FM4 FREQUENCY festival 2007 – Day 2

RACE STAGE:

text: Sandi Sadar

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

DECKCHAIR ORANGE: 14.35 – 15.05
The reason for the first gathering in front of the Race Stage this time was the local lads, Viennese boys and musicians of unwavering pop manner, and above all a total unknown, Deckchair Orange. You can feel pretty self-confident when, as the opening act, you reap applause just for greeting the hungover handful of first survivors (after a two-day howling beer marathon) with: “Hallo Leute. Wir Sind Deckchair Orange aus Wien!”. That told me absolutely nothing yet, until after some hesitation and a check of the guitar tuning they finally strummed out the first bars. The four-piece sounds like recycled American pop. From the very first touch of lips to mic, the singer’s vocals sounded like a blend of something resembling a guest spot by a Robbie Williams with a cold, with the backdrop woven by members of the by now nearly forgotten Rembrandts (you remember the theme song of the cult sitcom Friends, right?). The result was melancholy, a swaying crowd, and the question of whether the weather might spare us a sacrifice of rain after all. They weave in Christmas bells, triangle, xylophone and other Orff instruments, but despite the effort it all sounds cheap, two-dimensional and tiring. The guys try to be listenable, so all of a sudden, quite logically, right, they shifted into a more homey Coldplay gear, to which, after absent applause, they then added some garnish with no effect. A goulash of sound tried to win us over with ska drum rhythms, then with acoustics and something that recalls better bands like Buffalo Tom and Stereophonics. My only bright moment came shortly before the end, when they smuggled something I’d call an approximation of a full sound into the verses of “Take you down to highest ground”. All that glitters is not gold. Not everything that stinks is shit. Deckchair Orange showed at least effort and courage. The results were average. Shit happens!

SUGARPLUM FAIRY: 15.30 – 16.20
When Tchaikovsky wrote about the dance of the sugar plum fairies, and Lennon, in the golden days of the Beatles, added the sung line “sugar-plum-fairy, sugar-plum-fairy” to the lyrics of ‘a Day In The Life’ (you can hear it on the release of the album The Beatles Anthology), neither of them thought that at the turn of the millennium a Swedish alter-rock derivative would take that name. Sugarplum Fairy are a young quintet from Borlänge, where multi-instrumentalist, singer, guitarist, bassist and percussionist Victor Norén, vocalist (his brother), guitarist and keyboardist Carl Norén, bassist David Heberd, guitarist Jonas Karlsson and drummer Kristian Gidlund joined their creative forces on two albums. They’ve got two albums under their belt (Young & Armed and First Round First Minute) and one more ace that adds a pinch of appeal – if you’re a fan of Mando Diao, let me add that the Norén brothers are in fact brothers of the singer of that more famous outfit you may have heard of, Gustaf Norén. First bars, first song. They sound like sped-up punk’n’rollers with a proven Hives-style sense of theatrics, since halfway through the song comes the word “Stop!” and the guys freeze in place. For a few minutes a random passer-by would get the feeling that wax dummies from the Madame Tussauds museum had been placed on stage, and then they shift into full gear and reap thunderous applause. The PA was on the edge of bearable, and Victor’s musical dedication to some Harriet sounded, amid the racket, closer to “Give it to my hairy ass” than to the girl with the aforementioned name… I couldn’t shake the comparison with Oasis. Vocally and instrumentally the Sugarplums are close to the Gallagher brothers, and they soon confirmed my suspicion with the first cover on the main stage – ‘Wonderwall’ a cappella. The main hits get played. ‘Sweet Jackie’, ‘Marygold’ and ‘Let Me Try’ and a heap of others. They deserve praise. Plenty of bands can’t muster a decent frontman. The Sugarplums have two who know their job and can coax salvos of enthusiasm out of even a crowd as dead as the Austrian one. These guys know how to recycle. They’re direct and full of punch and balls. They’re manipulators and clones of clones, but this time I can assure you they’re harmless and you won’t risk the brain hemorrhages caused by stupid, syrupy pop lyrics, because this time the romance pouring out of the speakers is genuine and heartfelt.

 

JULIETTE AND THE LICKS: 16.50 – 17.40
Movie stars who sing are, if not sexy, at least attractive and magnetic in the allure of their stage performance. Juliette Lewis was one of the main aces with which you could say the second day of the festival finally hit the jackpot. A little before five in the afternoon the music from the speakers falls silent, and the roar in front of the stage and the applause announce what’s next. To the sound of Native American drums and chanting, Todd Morse, former guitarist of H2O, comes on stage, Ed Davis sits behind the drums, and Jason Womack juggles a four-string jazz bass. The peak is the arrival of the main Indian squaw, exhibitionist and driving force behind the success – Juliette Lewis. A tiny girl with a ton of energy pouring out of every pore. The first song, ‘Hot Persuit’, shows what we’re in for. We got garage rock, indie pop and a massive dose of energy that doesn’t let up for a second. Juliette isn’t a singer of the proper vocalist breed, but she has every trick of stage eroticism. Janis Joplin’s raspy vocals burst at the seams at moments, but she doesn’t save them for later. The Licks glue the fallen pieces together into a compact, rock-solid sound. The party below the stage is spontaneous and the action on stage follows the same red thread. ‘You’re Speaking My Language’, ‘Hot Kiss’, ‘Sticky Honey’ and the catharsis of ‘Purgatory Blues’, a primal etching of perfect chemistry between the simple and the effective. The riffs build up with piercing female vocals and charisma that reap success and sympathy. And if we add the fact that we got a soft-erotic moment in the form of Juliette’s strip tease… I almost forgot that we got a cover for the second time that day that exceeded expectations. Juliette & The Licks took the energy of the disco track ‘Hot Stuff’ and brought it to a higher plateau. And when you think the girl is just a one-day wonder, look at the shelves of your nearest shop and give one of the three albums a listen anyway (I especially recommend Four On The Floor, released last year). I think Miss Lewis will win you over after all.

 

MIA.: 18.10 – 19.00
When it comes to defining Austrian and German musical taste, you land in a dilemma if you don’t know the iron repertoire of the small screens on RTL and ORF, where everything that comes out of the speakers in German gets full support and delight. MIA. are no exception. The almost mafia-like look of the backing band that strides confidently onto the stage somehow clashes with the stage set, with which they circus-ify their latest masterpiece, Zirkus. The singer, who jumps on stage in a pink skirt with huge white wings on her back, adds the cherry on top of the kitschy imagery. The Berlin quintet consists of German pop-rockers Gunnar Spies (drums), Robert “Bob” Schütze (bass), guitarists Andy Penn and Ingo Puls, and an aged little girl with a strange hairdo – singer Mietze Katz. They kicked off their landing on stage with the song ‘Engel’, where Mietze finally shed her wings at the end, while the ever more numerous crowd, a few tens of thousands strong, fell into a state of total bliss. Yet they’re really nothing more than Eurovision drop-outs, a spew of syrupy pop and a lukewarm string of hollow-sounding words lined up in German. They go on with a “borrowed” riff from ‘Under Pressure’, reshaped into a sped-up monstrosity that surely has Freddie Mercury spinning like a top in his premature grave. “Ice Heiss, Ice Calt…”. It was nearly impossible to tame the crowd of frenzied lads and lasses who see potential in the performance that stayed hidden from non-German speakers. MIA. are a local attraction that can send the natives into ecstasy, while yours truly stayed unmoved by the string of cheap tricks, the kitschy set and the aged little girl who looks like what, say, Lara Baruca might look like in ten years, cold as a schnitzel in your freezer. The balance between music, a healthy dose of good taste and everything negative was upset. I was ground down by a worm-like churning in my lower abdomen, while MIA., after a string of “hits”, got a standing ovation from the locals.

BEATSTEAKS: 21.00 – 22.00
The earlier swaying was replaced by the promise of a series of livelier rhythms, which reinforced the already colorful crowd of emos, gentle souls and other ornaments of contemporary pop culture with hordes of skate punk gear. The grounds were packed to the last corner. People were crammed in front of the stage and along the paths, and those eager for a better view who had a bit more daring and nerve also occupied the roofs of the portable toilets or stood on urinals. After lengthy preparations, vocalist Arnim Teutoburg-Weiss, guitarists Bernd Kurtzke and Peter Baumann and bassist Torsten Scholz stormed the stage, with Thomas Götz sitting behind the drums. The quintet, which we know quite well here at home too, since they thoroughly shook up and stirred the local concert scene at last year’s Trnfest, goes by the name Beatsteaks. The Berlin punk rockers broke new ground and got hearts beating faster with a dynamic set that brilliantly wove in moments from all five albums. ‘Cut Off The Top’, ‘Loyal To Noone’ and ‘Demons Galore’ and ‘I Don’t Care As Long as You Sing’ raised the fever of the evening, which was being nibbled at by a light sprinkle of rain. Ecstasy followed ecstasy, and all of you who thought the skate punk attitude had died would have changed your mind after the first couple of minutes. Of course the emphasis was on presenting this year’s record .limbo Messiah, which is, in keeping with the times, a more softened version of the material from records like Smack Smash, 48/49 and Living Targets, but the intensity of the unbroken bond between the audience and the executioners on stage is proof that punk is far from dead. Lagwagon, NOFX, Pennywise and Good Riddance are the frame of reference you could use to describe the part of the musical spectrum that the Berlin punk wizards embodied into something distinctive and recognizable, but it’s something more. Arnim pulls the strings with verbal clowning, so routine and yet so alive that the crowd surfing, which gave the security guards plenty to do as they hauled heated lads and lasses over the barrier like on a conveyor belt, the pogo and the screaming were just part of the game of the marionettes below the stage. We witnessed mass hysteria, and I can’t believe I actually saw a forty-thousand-strong crowd eating out of the Beatsteaks’ hands as if it were a joke. We played games and had fun. The catharsis of feelings was a natural consequence of something you could even take for the high point of the day before the real high point of the day. Whoever missed it this time can make up for it this October in Ljubljana…

 

 

DIE ÄRZTE: 00.40 – 02.40
Berlin is undoubtedly one of the main epicenters of European punk. So it’s no surprise that the final act, the trio Farin Urlaub, Bela B. and Rodrigo González, better known as Die Ärzte, put down their roots in the German capital. In two waves, active between 1982-88 and from 1993 on, they carved out a raw mix of punk, rock and pop which, believe it or not, still sells like hotcakes. The rain had become downright agonizing, but the crowd of young bodies below the stage came to defy the weather and alcohol discomforts and party to the bitter end. If the Düsseldorf bigwigs Die Toten Hosen aren’t around, then the “Doctor” uncles will provide the fun, serving up a dirty version of listenability, German language and primitive entertainment. The Guinness Book of Records lists them under the shortest singles, where they said everything they think about Yoko Ono in 30 seconds. This time, though, the rainy festival turned into the agony of an endless string of hits from the past, the semi-past and the partly faded past, which gave me no real reason for self-destruction, so I preferred to head for the tents, leaving behind a soaked crowd reeking of sweat, beer and testosterone, hungry for a good time, simultaneously switching off to songs from the albums Männer Sind Schweine, 13 and others. “Oi, Oi, Kill The Nazis!”, which a few lads in vintage uniforms were adorning themselves with (I mean lads in the audience who went looking for crap), is still a poor reason to hang on, and a cheap cold or total exhaustion is hardly a good send-off for the big finale, right?

 

GREEN STAGE:

text: Aleš Podbrežnik

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

GHOSTS: 14.25 – 15.10
Just like the day before, FreQuency festival kicked off today on the Green Stage. According to the lineup, the English indie rockers Ghosts took it first. A soft natural sound, a predictable, pretty poppy rounded-off scenario, incredibly tasty on the ear and with an incredibly well-crafted feel for stacking highly melodic compositions, with the fitting timbre of singer Simon Pettigrew’s voice, who didn’t shy away from generous use of the acoustic strum while singing. Music with dangerously infectious hyphae that spread across the airwaves at the greatest possible intensity, a very friendly ear-jingle. The band released their debut “The World Is Outside” this June, which met with enviable reviews and general approval. They’ve already put out three singles from this album and presented all of them at their Salzburgring show, namely the songs Ghosts, The World Is Outside and Stay The Night. With a livelier number in the vein of Stop, the guys came nicely alive during the concert. That one surprised with a disco dance 70’ies trick built into the chorus and made no secret of its electronic additions… There were fewer people below the stage than on the first day at the same hour. The rain simply did its job. Ghosts staged an excellent opening, delivered a polished performance, served a healthy dose of typical English black humor, and with the material shown confirmed their big potential for a commercial breakthrough and a place in the field of musically healthy pop rock mainstream.

FOTOS: 15.30 – 16.15
The gentle pop-rock veil that Ghosts left behind at the end of their set was dispelled in an instant by the far bolder and arrogantly aimed Fotos. The Germans from Hamburg struck with a sort of synthesis of punk rock, commanded by the frenetic lead vocals of singer/guitarist Tom Hessler, with touches of the dark-wrapped ancient era of the late eighties (post-punk rockers). A German answer to Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party, in a fleeting way even Kaiser Chiefs here and there… it heated up the audience far more intensely than their predecessors Ghosts. Songs like Komen Zrruck, Giganten or Es reißt uns auseinander… Hessler, the engine of Fotos, proved to be an excellent communicator and mood-igniter, and despite the sour weather and gloomy sky, the band was as rowdy and unhinged as befits proper dilettantism. A compact adrenaline brawl from the stage to the pit and back, the audience partied along with the band. You don’t need Einstein for any of this, just the balls for a simple and direct rock’n’roll approach, and Fotos proved they definitely know how and have what it takes!

!!! (CHK CHK CHK): 16.35 – 17.25
INXS on acid? Serve it hot! The Americans, active since 1996 and formed from the ruins of The Yah Mos, Black Liquorice and Popesmashers, upgraded the variety of moods on the Green Stage. After a lazy intro built from electronic samples, during which singer Nick Offer pulled all the attention onto himself with mocking pouting and jeering. With his swagger, which fleetingly recalled the untouchable Apollo of women, Morrison, Offer looks like he’s powered by energy. The first few moments, concentration… Boom. A sudden catapult of rhythm is here. A shrewdly experienced team hit with an interesting alloy of techno dance rhythms, into which a funkoid, charging bass fit nicely, with a curtain of rippling synths, wind-instrument inserts and a rock touch of guitars that wavered in sound all the way from plain INXS riffs to the psychedelic dissonance of the legacy of the seventies forefathers and funky wah-wah walking. Nick Offer’s outstanding presence with vocal outbursts ranging from the neo-punk rage of RHCP to INXS soul hints. The band convinced with the excellent vibes of Must Be The Moon, Hearts Of Hearts and All Of My Heroes Are Weirdos from this year’s new album “Myth Takes”. A wild gallop through a hefty dance beat, backed by electronic sampling, combined with the classic additions of the natural twang of guitars and bass guitar, created a surprisingly effective platform for launching into jam-up madness below the stage too. It was truly impressive to watch the carefree crowd, which had been going nuts for Fotos just half an hour earlier, give itself fully to a completely different energy, the one created by the arrival of !!! (Chk Chk Chk) on stage. A quirky name, quirky play and quirky fusion. But bold, logical (fusion-wise acceptably successful) and seductive. A band worth the attention of everyone who simply wants something easy on the ears that carries you off into swaying, firm dance rhythms, with a milder touch of dirty rock character. Despite the generally positive verdict, a minor bolt from the sky hit the band, since ten days ago (counting from the day of the Frequency festival 2007 show) their second vocalist John Pugh left for good. Allegedly the guys fell out after the band’s show at the Lollapalooza festival. So Nick Offer drove through all the vocals alone. Carefree and confident.

THE SOUNDS: 17.45 – 18.35
The Swedes The Sounds, in the lineup of Maja Ivarsson (vocals), Felix Rodriguez (guitar), Johan Bengtsson (bass guitar), Jesper Anderberg (synthesizer) and Fredrik Nilsson (drums), brought a true retro eighties alternative look back to the Green Stage. A proper little alt band that leans heavily on the legacy of The Mission, Joy Division and The Sisters Of Mercy, so a simple rhythmic gallop, an emphasized bass foot, light and indistinct riffs with a hint of cheeky punkoid proclamation, all wrapped in the dominant grips of primitive “Oberheim synthesizer” sounds from the late seventies, or the pioneering touches of the Depeche Mode debut and Yazoo from the first half of the eighties, and of course with the charismatic, long-legged blonde Maja Ivarsson on vocals, full of thrilling arrogant charm, who brought direct parallels with Blondie to life on stage. Simple, intensely under-the-skin, a universal melancholic touch! With songs like Painted By Numbers, Tony The Beat, Living In America or Ego, definitely a fitting morsel for dark nostalgics, or for any youngster immune to rock recycling. The Swedes know their stuff. Simply perfectly played, sung… on this side of their sound and delivery of the material you could in fact mistake them in a moment for an Anglo-American rock band. A new and very welcome addition to the Green Stage.

JIMMY EAT WORLD: 19.05 – 19.55
The American punk hardcore guys, let’s call them emo-core too – “pretty emo boys”, hugely popular with the female teenage audience, from Arizona (USA) – chose a setlist made up of their biggest hits, with the majority boldly aimed at the highest gear of adrenaline rush, driven by a high-revving stick, which was tailor-made for the festival mood. For the first time on the second day of FM4 FreQuency festival at the Green Stage, the crowd below the stage exploded in euphoric unison, even though rain, rain, rain and more rain had generally lured significantly fewer people to “jump” below the stage than the day before. And yet this had no effect whatsoever on the positive mood climate and the consistently high fluctuation of energy between band and audience and back! The lineup of Jim Adkins (vocals, guitar), Tom Linton (guitar), Rick Burch (bass guitar) and Zach Lind (drums) opened their concert with the song Bleed American and, through the minutes spent with the frenzied audience, shared those moments with performances of the songs (the order is not completely accurate) Get It Faster, Blister, Sweetness, The Authority Song, A Praise Chorus, Lucky Denver Mint, Hear You Me, Go Big Casino, Futures, Work and Pain. Jimmy Eat World presented themselves in a brighter light on the festival’s second day compared to the rest of the stage competition, which is definitely down to the somewhat longer mileage of the band’s fourteen years of existence and their rich experience, including what they picked up on the joint tour with Green Day.

THE GOOD THE BAD & THE QUEEN: 20.25 – 21.25
The performance of Blur boss Damon Albarn’s project was, for me personally, the moment I’d been looking forward to most on the Green Stage on 16.08.2007. A hater of Kaiser Chiefs, Oasis and a few others from that Brit-to-post-Brit-pop movie, he surely reached the point of most intense artistic-intellectual musical flowering with the self-titled debut. Excellent indie rock, imbued with the poignant esotericism of psychedelia and a theater of ingenious visuals (a combination of stage set and lighting), built on the intense construction of keyboard sound, especially the ones with a rustic tone like mellotron, classic piano and touches of moog, backed by a female string quartet of cello, viola, violin, violin…brrr.

In short… the first onto the stage, bathed in a creation of pure white light, striding through thick fog, was bassist Paul Simonon, former member of the notorious The Clash. He took one last drag of smoke from his cigarette, savored the last molecules of the extract, and, in the style of the famous school of naughty boys The Clash, flicked it off to his left side of the stage with a catapult made from the thumb and middle finger of his left hand, with routine. Dressed in a decadent outfit, thoroughly worn out from night wandering, topped with a crumpled hat… there were as many as eight people on stage, including the string quartet, Simon Tong (The Verve, Gorillaz) loaded with keyboards, and Nigerian drummer Tony Allen (Fela Kuti), when, last of all, ninth on stage, the most attractive member appeared, Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz), chief initiator of the project The Good, The Bad And The Queen. The project has a splendid record of the same name behind it, released this April. It carries a concept about modern London life. The Good The Bad And The Queen also thought about an exceptional stage set. Besides the unified outfits, the stage was adorned in the background with a split canvas that referred directly in motif to the album cover itself and gave the view a real feeling of stage three-dimensionality. Anyone who knows the album knows it’s about a mood created under a strong touch of psychedelia, and about the undulation of gentle interweavings of entirely natural sounds, delicately softened, that act hypnotically in an instant. So it’s perfectly logical that collages of soft gradients of white, blue and violet belong on stage… all the way through, with fog playing along. A real London in the middle of Austria! Albarn and company played the album “The Good The Bad And The Queen” in full, from head to tail. The leader sang the opening History Song placed up front in the pure role of vocalist, and for the next one, 80’s Life, he moved to the classic piano in the background.

The Good The Bad And The Queen were one of the most intelligent things to happen on the Green Stage, and what’s more, we can say on the entire Frequency festival 2007. A project that confirms Albarn’s extraordinary artistic talent, since Albarn had already smoothly knocked the public’s socks off with the genius of his own kind of musical expressionism in Gorillaz, and who is currently reviving his Blur (the time has simply come again for a nice payday), came alive on stage in a strongly intense and realistic way! The chemistry of the performers immediately created a special mood in which you floated, or were carried by waves built from entirely natural rustic sounds, with the emphasized primacy of keyboards (an interweaving of collages between classic piano, mellotron, and mild yet witty seasonings of electronic samples), beneath which a warm (interesting, given the otherwise cold mood for the most part) and firm line of bass guitar and exploring drums strolled quite freely in contrast. Allen’s jazzy touch in Three Changes, placed at the close of the set, especially sparkled. The little concert flew by in a flash. A simply created mood, gloomy, with a transcendental touch, sucked the listener into a special parallel world, from which you only returned when Albarn and company actually waved goodbye to the audience and the first roadies ran onto the stage. A perfect performance, the incredible harmonious integration of the female string quartet, and the general sonic abundance woven from many small strokes of entirely natural origin, even a guitar without a breath of distorted neurotics, safely housed in the hands of acoustic to semi-acoustic… with Albarn’s shameless flirting with “Beatlesque” touches, was so convincing that I needed quite a few moments to fully come to my senses and return by spaceship to my “real earthly axis”. The high point of the concert was the closing title track of the album and the project, with a touch of Bowie-esque charm (read: the dissonant communication of keyboards between Albarn and Tong, with the addition of a wind-instrument effect). In the end I forgot I was standing completely soaked in the rain… The Good The Bad And The Queen were thus the high point of the festival’s second day. The English simply know best how to show heaven and hell in the same breath, through the legacy of rock!

JAN DELAY: 21.55 – 23.10:
Eh… why did this have to happen?!?! Jan Phillip Eißfeldt, stage name Jan Delay, or “Late John”, a German singer from Hamburg, came rolling onto the stage with a horn section, backing vocalists, two percussionists and the rest of the classic lineup (keyboards, bass guitar, guitar, drums) to warm up the drenched audience. He began carrying out his intention with a mixture of hip hop, reggae, dub and funk. Welcome to the dance! Of course, with the verses sung in German. I simply couldn’t find my way in this newly created dimension. Not with my mind, not with the vibration. The audience was of the opposite opinion. It literally went wild, as if they’d been waiting for such a moment all day below the Green Stage. A sort of modern German version of Blood Sweat And Tears, which isn’t such a stupid or out-of-place quip, with a vocal that pulls the verses through the nose, in German, an Eros Ramazzotti variant, ah, only that he’s Italian… well… we at RockLine aren’t exactly at home with dance beats, and yet the band surprised even a hardened rocker like me when it played a medley of the best-known motifs of pop dance hits, which it opened with an insert of the leading hard rock guitar motif of the “Rocky” evergreen Eye Of A Tiger (orig. Survivor), rearranged for the horn section of its members. Anyway, I think acts like this don’t belong at festivals like Frequency, as they further increase the already sky-screaming vagueness of the term “alternative rock” today, and ought to be driven off stages like Frequency’s with fire and sword. As said, my opinion got scorched, since the crowd danced and spun madly below the stage in rock-solid dance beats… Now go figure the teenager who went nuts for Jimmy Eat World and Jan Delay at the same time,… ah, those Germans… the musical globalization of the mind. Everybody suddenly likes everything.

INTERPOL: 23.40 – 01.00
One of the most awkward things happened at the festival when Interpol played. The band was scheduled at the same time as Nine Inch (s)Nails, who were playing on the neighboring Race Stage. Someone living in Europe doesn’t get the chance to watch Interpol play every single day. So for once, screw the “nine inch larvae”. It was raining… brrr, but despite the rot coming from the sky and the competition on the neighboring stage, a sizable mass of people gathered below the stage, already warming up their vocal cords with sporadic sing-alongs in anticipation of their heroes, the indie rockers from New York, in the lineup of Paul Banks (vocals, guitar), Daniel Kessler (guitar, backing vocals), Carlos Dengler (bass guitar, keyboards) and Sam Fogarino (drums). Barely a good month earlier (counting from 16.08.2007), they had released their third studio album, “Our Love To Admire”, and so they opened their set with Pioneer To The Falls, the opening track of their most current studio achievement! Brrr… This is not an everyday thing! This is spine-chillingly dark! Icy, chilling you to the bone… Paul in a burglar’s beanie, with a battered look and that recognizable voice, pitched a bit lower, through which wound a vibration of something unknown, mystically mysterious, even slightly villainous, a completely specific vocal, born precisely to sit in the space between the pulsating, vibrant, high-volume bass, howling spacey synthesizers, chunky guitar grips leaning on a heavy reverb effect, or simply a one- to two-string single-note sliding walk along the neck, an important building block of the band’s expression, with a touch of the dark post-punk atmosphere of the late eighties. The stage was once again engulfed in thick fog.

The guys were given a decent amount of minutes to really loosen up, much to the delight of fans, since they’ll probably have a long wait to see them in Europe again,… well, not really, let’s grit our teeth until November 2007. So the band proportionally dosed material from all three albums into its repertoire, in which the newest one also worked out excellently. A special contrasting atmospheric effect was caught in the rocky, characteristic combination of beat riff in the seductively romantic Rest My Chemistry, in which Kessler, with his characteristic stage movement (it’s practically impossible to photograph this guitarist normally when the stage is 3 m high, with a “photo cricket” like the Canon G7), didn’t hide how immersed he was in the grabby sound he was squeezing out of his guitar – a Gibson ES 335 copy. The dreamy, highly atmospheric excursion was followed by a jump to the equally fresh Mammoth, with the piercing energy of total disillusionment and despair, a contagious accelerated drive – one of the three released singles from the new record – and the performances of the other two, The Heinrich Maneuver and No I in Threesome, didn’t leave Interpol indifferent either. Interpol confirmed that they possess a charisma all their own, that they keep developing effectively in an artistic sense, onward and upward. The energy during the show was simply unique, both for the band and for Frequency, and it’s hard to find references for it. You’d wish for more bands like this at such “alternative rock” festivals. This is typical healthy indie rock and in fact a fulfillment of the demands of the Green Stage, which The Dandy Warhols had met the day before in their own utterly idiosyncratic way. Intelligence and a half! Alongside The Good The Bad And The Queen, the absolute co-high point of the festival’s second day. I breathed a real sigh of relief after the ear torture with Jan Delay.

In Interpol you’ll find a specific energy, a specific expression, and, on top of that, an excellent measure of compositional variability within the basic motifs of the songs the band writes. So the essence and spirit of the band are unique, and that gives the band room to maneuver, to create diversely without turning its back on its own essence, which is the point of healthy expression for any performer, conveying a unique language of the musical universe, if you can find one, that is, and there are fewer and fewer of those today. Interpol presented themselves as a superbly tight band, and regardless of the icy breath that blows through their creation of a one-of-a-kind mood, they addressed the audience during the concert with the words: “We’ve been here two days and haven’t seen such a beautiful country yet. And that goes for you too, dear audience!” Maybe a hint to Banks and company to drop by Slovenia too, since they’d change their minds about the most beautiful country in an instant. Despite the fact that Die Arzte had already started raging on the Race Stage, the people below the Green Stage didn’t drain away during Interpol’s set…

INTERPOL setlist:
1. Pioneer to the Falls
2. Obstacle 1
3. Narc
4. Say Hello to the Angels
5. Rest My Chemistry
6. Mammoth
7. Hands Away
8. Slow Hands
9. No I in Threesome
10. The Heinrich Maneuver
11. Evil
12. Not Even Jail
13. PDA
——————
14. NYC

FREUNDESKREIS: 01.30 – 02.50
Madness. After Interpol, despite the late hour and the merciless drenching from the sky, we witnessed a mass migration of people from the Green Stage to the Race Stage. Evidently, after Interpol people preferred the “biting doctors” over yet another German hip hop trick from Stuttgart, and they couldn’t be bothered to wait another half hour for the stage to be set up properly either. Maximilian “Max” Herre, “Don” Philippe Kayser and Martin “Friction” Welzer not only went far beyond my general knowledge of musical forms meant for entertainment, but in my own helpless ignorance I once again felt the helplessness and powerlessness of the organizer, who, with invitations like this to acts such as Freundeskreis at a festival meant to showcase alternative rock, keeps people below the stage this way so as to sell as much beer and food as possible. Rapping in German, French, English, never mind Esperanto… all well and good, but in some other movie. “Good night,” I said, and instead chose the mud-ton slide of the concentration camp of the southern campsite, where I headed off to crash. Hallelujah, the tent was still standing when I got there…

The second day also ended up without the cherry on top of the fruit cream sundae. Simply, once again, because there was no big headliner on the Green Stage, and it’s the organizer’s fault for breaking up the healthy rock energy with invitations to acts that don’t belong at the festival.