Last weekend was the musical feast and all round festival extravaganza that is Lovebox. We like thousands of others flocked to east London's leafy Victoria Park for three days of dancing,boozing, random-stall persuing, muching and general merriment. (Although Lovebox was over three days, we only attended the Friday and Saturday instalments but I'm guessing from theline-up that Sunday was just as fabulous.)
Lovebox started in 2002 as Groove Armada's club residency and has been growing ever since. Although it was originally a dance based festival the variety of live music has also expanded with several stages and a couple of smaller pop-up musical outlets/tents, not to mention the stalls selling clothes,crafts,jewellery,even recycled bits turned into festival essentials (thanks to Scrap Dragon for my Juliper beer top earing, it's a fitting souvenir) and of course food. So. Much. Choice.
Friday's highlights: it was super hot on the first day and not as busy as it would get during the rest of the weekend. NYC Downlow - a life size ruin of a nyc housing block with amazing music happening inside. We managed to catch the end of Photek Live (awesome). Metronomy - v.much liking their newer stuff but was I particulary happy to hear 'you could easily have me' and 'thing for me'. Beatboxing Champs - in the tent next to the Gaymers bar and stage we witnessed some rather impressive beatboxing. The sound the guys can produce is pretty cool, especially when three of them were improvising at the same time - crazy! We ended the night in the garage tent (the wombats were closing/headlining, which was a bit of a disappointment in my opinion, are they really that big/good? The crowd seemed to think so at least).
Saturday's highlights: it rained a lot in the early afternoon and the park was a bit of a muddy bog but with wellies and anorak on the weather didn't stop me. Santogold on the main stage - easily the best performance over the two days. She put on an excellent show (I love her voice/attitude - the whole ensemble) The crowd got her awesome tunes from the first album, the appearance of a pantomime horse and the chance (some 8 or so lucky people) to get up on stage and dance (mostly badly but who cares) to a drum pounding rendition of 'Creator'. Lykke Li - a new album heavy performance (not a bad thing in the slightest) but she did sing 'Little Bit' (my fav) and 'Dance, dance, dance'. And of course, Snoop Dogg and the gang. We were left in some suspense waiting for Snoop to come out on stage and, aside from him actually arriving and performing lots of old school stuff, the best bit was the short little films that played as a precursor to each song. Snoop is a man of many talents.
Oh yeah, beard update: it's coming along nicely.
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