90s, but only hit big with a certain anthem two years ago. Go for Standing In The Way of control. Then see what else is on.
The Roots; Hip-hop with real instruments and “music”. Drummer/producer ?uestlove is an arrogant nutter, but that hardly matters when he helps to put on such a show with this crew. All rappers should aspire to be like this.
The Urges; Dublin-based psychedlic garage music. Sounds like something you’d hear on a Tarantino soundtrack.
These New Puritans; An English indie/nu-rave/noise band who wrote a song about Elvis. But apparently not that one.
Turin Brakes; Yawn. This one is for the Franz Ferdinand fans out there.
Wolfgang Haffner; Funky nu-jazz. That’s not always a bad thing!
Yacht; Experimental noise from Portland, Oregon. Sounds like fun.

