Offset Day One // Never Put Off Till Tomorrow…
Offset Festival is that rare thing of beauty - a festival combining the hipster stares and trendies of London festivals with the grotty carousing of larger events. With trepidation Noize queued up, camping gear in hand, expecting the same delights that last year’s edition had for us. With a plethora of wrist-bands secured round our scrawny arms, we rushed to complete putting up our tent, only for our juvenile excitement to get the better of us. In a moment of madness that would later come back to haunt us, we decided that pegs could wait, and a couple of sleeping bags as balast would suffice. After admiring our handiwork, we headed onwards and upwards, blissfully ignorant of just how badly we’d regret our time saving efforts.
And so, to the first act, Leeds’ avant-hardcore-dub-funk-THING Castrovalva. Possibly one of the best openings to a festival we’ve ever seen, their set was a mishmash of samples and mini-raps from the glory days of defunct genres U.K-G and two-step, with added hardcore, in an entertaining package of movement and stop-start time signatures. If that’s hard to picutre (and we sympathise), just google them, and make sure your volume isn’t too loud.
Like a Japanese Hawkwind, Bo Ningen’s set was peppered with psyche-noise phreakouts and tie-dye. The music itself is a standard collection of rock riffs, but they were asked back after last year’s performance culminated in an audacious dive from the drummer. This year didn’t disappoint either, the crowd sticking round ‘til their last song, a slow burning bluesy sounding track, which built to a wall of noise as instruments were thrashed before said drummer suddenly stood up, sprinted towards the scaffolding and climbed to the very top. Thankfully, he made it back to Earth without troubling the paramedics, but only after milking the rapturous applause.
Comanechi in the Loud And Quiet tent provided the second highlight of the day. In-between bouts of banging the drums to her band’s infectious punk-noise explosion, Akiko Matsuura had a running “discussion” with security to stand down their obscuring and domineering stances in front of the crowd. Whatever they were expecting, they were taking no prisoners, and their heavyhandedness created unecessary mutual loathing.
Lovvers followed directly after, the already sizeable crowd growing even bigger for this much touted band. One of the rare occasions where an act sounds clearer live than on record, Lovver’s songs are instantly recognisable, sending the crowd into spasms of joy. “OCD Go Go Girls” in particular stood out, its intro of rock’n’roll guitars preceding a hook that forced us to skip about. Ending the set in suitably unruly fashion, the band’s guitarist handed his beaten axe to the crowd, dove in after it and was held aloft by the baying flock. Ah, like Lovvers of old.
Rounding off the day was Sheffield’s Rolo Tomassi. As we pushed our way to the barriers, the band completed an extensive sound check before launching their sonic assault on the rammed hardcore tent. By this time, with bottled Carlsberg pulsing through our veins, we were ready to go off. We launched ourselves full throttle into proceedings, partaking in circle pits and just generally flailing around uncontrollably to the point where we felt like we were going to pass out.
Forty minutes of stop-start hardcore culminated in a mass exercise of the art of crowd surfing, and we partook ourselves. Once over the barriers, a burly security man led us behind the stage for the obligatory dressing down, but by some quirk of good fate, we’d been taken to the VIP area. Making a bold (nay foolish) break for safety (hey, we had a wristband anyway) we made the most of our time in this most coveted of lands. We’ve hazy memories of sneaking onto the Dance stage, enthusiastically working the crowd into a frenzy over Italo-electrico, before crashing back to our still unerected tent and cursing our lack of foresight at just how difficult this job could be, mildly tipsy and in the middle of the night. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Words by Alex Nelson
Photos courtesy of Offset Festival
Never let the lunatics run the asylum.
This is what we came for.
Rolo Tomassi show the crazies how it’s done.
