Review: Parklife Festival 2013 - Saturday

Saturday 8th June 2013 – Day One @ Parklife Festival, Heaton Park, Manchester

Words: Tom Sanders

The first big, noticeable change about this year’s Parklife, following its relocation from the student-friendly Platt-Fields to Heaton Park, is just how long it takes to get to the actual venue. Whereas in past years getting in involved navigating a series of metal barriers and trying not to get sucked into a bog, the road to this year’s festivities involved a leisurely stroll through the park grounds with ample opportunity to smell the flowers, pet the animals and get rattled by the ominous, rumbling bass emerging from within.

After a brief stroll to get the lay of the land and a conscious decision to avoid listening to Drum n’ Bass at 11am, attention fell to Main Stage acts Trojan Sound System and Crazy P to get the party started with their respective blends of roots reggae and breezy disco-funk, which provided the perfect soundscape to accompany the weekend’s intense heat (and in Crazy P’s case filled a disco-sized hole formed by the startling lack of ‘Get Lucky’ during DJ sets).

It can’t be overstated how much of an effect the weather had this weekend in raising people’s spirits and getting them to loosen up- this time last year people were doggedly stomping in the rain to remixes of the Coronation St. theme, while today impromptu dance parties were breaking out everywhere there was a spare patch of grass thanks to a great spread of quirky outdoor stages and pop-up DJ’s (here’s where the size difference really made itself known). Special mention has to go to the brilliant tree house stage, which dropped club bangers on any passers-by and kept the general mood at 130bpm or higher for most of the day.

But whilst other main stage acts like Rudimental and Jessie Ware attempt to capture that sunny-day soul feeling, the real meat of the day is found in the tent stages, which offer up an eclectic and relentless onslaught of beats from every micro-genre across the UK Bass spectrum (and in the Metropolis tent in particular, a seemingly never-ending series of breakbeats).

Interestingly though, despite featuring sets from major players in the scene like Baauer, Goldie and Sub Focus, the crowds weren’t at all interested in playing DJ-worship, instead rating each artist on the strength of their sets and being unafraid to jump ship in the event of a lacklustre performance- a lesson Danny Byrd learned all too well after constant bait-and-switches and an obnoxious MC caused half of the crowd to migrate to Jaguar Skills’ much more crowd-pleasing and technically impressive set one tent over.

If there were any missteps in the line-up today, it was the overly prominent positions given to The Maccabees and The Temper Trap, whose particular brand of arena-rock indie was probably better suited to an environment like Leeds/Reading. Though ‘Sweet Disposition’ and ‘Pelican’ managed to get plenty of hands in the air, one can’t help but feel they would have benefited more from playing one of the tent stages, where their fans’ obvious enthusiasm for the material would have been much better received in a more concentrated dose.

Thankfully though this was quickly rectified by headliner Plan B, who after a brief bout of beatboxing to hype the crowd tore straight into the title track from ‘Ill Manners’, accompanied by a visually arresting backdrop of scenes from his riot-inspired film of the same name.

Acting as a great showcase for his considerable talents, B seamlessly ducked and weaved seamlessly through his assorted personas, getting the crowd’s hips shaking during the soulful ‘Strickland Banks’ material during the first half of the set before flipping the record halfway through and laying on the grime thick and fast with covers of his Chase & Status collaborations ‘End Times’ and ‘Pieces’; whose calls for a mosh-pit were answered with glee by the crowd. Alongside some great D n’ B-style breakdowns and re-arrangements from his talented backing band, his set managed to encapsulate everything that was great about this first day of festivities.

CLICK HERE to read Sunday's review.