Saturday overview

2008 sees Dot-To-Dot festival expand from one day to two, and from two geographical locations to three. Nottingham's annual music festival now has sister sites popping up in Bristol and London, and with the biggest line-up ever had it's making a damn fine thrust at the chalice for best urban festival in the country. The main drawing point? Not the headliners (This year the take-it-or-leave-it likes of Dirty Pretty Things and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.), but the eclectic mix of new and upcoming bands peppered across the cities participating venues, defying all expectation and genre boundaries. From dance to indie to folk to thrash, there’s something for everyone.

This writer's Dot To Dot 2008 kicks off with Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds in Rescue Rooms, snappy art rockers with their tongues firmly in their cheeks. Like five Beano characters burst out of the pages of their comic book world, they’ve beaten up Foals and stolen their instruments. It’s incredibly good fun and puts everyone in a good mood for the rest of the day, as singer Rory cavorts around the stage like a tempest propelled by comic-book fart clouds. They may not be the most original band on earth, but they certainly could be doing a hell of a lot worse.

Next up, Cazals, also in Rescue Rooms. Frustratingly lacking that special something to truly make their mark, their retro-aware/forward-looking electro-indie is breathtakingly OK. Perhaps, and this is no personal slight – just an observation, it's the fact that singer Phil's wheezing vocals lack any real power that the band don't connect... watching indie's own Fagin rasp into the microphone is more creepy than it is cool. Having said that, their cover of Spandau Ballet's 'To Cut A Long Story Short' is pretty good fun.



Over in Stealth, The RGBs are the afternoon's first epiphany. Fronted by three femme-sirens, their eccentric dance/pop blitzkrieg is the biggest surprise of the day and totally awesome. The rising thump of deep house opener 'New House' (like New Rave, perhaps? God, I hope not...) sets people in motion that's a hell of a lot more vigorous than you'd expect for five in the afternoon.

Sadly, after the excitement of The RGBs, Dot To Dot experiences an early evening lull, which it never really recovers from. Hip-pop poet Saul Williams in Rock City draws a smaller crowd than expected. Despite the glamorous stage outfits – he wears a crown of feathers – his spoken word/noise amalgam doesn't keep this reviewer hooked beyond the first three songs.

So it's over to Rescue Rooms for Team Waterpolo followed by The Little Ones, or at least that's what it says on the line-up. Actually, both of them have dropped out, and been replaced by some awful indie mumbling dirge that no one should waste their time listening to. Sorrows are drowned at the bar, but there’s more bad news to come – Rescue Rooms headliners Alphabeat have give up on Dot To Dot too, their singer has a sore throat. Aww.



But things pick up come the turn of Chrome Hoof on Rescue Rooms' stage. The experimental jazz-metal outfit manifest like gold-clad sorcerers from a parallel dimension, and their progressive whig-out across a minefield of explosive conflicting time signatures wows the crowd, who've never seen anything quite like it before.

The thought of Cazals getting an encore and returning to the stage to fill in for Alphabeat is not one worth entertaining, so it's over to the Bodega for Jeremy Warmsley, who rounds off Day 1 of Dot to Dot in serene style.

The well-mannered electro-tinged singer-songwriter previews tracks from his forthcoming second album, including a cover of New Order's 'Temptation', but it's occasional forays into his modest musical past that go down best, particularly the excellent 'Dirty Blue Jeans'.

The Bodega closes its doors to the first night of Dot To Dot at this point, but the other venues stay open until the early hours. Dan Deacon plays in Stealth, while Bloc Party DJ in Rock City. Overall, mostly due to an unfortunate slew of no-shows, the first day of Dot To Dot has been unmemorable. Sunday, however, has a far stronger line-up, so hopefully things will pick up...

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