Orbital brings Get Loaded to an unforgettable climax
Get Loaded In The Park 2009 review
Wednesday 2nd September 2009
Both Felix Da Housecat and the glorious weather of the day before have decided to announce last-minute cancellations at this year's Get Loaded In The Park, but with a line-up that'd have Kevin and Perry shooting streams of glo-stick juice into the air, you'd be hard pressed to say that the few thousand people crammed into Clapham Common are all that distressed. Teenie boppers, aging ravers and even a few toddlers can all be seen strewn across the park throwing some ludicrous shapes, and even the barbarically high food prices can't dim an atmosphere that has revellers jumping around like twats from the early afternoon.
And speaking of such scenes, Krafty Kuts kick things up a notch on the main stage with an awesome set of breaks-slanted dance that raises some of the biggest cheers of the day thanks to some cheeky sampling of Calvin Harris and Michael Jackson amongst others. Inside the XFM tent there's a more bemusing set on show as Miike Snow and his band of merry masked men cause an indie-dance ruckus that has as many people staring goggle-eyed at the stage as it does delirious dancers.
Back on the main stage, Freeland sends the swelling crowd into euphoric flurries of arm-waving grins with his uplifting trance, before drum n' bass collective Roni Size Reprazent provide one of the most well-received performances of the day, despite a somewhat anti-climactic start after a mammoth intro track. This is actual drum n' bass, and the presence of live instruments gives the group a huge sound that causes all sorts of pandemonium within their eager audience. Meanwhile, a somewhat less chaotic but perhaps more soulful hoe-down is taking place in the XFM tent as rising Rn'B starlet VV Brown wins over more than a few new followers thanks to her charming stage presence and refusal to let anyone stand still.
Across the park in the Clash tent, one of the most reliably brilliant acts on the festival circuit is taking to the stage in suitably ridiculous fashion. Peaches has managed to carve herself a dedicated following in the years since she gatecrashed the pop charts with 'Fuck The Pain Away', and the packed-out tent goes ably ape-shit as she appears with her band completely decked out in luchadore wrestling gear. It's mental, but it's also freakin' awesome. Carl Craig offers a far more civilised alternative on the main stage with a set that features an orchestra backing his smooth house beats. It's a great idea, but it draws a disappointingly small crowd and ends up being more of a pleasant distraction than a show-stealer.
Pendulum can do no wrong these days; loved by just about everyone from indie kids to metalheads, even today's stripped-down DJ set draws the XFM tent's biggest crowd, which is a blessing and a curse given that someone seems to have forgotten to turn the bloody sound up. Not that such things stop everyone from completely losing their shit to the likes of 'Blood Sugar' and 'Propane Nightmares', but a speaker system that goes up to 11 wouldn't hurt. Norwegian electronica legends Röyksopp also draw a surprisingly rowdy crowd given the more ambient nature of their music, and what could have turned into a flat answer to Pendulum's energetic set in fact serves as the perfect warmup for tonight's headliners.
Sadly for Röyksopp and everyone else performing in Clapham tonight, no one had a piss-soaked snowball's chance in hell of stealing Orbital's thunder. Sorely missed on the dance circuit since their split in 2004, tonight's set is a blistering reminder of why they became widely regarded as one of the best festival acts of the past 20 years. Timeless tunes such as 'Satan [Spawn]' and an immense live reworking of 'Chime' provoke rapturous cheers and shit-eating grins aplenty, and by the time the duo take their leave to close the festival at a criminally early 9pm, the hordes of happy revellers making their way back through London are left to wonder how Get Loaded can ever top this. If they can, then it will surely cement the event as the capital's premiere music festival.
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