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All Points East, Victoria Park, East London, August 2023 – It was the turn of The Strokes to headline in the park, it was looking like a split decision though and no one could call it. The judges couldn’t pull them apart, the undisputed heavyweight champions of the world remained just about that, undefeated, it was a close thing, Warmduscher took Black Midi all the way and in the eyes of some just about edged a relentlessly hard fought fifteen rounds. A tough decision. it was probably fair ro call it as a draw in the end or so the judges said. Nothing tough about it, the big blue tent in the middle of the festival was the place to be for the second Friday of 2023’s rather big All Points East festival over here in East London’s Victoria Park…   

Back for a second go after Stormzy‘s triumph in that biblical rain of last week – nothing almost about it, that was serious serious rain! That Stormzy performance that kicked off this year’s ten day All Points East Festival was a rather specialnot to-be-forgotten experience. One week on and the second Friday is upon us, The Strokes are headlining, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are the other main attraction at day three of the seven big gig days of Summer 2023.

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Warmduscher took Black Midi all the way in terms of band of the day, we already said that up there, let’s start at the beginning and yeah, it was frustrating being in the lines to get in and not quite being able to hear HotWax, we could just about catch Treasure floating across the field, what we could catch was sounding good. Missing most of their set was annoying, our fault and of course it is going to take time to get in, actually the All Points East operation seems pretty slick and HotWax did sound ferociously good as we rushed towards their powerful sound coming from the speaker stacks of the big Wast stage. The Hastings band (that’s Sussex, England, for you people tuning in from Oakland or Berlin or wherever in the world you are – out stats tell us we have thousands of readers all over the globe), the Hastings band sounded strong up there on the very big stage, the attitude as well as the songs coming over powerfully, a confidence oozing, a bold band, raw (but not too raw) , powerful, the three girls did more than good from the bit we caught properly. Made it down to the front for the last couple of songs, Rip it Out is a serious statement of serious intent, biting riffs, classic quiet-before-the-loud-scream vocals, classic three piece alternative rock band, properly ripppppping it out indeed, Friday is go, HotWax seriously kicking the day off, impressive start to things.

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HotWax done, quickly join the herd of wildebeest kicking up the contact-lens-annoying dust while they cross the great plain from West to the even bigger East stage, The Lazy Eyes went on before HotWax ended so it is a rush. The mood is quite a contrast over on the main stage, The Lazy Eyes are just right for the mid afternoon Summer sunshine, a band we’ve covered a number of times on these fractured Organ pages, they’re a rather mellow forward looking delight today.  A self-proclaimed psych rock band from Sydney, Australia, we were rather looking forward to seeing them in the flesh for the first time, their 2022 debut album Songbook is a bag of slightly psychedelic pop rock songs, crafted, progressively warm chunks of mellow sunshine and they’re clearly having a great time performing bits of it to a more than healthy rather attentive East London crowd. Mellow sounds laced with beautiful detail, pet sounds you might say? The biting baseline of Fuzz Jam sounds just right in the sunshine, all is okay at this end of the park, the forward motion of Where is My Brain? Prog Rock harmonies, A touch of Ben Folds here, just a hint of Yes there, Spiritualized, and a slab or two of Beatles along with those Beach Boys bits, all thoroughly modern, all rather now and sounding as right here in the Victoria Park sunshine as they do on that Songbook album or those early singles we championed here. Actual tunes, proper songs that repeat in a deliciously complex way without ever getting too difficult, proper pop art, the day is feeling good, psych-pop yes, but it is about crafted proper songs, The Lazy Eyes are a band who demand you go dig into them a bit more, a band worth taking the time to explore…  

Managed to not catch that much of HighSchool in the big blue tent while we wander around waiting, anticipating, what Be Your Own Pet will have for us? Managed to miss the darkness of Julie back on West stage while The Lazy Eyes were on which was a little frustrating, can’t be in all places at once though, sorry Julie… 

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Be Your Own Pet have a new album out today, Mommy, it sounds like everything you’d want from the returning Nashville band, been oN repeat here in the Organ studio for a good few days now, some of us around here really were looking forward to the return of one time teen punk riot of a band who haven’t been around for something like fifteen years. Where have they been? How will it be? It was all about teenage rebellion back there, furious songs, growing up badly and taking on everything society could throw at them. But they’re not teenagers any more, how will it go? Well the attitude is still there on the new album, in many ways you could say little has changed, but of course they’re fifteen years older now and so much surely has, Jemina Pearl sounds like she’s the one in control of it all now, she’s the one with her thumb on the hand grenade, she’s no mere survivor and when she tells you that when you can’t sleep, she’ll be the reason, she is more that convincing. They’re up there in the sunshine, the four of them, she’s owning the big stage, short black skirt, big black boots, white t-shirt, bold black unmissable slogan on the front commanding you to Worship The Whip. Most of what she’s screaming still feels like a battle cry and no longer, so she tells us, is she playing anyone’s fool! But they’re fifteen years older now and she’s singing about her mortgage and having two kids and asking herself more than us what the fuck happened?

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Yes, it still sounds like the frenzied garage rock that shot the Nashville teenagers right at us back at the start of the century, maybe not quite s ofrienzied but it is still there – they were all over our printed pages and our Resonating airwaves for fifteen minutes back there at the start of the century when we did still print Organs and the new album sounds like a band finding themselves again is a rather positive way. A band picking up the pieces and finding out who, what and where they are now. It does sound like it still matters, it sounds like it should still matter to us, and here we are in the Summer sunshine in a park in East London, late afternoon and lick it up, and not wanting to be left behind and everyone else is having a good time, they are rather storming through their set, still all punk rocked and ready to confront, they definitely are rocking, she’s all over the stage, still the same four people, Jonas Stein still delivering the riffs, it is still there. Some of it is more poppy now, some of that stage talk is a bit cheesy though.

The thirty-somethings band have two personalities, they still let you know you can’t fuck with them but they really can’t play the badass teenagers now, and is it not quite connecting?  Do we need Be Your Own Pet to be in some dark moody venue rather than in the mid afternoon sunshine? Do they need it to be more intimate? Are they trying too hard? They’re still damn good, more that good, some of it really is stomping, storming, still that that garage punk rock thing, but they can;t be that same band now, it isn’t quite igniting, not in this weather where people would rather be politely licking ice creams that whatever she want you to lick up. Surely they’re a nighttime band? Surely they’re a dark sleazy venue kind of band? They can’t quite get their pleasure seeking into our faces here, it isn’t quite working. The new album is excellent, it really good to have them back, I hope there’s more to come, that next album and where they go now is going to be interesting, there’s lots to catch up on since the last one in 2008, really need to hear all this in a dark sweaty venue though, it didn’t quite connect in the big park in the afternoon sunshine., maybe they should have been in the blue tent. Don’t misunderstand, Be Your Own Pet were damn good at All Points East, but not quite as good as they clearly could be on their own stage when things are on their terms and where we suspect a now grown up Jemina Pearl and her band really will own it (again).

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Back with the herds of wildebeest migrating across the plains to the other end of the festival again, catch a moment or two of Picture Parlour on the way to check out The Walkmen on the other main stage. The queue for the craft beer tent and a pint of draft is impossible, there no one much is at any of the can bars, got that one wrong didn’t they? Actually most of this audience look like they spend most weekends at Hackney’s Broadway Market eating overpriced food and thinking a ten pound scotch egg is living life on the edge.  Thankfully there’s a bar in the back stage area where there is no wait for a semi decent overpriced pint in a paper cup – yeah, we’re on another blag, told you before, to pay is to fail.  The Walkmen hold our attention for a song or two before we spend time considering what the people from out of town are making of our norm that is the squadrons of green parrots flying over the park that is their home. Angel Olsen has a certain charm back on the main stage, Amyl and The Sniffers have never really quite ignited these ears and they clash with Warmduscher so there really isn’t much debate in terms of where to be. The blue tent (rather than the blue bus) is calling and whooooooh, that’s right!  Things are about to get hot, love is real 9as they say)

Rather like Sleaford Mods in the same slot in the same big blue tent at last year’s festival, Warmduscher are the right band in the right place at just the right time. Slightly unhinged but always fantastically entertaining, this promised to be good, Clams Baker, Jr. and his mysterious band – some say they’re really from London and that those Fat White Band people, amongst others, might just be involved but we never fall for any of those internet conspiracy theories people like to push, although Warmduscher do seem to spend a lot of their time in our capital city and as someone else once said, they are one the “sleaziest, most debauched, and downright addictive experiences in London’s guitar underground right now”. Their low down funk and their none stop sleaze and the knowledge that they have friends who could have you disappeared in seven different countries soon has the place jumping, yahhhooo again! They’re fixing to shoot the top right off the tent with a six shooter so strong and take me back, eyes closed right, this is what this day needed as the sun is starting to think about going down. Now we’re motoring (I know, that gets said quite a lot around here, I stole it off Peel and that time he introduced a Doctor and The Crippens session).

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Now one’s saving no one here so you better grab it while you can, soul, funk, groove and punk, Warmduscher are serving it all up together, the perfect mix served with just the right attitude and down the front we’re dancing like mad fools, well ya gotta do what you’re got ta do, all primal screams and a boy named jimmy born and raised in Whale City in a four wheel drive and a skin tight suit and this is seriously good fun. This is peddle to the metal, they’re coming out fast, this feels good, we don’t want to stop, gawddamn! love.as we already said, is very very real.  Warmduscher, wherever they’re from, just lit up the whole day. 

Apparently there was another of those torrential downpours during the Warmduscher set, had no idea, apparently it forced loads of people into the tent, divine intervention! The music gods spoke, thou shall go in the tent and taste the funk! Fancy accidentally running into a tent just to avoid the rain and catching that? Surely must have changed the lives of at least a couple of the estate agent types who think The Strokes are now or have ever been in some way radical.  Warmduscher and their sleazy groove took it all, and  if it wasn’t for the heavyweight champions of the world waiting to be announced and taking to the stage straight afterwards, then the whole day would have easily been there’s for the keeping….

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No point in leaving the tent now, no point in even thinking about what time the Yeah Yeah Yeahs might be coming on on the big West stage, there’s a girl standing waiting down the front for Black Midi, she’s standing next to me, she’s got her Hellfire t-shirt on, she’s dragged her friends in their Strokes t-shirts in and she ‘s just said to one of them, “you’re about to find out that the 1975 really aren’t your favourite band any more”, she has a slightly evil look on her face, a gleeful smile, she knows what she’s about to expose her unsuspecting friends to and that there’s no such thing as luck and ladies and gentlemen are you ready for the sporting event of the year? Sugar Tzu is rolling by way of an intro tape and Black Midi are about to enter the arena, if you’re not in the tent, you not even at this damn festival! You should have joined those in attendance and the millions watch from around the world, we were about to see some thunder. 

London’s Black Midi have taken on Warmduscher’s challenge and we’re off and galloping. And they do gallop and no early set technical problems are going to stop Geordie Greep and his tag team of rather accomplished players, this is the serious stuff, we’re at the sharp end of the business now and help yourself to whiskey, onions and cheese, The Race is About To Begin. We’re off and jumping again and are they just about the best band around at the moment? There’s certainly not many like them, we’re up and seriously on it now, they’ve locked into thier sport, we’re going off and things, unscrew your frown and  just enjoy the entertainment! The Black Midi sound isn’t an immediate thing, you need to give it time, it is dense, it is complex, but they give it so much life, so much soul and by not pinning themselves down tonight they’re really making it work. They’re telepathic enough to be able to flex, to take on any challenge that circumstances (or the other horses) might throw at them. It felt like the audience needed this, that something really was needed today, something more, something serious to chew on. If you let them in then Black Midi really do reward you, you’ve got to let them in though, this is not an instant thing, although in here, in this big blue circus tent, tonight, it really is instant and in this land of oysters don’t be the worm. Forget about it son, a slap of this is all you needed…

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Black Midi are a properly experimental band, a properly challenging band, do we need to call them a properly experimental, properly progressive, proper prog rock band? Surely not? Surely they’re above all that and they don’t need men (or women) like you putting them in little boxes? We could call them an avant prog band but that really does sound like something rather tiresome and tiresome is the last thing this thrilling musical beast is and we’re doing so good and the rapidly expanding pit down the front is lapping it all up and jumping like crazy, all pond-like and just maybe a little bible black. The girl in her Hellfire shirt is dancing like a fool, her friends have long since run away, we’re all dancing and jumping and smiling at each other,, those who know really do know. Don’t kid yourself, this  isn’t the news, or is it? The lines are open and that’s Lucky Star, Eye Sore, Doctor Murphy, Sun Tzu, The Clap, Mr. Winner,, Spot, Wallace, Mrs. Gonorrhoea, Perfect P, Deadman Walking and The Company Favourite and I’m just reporting the real state of affairs inside this now very hot tent and their smoothness can’t compare, their gleaming appliances more than attracting attention, he is like a circus announcer or a fairground barker, no, he’s a racetrack caller and there;s nothing hidden under anyone’s coat sleeves and it is almost like they only just started and already their allotted hour is over.

All ears back, all brace and adventurous, that was it, the race was run, everyone in here won, those who came in and stayed, and those who will stay when the word of mouth reaches them, the freaks of the wilderness, open and letting is all in, the time before time was the time to sing. And over there, somewhere else in the field the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were playing and The Strokes would soon come on but there really was no point in staying beyond Black Midi, the race was already done, already won. Warmduscher pushed them right up until they were almost touching that winning post, until that bell for the end of the final round was rung, I take back what said at the start, Black Midi took it, still undefeated, ladies and gentlemen, we are done here. The day is done….

The day is done, HotWax, The Lazy Eyes, Be Your Own Pet and especially Warmduscher and the mighty mighty horse race that was Black Midi, the day was done indeed and what a good day it was. (sw)