#25 Latitude Of all the many UK music festivals, Latitude (located in Suffolk) is the one for the true liberal, right-on, middle-classes: the sort of people who frown at main-brand lagers, Arsenal supporters, and any supermarket that fails to stock organic pesto. As an initiate, I approached the whole thing with some trepidation – even though I’d not contributed one jot to the organisation of the trip and therefore could, with complete impunity, do the honourable thing and blame Claire if it all went badly wrong. It was an inauspicious start; a succession of people cheerfully and most earnestly directed us in the diametric opposite direction of the one we needed to go. By the time we got to our tent, the level of dessication had reached the point where we could have easily and usefully replaced silica bags more customarily used as dehumidifiers. So, just for form’s sake, here’s an alphabetical list of bands we either sought out or just stumbled upon: Bo Ningen, Hot Chip, Kraftwerk, Mum, Swim Deep, The 1975, The Maccabees. Plus Dylan Moran, Richard Herring and Marcus Brigstock in the Comedy tent and David Schneider in the Literature tent (presumably because they couldn’t fit him into the Comedy tent programme). It would be pretty tedious to go through in detail all of the above. Suffice to say that the above comics were all amusing (Dylan Moran, particularly so), Mum were a bit more pixie-like than one would have hoped, Swim Deep were kind of forgettable (to the point that I (a) almost forgot that I’d seen them, and (b) slept through half of their set – so maybe that half was mind-blowingly terrific, I’ll never know). The 1975 are destined for semi-greatness, on the basis that the sound pretty much like a British version of The Script and look quite very convincing, and The Maccabees were good (and very smiley). That leaves Bo Ningen, Hot Chip and Kraftwerk. Trying to describe Bo Ningen is a challenge. Before seeing them, neither myself nor Claire would have automatically described ourselves as aficionados of Japanese psychotic death metal. However, with these guys - actually two women, a male drummer (well, it had a beard) and a lead guitarist of uncertain gender and, indeed, species – you just have to make an exception. In the words of David Coleman, quite extraordinary. Kraftwerk are known to be somewhat understated at their gigs. Or, rather, completely stationary - intent as they are on producing a sparse yet engaging noise not unlike that of a modem being repeatedly switched on an off. It seems hard to fathom that, in this day and age, it takes four of them to produce the sound that they do, and that they must surely instead be focusing all of their efforts on a game of electronic doubles scrabble whilst letting some ZX 81 somewhere knock out the riffs. OK, so maybe it’s not possible to play Scrabble in German without doubling both the number of letters and the size of the board, but it’s something along those lines. Whether or not you’re a massive Kraftwerk fan, though, it would be hard to criticise the 3D show itself: completely captivating. And then there’s Hot Chip. Surely, there is no other band for which the disconnect between sound and appearance is so absolute. There are seven of them – 3-4 keyboard players with another spare one, presumably in case one of the others takes ill. Two of these ivory tinklers take turns embrace the responsibility of what might be described as lead vocals – if either were actually graced with the ability to sing. The primary lead vocalist/keyboardist/occasional guitarist looks like the end result of some evil experiment to morph Trevor Horn and Tony Robinson, and his co-vocalist looks like he’s bunked off from an Applied Ecology postgraduate course from the University of East Anglia - having cleared the refectory of most of the pies. Then there’s some guy (spare keyboardist, tom tom hitter, guitar strummer, and anything else that might be unplugged at the time) who probably truly is a prematurely-retired physics teacher from a failed comprehensive school. He certainly dances like one. Meanwhile the other keyboard player is stood at the back, unmoved and unmoving (and giving Kraftwerk a run for their money): not daring to be distracted from the Dan Brown novel he’s almost certainly reading on his Kindle. And the noise this motley crew make? Absolutely, unequivocally amazing. The first gig I ever attended XTC in Oxford in 1981, one which I had always regarded as the best. Alas, Mr Partridge and co., you’ve just been demoted to second place. Hot Chip - worth the admission anywhere (and a big thanks to Claire, of course).
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 17:08:49 +0000
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