Loyle Carner, Nas, André 3000, Cymande and more, All Points East, Victoria Park, London, 17th August 2024 – We’re back round to All Points East time again, back in the big park, in our local park, Victoria Park, East London. We can hear the festival from the Organ bunker here in Hackney, they’re going to have to go some to better the glories of Stormzy in that torrential (almost biblical) rain last year, but then we said they’d never top Nick Cave the year before (or Idles a few days before the Bad Seeds for that matter, that was one hell of a pit for Idles), we said Mick Cave could’nt be bettered and Stormzy at least equalled Mr Cave, what will this year throw up?

All Points East time again then. a week of massive massive gigs, a festival spread over two weekends (with the free to enter Neighbourhood bits on in between during the weekdays). The bill on day one wasn’t really calling us, day two promised though, what would André 3000 do? How would Nas take it on some thirty summers on? And is that really Cymande on the bill? The actually Cymande? Back from the 70’s? Not some other set of jokers with the same name? London’s very own Loyal Carner was headlining day two, right there in the belly of beast, his home ground, time to take the very short walk to our local park and see… 

Cymande were due on mid afternoon, there wasn’t really anyone demanding we go that much earlier, we did some checking, we did sone politely watching on but it wasn’t really until Cymande took to the big West Stage in such an understated way that things started to take off on day two.  Now indulge me while I set the scene a little, Cymande were a London funk band that I first found in in the basement of the Record and Tape Exchange back in the early 90s when vinyl was considered utterly uncool and dead and that Nottinghill basement was full of treasure. 10p a go, you could buy bag loads of albums by people you’d never heard of on the strength of the cover art or the length of the songs (hey, twenty minute song and a Melotron, this might be some tasty prog rock) there was any number of things that made it worth the gamble, I mean look at that cover of Cymande’s 1972 debut, who could resist spending ten pence on it? There’s the art from that album, just down there, being used as a backdrop, some on, that cover had to be worth a ten pence gamble!

So the London-based funk band made three albums in the early 70’s before quietly splitting in 1974 and, I guess, disappearing into obscurity. The eight or nine of them (depending on the album) probably thought that was that, it wasn’t though, seems somewhere along the line they started to get sampled, some of their songs deconstructed and used as breakbeats by early hip-hop artists such as Kool Herc and notably Grandmaster Flash, the result of that attention was the attention of others and by the late 1980s they were being sampled regularly by artists such as De La Soul, EPMD, The KLF, MC Solaar, Heavy D and many others (seems an unauthorized sample used The Fugees resulted in a nice pay day for the band), seems all this interest, as well as Spike Lee using their music in a couple of films, resulted in a cult underground following and eventually a reformation in 2010 and indeed a new album in 2015 (a reformation I didn’t get the memo about so it seems, I had that first album from a haul of ten pence percheses from the Nottinghill basement, it was rare to leave without a couple of dozen records, those damn price stickers were hard to get off!), I had no idea about them reforming and playing the occasional gig (or indeed a film being made about them recently, I clearly have some catching up to do). I tell you all this because I was genuinely excited when I realised it was indeed the same obscure 70’s band playing on a massive stage in my local park, it was the actual Cymande that i found in that basement back there… 

And there they were, Cymande, the nine of then, looking quite a bit older (and maybe just a little bigger in terms of a belly or two, I hope they don’t mind me saying that), there they were looking like they were having the time of their lives as they watched the crowd grow and grow, as they watched people half their age (and probably more than that) dancing and singing their words back to them, the nine of them up there sounding so good from the off. A cool as hell drummer, a just as cool percussionist, a glorious horn section, a soulful keyboard player, a mean bass player, a great guitarist, and a frontman who just can’t stop smiling at the audience, at the rest of his band, at anyone who caught his eye. The nine of them laying down some serious funk driven soul and playing some serious, if somewhat mellow, rock in the late afternoon sunshine, tt was just a beautiful thing. It was a joyous thing, watching them was brilliant as they sang about it being alright and Bra grooved on, you couldn’t stand still to do the watching, you had to move, down the front it felt really good, by the time they inject a little bit of Get Up Stand Up into their music is the message and the message is music the whole front is dancing and singing. They look like their smiles are going to burst, they looked like they were living their best lives, like every second of the performance meant something, the glances they were giving each other, like a whole lifetime had gone into those moments up there on that big stage, it was joy to be part of it, they were so damn good, they were brilliant, it really was a joy to spend some time in the sunshine with them…   

Okay, no time to dwell on things, according to my scribbled on the back of an old envelope list of set times (who needs to download an app and get marketed at!), according to my scribbled list, Nubya Garcia should be already on on the other even bigger East Stage at the other end of the festival. Nubya Garcia, a rather respected jazz musician if you want to put her in a (lazy) box, a rather tasty saxophonist as well as a composer and bandleader (she certainly was leading things) was already busy blowing up a rather impressive storm by the time we made it all the way over, she and her band sounded great in the sunshine as they battled with time restraints, they clearly wanted to play some more, they were already in the zone, they went down well in the hot East London sunshine, bet they’re good in a small club…    

A quick bit of Ireland’s Bricknasty (from Ballymun, a, dare we say, crap bit of Dublin) on one of the small side stages, a singer and guitarist called Fatboy wearing some kind of balaclava mask (his trademark so it seems), the kind headwear people don when they ride by and grab your phone. They’re kicking up a bit of a reaction, they got something tight going on, they’re inviting the whole crowd to go back on the boat with them (Holyhead won’t know what has hit her), they’ve got their groove going, a sardonic, neo-soul thing cut with a whit of their own. Bricknasty have a soft centre, a cheek, they look and sound like they have their ducks almost in a row and well, they looked like they were having a hell of a time. A serious time though, he might be a mouth, his band are good, there’s more than just that mouth here. All Points East’s little stages always throw up something or someone (note to self, what’s Willow Kayne doing? Her White City was the tune of 2022, it was an encounter on the same small stage that year that introduced Willow to our ears) 

Enny is on in the big blue tent – do love to see that big blue tent going up in the park, it feels like an old friend coming home –  are we suppose to say she’s Peng? (are we supposed to pretend we know what that means?) She going down a storm as well, she’s from South East London, this is quite a London bill, someone’s put some effort into this well curated day, she’s a Thamesmead roller, a mellow rapper, a singer, she sounds sharp in here, in command, as strong as she does on record and hey, we’re cherry picking here, focusing on the ones that grabbed us, the ones we felt good about. We really don’t want to be wasting time telling you how boring and one dimensional Glass Beams were with their one trick pony only-got-one-tune and that tune sounds like a bad Ozric Tentacles outtake. Glass Beams are from Australia, they talk of Kraut pervaded polyrhythms, something that really should have us excited but yawn yawn yawn, could they make it sound any more boring? The “enigmatic masked trio” from Melbourne may want to hypnotise us with a psychedelic fusion of some kind of Aussie surf rock and a take on traditional Indian music but all they’re really doing is driving us to the over priced bar and some of those unhealthy looking chips. Hey. we really did try, we really really did, we really wanted to like the three of them, they just never rang the changes, they were just so musically repetitive. Sure they looked interesting in those masks, sure, they were promising for a couple of minutes and well, they never went anywhere with it and no, we’re cherry picking, we only want to tell you about the best bits, of which Enny was certainly one and we should have stuck with her and not gone to check out the masked bores. Managed to miss Lianne La Havas completely, sorry Lianne…

Now I can’t honestly say Ezra Collective are my musical cup of tea but hey, how brilliant are they live! And how infectious is their front man and his positive messages, the whole storm of energy they kick up with their dance and their skank and their horns and their bringing people together. They are very very (proudly) London, a London thing you might say, they sum up why I like living in London so so much. I guess you’d call them a jazz quintet, they’re driven by drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso, who spends as much time on his feet talking lots (and lots) of beautiful sense and bringing everyone together in such an infectiously positive way, they fuse bits of Afrobeat with hints of calypso, reggae, hip-hop, soul and quite a bit of jazz, they don’t have mosh pits they have dance circles – form a small circle dance with a circle of strangers, he’s getting circles to form all over the park, they might not quite be my musical thing but they’re making me smile from ear to ear. Ezra Collective are brilliant, they’ve got the whole field dancing and putting hands in the air, they’re reach way up to the back where I’m loving it, they’re spreading a joy that you just can’t steal and here I am a day later listening to them at home and I can massively respect them but they’re really not doing it for me musically, but hey, how good were they at bring everyone together and getting a whole field smiling, how good were there live!  And now we’ve got to run to the other stage again, it is quite some distance, run past all the people in the football shirts, lot of football shirts in here, Ajax, Clapton FC, Bayern, United, way too many Gooner shirts here (aren’t they playing this afternoon, what are all these Gooners doing here?), good to see the Clapton shirts, time to get to the other big stage for some serious business, Nas time…

Now how is this going to go? The notorious rapper, do we still call him a gangsta rapper? probably not, Notorious? That’s probably wrong as well, respected certainly, not sure how some of the Brooklyn wordsmith’s older lines stand up now (did they ever?), then again some of them really (really) do, some of the wiser words really don’t need to be locked up in a cell, there are plenty of positives here, and he did sheepishly asked us if we didn’t mind him “throwing out some of this old gangsta shit do yer?”. Not sure if he’s just caught the vibe of the day and the feeling in the air but Nas and his men are smiling as well, he looks and sounds like he’s loving it up there. Feels like things are going well in his world. He’s past his half century now, he’s stuck around and yes first he was nasty but times (he says) have changed. His stage sets are excellent, got to mention those sets, his whole production, he’s got the thing on fire, he’s projecting his Queensbridge projects home turf in a park in East London, he’s loving it, so are we, he’s sounding fluid and that’s one hell of a live drummer he’s got up there, was that Haze Amaze? Whoever it was that was a neat Phil Collins reference, In The Air Tonight indeed, and yes, there has always been hope in his bleakness even at his most Gangsta, and of course N.Y State of Mind is a highlight of a set full of his classics as well as his new work – represent represent – and here he is going on thirty summers and smiling his head off in a park in East London with thirty thousand and then some watching him, shouting with him – evolving as well, King’s what? Perseverance and pride, thirty summers on from the classic Illmatic, Nas and his crew are sounding good, sounding at ease with it all, and no, he didn’t forget the roaches and mice. “He’s a sweaty really” says the person standing next to me, he is! He’s always been an innovator, a storyteller and yes I was kind of excited about seeing Nas in my local park, I really didn’t want to be disappointed, I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, how friendly it was all going to be, it went more than well, Nas done more than good.

No time to catch Sainté, sounds like his got the big blue tent going as we rush past on the way to André 3000. Did catch a little bit of Lulu on the unsigned stage earlier, she might need to find a new name if she wants to get signed, she sounded worth checking out, no time today though, sorry, that was earlier – tried to google her the day after, but hey no chance. Anyway, André 3000 is headline act on the big stage at the other end of the festival (pretty sure we did quite a few miles backwards and forwards with those mass migrations of crowds across the plains, there’s probably lions picking off a few straglers, wonder where the foxes go when the festival is on?). Talk about a mood change, somehow it works, from Nas to André 3000, surely that shouldn’t work? It did! The whole bill has worked, well most of it has, the vibe has been good all day, for a big expensive corporate thing this always is a good festival (yeah I know, we didn’t pay, that doesn’t impact on the words here, we’re telling it as it is, and yes, I really should hate it, big corporate money machine festivals aren’t really my thing, the beer prices are outrageous, as is the food, some of that really is taking the piss out of people who already paid an arm and a leg to get it and yes, there’s going to be a lot of hardcore fans of these performers who can’t afford the ticket, let alone the price of those pints apart (at least the pint is decent, not just some festival larger slop). Price of it all apart (and yes I bet it does costs a fortune to put it all on), All Points East always seems to work, maybe its because the studio pigeons can come with me? There’s Captain Lockheed over there watching Nas…

André 3000 and his people are being extra experimental, extra mellow, minimal, quiet, understated, it really should not work as the headline slot on one of the two big main stages of a major outdoor festival, surely this should be happening in Cafe Oto or some such place where this kind of thing regularly happens? Of course it helps that the rather big rather orange full moon is now up just above the black silloettes of the trees, it helps that it is such a warm night and everyone is feeling good about things, it helps that the conditions are almost perfect – no way would this André 3000 set have worked in the cold rain or the wind, but then as he pointed out at the start, the whole set was totally improvised and they are reacting to the situation and the vibe, I guess if the weather had been radically different then the set would have been as well. Yes, you can regularly hear things like this at a venue like Oto or places like (the much missed) Eclectik, there’s a strong experimental improv scene in London and around the globe and for those familiar with that more than healthy scene, this probably isn’t that radical, but then I suspect the big big majority here watching, listening and from where we are close to the front, the thousands paying close attention, they’ve never ever seen or heard anything like this before and yes, it is working. True, if you drift further back, people are more interested in their phones or talking, but right there down in the belly of the big crowd it really is working, connecting, reaching out. Slow mellow instrumental soundscapes, almost sound art, sound sculpture. The slow moving rather subtle light show and the faces of the creators large on the big screens either side of the stage are helping it all to flow, but yes, almost remarkably, this does work right here at this time in this place. I guess part of it is the respect afforded to the American rapper, singer, songwriter best known for being one-half of the Southern hip hop duo Outkast, tonight, besides an introduction explaining what they doing, this is to be a quietly mellow almost intimate (as intimate as it can be to thousands of people on a giant festival stage) improvised instrumental affair, no rap from Andre tonight, this is his New Blue Sun side of things, his flutes, his deep resonance, his almost-noodling soundscapes, it probably didn’t work for everyone, it was all improvised, no it wasn’t material from his recent album, it was in that ballpark though, I bet he was loving that big orange moon…

And then it was time to migrate across the great plain of the increasingly grassless Victoria Park dust bowl again, the schedules are tight, no time to hang about (they’re gonna need a lot of grass seed by this time next week, actually is does recover remarkably well, it will take a month or so but it always does, it does though). Time for the main act, time for Loyle Carner to take to his stage. The South Londoner is clearly loving this, he’s slapping his face in disbelief, he tells us this is his local park and that he cycled here. It hasn’t taken him long to get here, that debut album was only released in 2017 and here he is headlining in front of something like 50,000 people in a park in East London, here he is with the crown on his head and the crowd with him from the off. He’s keeping it relatively simple, keeping it real you might say, he starts off with a rather defiantly positive rather questioning Hate and some red fireworks that set things off nicely, you can’t help but feel good about it all. Now I’m not going to claim to be a fan, I’ve dipped in and out to check out what the fuss is about, I can’t sing along (rap along? talk along? it is almost very nearly poetic spoken word), I don’t know his music well enough, but I can massively respect what he’s doing, and yes I can enjoy or respect his positive words, his ways, his defiant takes on London life. Respect his flowing style, it is poetry, it is poetic, and what he’s doing up there it is kind of beautiful to witness. It is rather beautiful that his can do this and have an audience eating out of his hand like this, that he can say all these things, it feels good, it feels like it has been a rather fine day.

Time for us to quietly respectfully slip away with big smiles and warm glows on our faces, slip away and beat the big crowds, the day has been a beautiful one, respect to Loyle Carner for both his performance, his positive words, his music and his hand in curating the whole imaginative and well constructed say, it all felt good, it wasn’t quite Stormzy last year or Nick Cave the year before, it was more than good though, yes, it was a rather beautiful day, even Nas was beautiful, no time to proof read, time is of the essence, the web waits for no man, need to get this on line, what a beautiful Summer day in an East London park, thank you Mr Carner and friends. (sw)      

And it all goes on again until the end next weekend at All Points East, me and the pigeons are off to check out what the Neighbourhood has to offer in a minute, Pixies next Friday… Previous All Points East coverage on these pages

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