Saturday, just before two. Slightly cloudy, mild temperatures. The hairstyle fits. Two middle-aged gentlemen, who are behind their computer/synthesizer equipment and waving in a friendly manner to the still loosely filled rows, invite you to a tea dance. It’s The Avalances from Melbourne, Australia, who had a mega hit in 2000 with the album “Since I Left You” and the single of the same name. A symphony of samples and pads that became a slow disco classic of the techno era.
22 years later, Robbie Chater and Tony Di Biasi, without any further musician support, create a surging space sound that wafts across the wide runway. The vocals are also canned. That’s the principle with The Avalanches. Anyone with their own Shazam in mind will recognize the line “I will not always love you” from the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” later sound-and-word scraps of late ’80s Chicago house (“The House That Jack Built”) or Freddie Mercury, who lends them his “I Want To Break Free”. At home in Australia, they sometimes perform these compositions with a symphony orchestra. Those who found space enjoyed the performance while lying down, so their almost 40-minute set was a kind of “chill in” for the other bands on Saturday instead of a chill out. Electro to groove in for the rock colleagues.
What Johnossi repeatedly asked for from the audience, got Wolf Alice almost effortlessly: spectators attentively followed and interacting with the infectious performance from start to finish – including mosh pits and headbanging. It turned out that aauthentic joy to be able to play in this country again: “We missed you!” exclaims Ellie Rowsell, the singer of Wolf Alice. It is the first concert in Germany for the British indie rock band in four years. At that time they performed in the small Columbia Theater in Berlin. This Saturday afternoon they play 500 meters further south as the crow flies (rough estimate) in front of many thousands of people: It’s amazing how many people came to see the band. But only logical: Your new album “Blue Weekend” is great – and wonderfully suitable for big stages and big crowds.
Half of their set is new songs and there could have been more. They don’t get to some album highlights at all; they prefer to focus on the confident rockers (‘Smile’ as opener, later ‘Play the Greatest Hits’) or the synth-pop bangers (‘How Can I Make It OK’) here rather than the quieter tracks. Understandable! During the quieter moments, like the first half of the power ballad “The Last Man on Earth”, noise from the rest of the festival area then penetrates, like a very ill-timed, and annoyingly loud, sound check on the main stage. If Rowsell and colleagues noticed it, at least they didn’t let it show. “Are you all drinking enough water?” shouts guitarist Joff Oddie. He’s not wrong, it’s really, really hot. With these songs.
Energetic performance from idles
Shortly before four, fanboys & girls and international football shirt wearers (Chelsea, Betis Sevilla, Royal Antwerp…) gather on the central line of sight to the main stage. They are expected idles from Bristol. And this promises to be an intense board. A thunderbolt unparalleled. From a distance, mastermind and singer Joe Talbot with a white waiter’s shirt, suit trousers and short haircut looks like a nasty Englishman with whom it’s best not to pick a fight in the pub. His crew plays the individualism card. Guitarist Mark Bowen, for example, in an airy dress like Kurt Cobain used to wear. With “Nirvana from UK” one would not categorize the quintet fundamentally wrong in terms of noise, pain and intensity. At the beginning Talbot preaches a recurring mantr “It’s coooooming…” doomed – and everyone knows: it’s about to start.
The credo of the fourth album “Crawler” echoes across the runway. Trauma and dependency in front of the stone Nazi bombast architecture in the background. A congenial combination. Talbot throws his microphone through the air for a moment – his “microphone spin” is the signal for an attack. He divides the crowd of fans in two; with the request “Let’s Collide!”. And then the band gives rubber. In front of the stage Old School Pogo instead of Mosh Pit. In the music of the Idles there is oi punk of the late seventies with bands like Sham 69 or Cockney Rejects as well as the brutalism of Nick Cave’s Urband The Birthday Party.
Every song is its own show. Sometimes the bass player continues playing into the audience, then the tempo is skilfully stretched and stretched. Only full gas is not her profession. The idles want a challenge. A disruptive moment is Talbot’s lengthy announcement about the death of his daughter. fate and atonement; but it must go on. On and in front of the stage. Also here striking (personal) parallels to the great man of pain Nick Cave. So it goes on, on, on and on; to speak to goalkeeping titan Olli Kahn. The idles are (also) masters of tempo changes, experienced musicians at that. Neo Baller Punk of the exquisite sort, even if they hate being called punks.
Alt-J: hits, hits, hits
So while Wolf Alice mainly plays songs from her latest album, plays Alt-J especially songs from their oldest album: “An Awesome Wave” from 2012. That usually doesn’t bode well for a band’s current relevance. However, the dominance of their still most popular album is probably due to the festival context: If there are many occasional listeners in the audience, as is unavoidable at a festival, why not play the old hits in particular? So after a handful of new songs that are rather unknown to a wide audience (“In Cold Blood” and “The Actor” for example), in the second half there are almost only classics like “Fitzpleasure”, “Dissolve Me” and as a conclusion ” Breeze Blocks”.
Vocalist Joe Newman and keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton are fairly static presences on stage, the energy and dynamic coming from awesome drummer Thom Sonny Green (wearing a t-shirt of nineties hip-hoppers The Pharcyde tonight): he plays without cymbals, instead hitting the cowbell and tambourine and also has bongos in his kit. So when his colleagues’ very serious, ambitious art-rock melodies don’t always hold the attention, Green’s beats offer a hilarious distraction.
Brilliant conclusion
But Maximo Park, Fil Bo Riva, Barns Courtney and Sophie Hunger are in no way inferior to the shows of their colleagues – on Saturday too, Tempelhof Sounds will prove that their line-up has everything that is needed for a successful festival weekend. Muse deliver the brilliant conclusion, their set being heralded by the new “Will Of The People”. 21 songs including the hits “Supermassive Black Hole”, “Knights of Cydonia” and “Madness” leave nothing to be desired. Even the curious onlookers at Tempelhofer Feld burst into cheers and applause.