Looking forward to Field Day this weekend? Here's a playlist and a preview

Something that interests me as a voracious consumer of new music is the rise of multi-venue festivals where you can try and cram as many acts into your day as possible. The SXSW festival in Austin, Texas is the best example of this, but this year already many UK events have taken this as their lead, with the likes of Brighton's Great Escape, Liverpool's Sound City and the long established Camden Crawl booking a huge range of bands over a variety of venues.

With literally hundreds of music festivals competing for space and attention over the summer months, this seems to be a succesful model. This year larger events such as Sonisphere have been cancelled, whilst even legendary ones like Glastonbury have taken a year off.

One event that has moved from its normal slot in the festival calendar is London's Field Day; a one day outdoor event that has steadily been building an audience in Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets since 2007. This multi-stage music festival traditionally takes place in August, but this year it has been pushed forward to the first Saturday in June due to the huge presence of the Olympics taking over that area in August.

Field Day always boasts a cutting edge line-up of both established and breakthrough acts, and as it is all compressed into one day, you don't have to camp or bring anything with you. For me, it works brilliantly as a showcase; an excellent way to see quite a few new bands in one day as you can cover the ground between each stage in a few minutes.

The festival emerged from small grass roots venues and promoters working together and has grown into something much larger. In 2006, it began in the car park of the Griffin Pub in Old Street as the Return of the Rural and took the format of a village fete with live acoustic acts such as James Yorkston and Beth Orton, as well as Clinic and Four Tet. These acts were large enough to pull a decent crowd back then, and the promoters decided to do something bigger the following year they booked space in Victoria Park, joined forces with other promoters and announced the first Field Day, which sold out to 10,000 people in August 2007.

The festival has evolved and grown in size to 20,000 and has now played host to the likes of Florence and the Machine, Phoenix, Santigold, James Blake to name just a few.

Last year's festival was the largest yet and there were some issues with overcrowding. These have been addressed this year with a new layout to help the flow between stages, although the capacity remains the same.

The close proximity of the stages gives the organisers another headache, specifically how to reduce the bleed-through of sound between venues. Over the years they have taken various steps to address this and with some clever positioning of each PA plus a capacity crowd in each tent, the colouration is negligible.

There are around 60 acts on the bill, so I thought I would try and pick out some highlights. There are inevitable clashes of course, but I reckon on a carefully planned day you get to see around 8 or 9 acts. A clashfinder is essential but here are some suggestions.
Grimes – one of the breakthrough acts of 2012, Grimes is the alias of Claire Boucher, a young prolific talent from Canada, who manages to straddle the genres of dance music, lo-fi indie and witch house with ease
Peaking Lights – a husband and wife duo who make a lo-fi mix of dub, krautrock and psychedelic pop
R. Stevie Moore – a prolific but wilfully obscure DIY musician who has been making music since the mid-70s but is only just coming to a wider audience now thanks to the likes of Ariel Pink
The Men – high octane punk rock, noisy and brash, which sounds like it was recorded with all the needles on red
Summer Camp – duo Jeremy Walmsley and Elizabeth Sankey are building their indie-pop origins into something very special,as last year's Welcome to Condale album showed.
Fennesz – legendary Austrian guitarist now firmly established in the world of ambient electronica, he makes some lovely noises
Andrew Bird – an amazing talent who plays superb violin, writes great songs and does clever things with loops. He is also a fantastic whistler!
Tortoise – the guys who brought dub, jazz and krautrock to the world of American indie-rock in a rescheduled show from last year
Mazzy Star – newly reformed,this duo made three classic albums in the 1990s, featuring the distinctive voice of Hope Sandoval and the psychedelic fuzz guitar of David Roback.
Liars – one of the finest experimental rock groups of the last 10 years, showcasing their new album WIXIW.
Papa M - the alias of David Pajo, best known as guitarist of the post-rock group Slint
Django Django - last but not least, one of the bands of 2012, on a mid-afternoon slot so look sharp.

Just in case you missed the clashfinder, click here to get the official one.

The Field Day line-up was hard to pick ten or twelve acts from, so I've made a 25 track playlist on Spotify. Enjoy!

Listen: 10 of the best releases of the month, March edition

I'm enjoying wading through albums to try and pick ten or so for this page every month. March wasn't as strong a month as January or February in my opinion, and it's the first month I've been unable to pick ten albums with Spotify links. Happily, the three non-Spotify albums that I have included are fantastic and well worth seeking out.

Chromatics 'Kill for Love'
*no UK spotify available* but the album is still streaming via soundcloud, click here for more. This long awaited, highly anticipated album from the Portland based synth act is well worth the five year wait. Over the 91 minute running time it manages to sound cinematic and epic whilst retaining the thrill of well crafted synth-pop songs. It's early days but I've already heard the word "masterpiece" applied to this by a few people.

Andrew Bird 'Break it Yourself'
listen via Spotify
My review
'Break it Yourself' sits together very well as a set of songs. It's not a concept album but there is a sense that it is loosely about the passage of time, the ageing process and our own personal memories.
This time around he has recorded it mostly himself in his barn outside Chicago and at the heart of it, like most of his albums, is his deceptively simple song writing which gets constructed into something complex and clever because of his work with loops and his interweaving melodies.

Lee Ranaldo 'Between the Times and Tides'
listen via Spotify
my review (the 405)

This is a strong solid rock album that warrants repeated listens. It has enough familiarity for Sonic Youth fans to latch on to, but it also has plenty of surprises. If you were expecting an angry, experimental record in the aftermath of that group's demise you will be disappointed, because Lee Ranaldo has produced something that embraces his new solo status with an exuberance few would have predicted.

Julia Holter 'Exstasis'
*no UK spotify available*
An album which gathered such over-the-top gushing reviews that I couldn't bring myself to add to them! It is a beautiful album, a collection of experimental, ambient pop apparently inspired by Greek mythology. It would sit nicely between Joanna Newsom and Mary Margaret O'Hara, whilst not really sounding like either of them.

THEEsatisfaction 'awE naturalE'
*no UK spotify available*
Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White made their presence felt on the best hip-hop record of 2011 (Shabazz Palaces 'Black Up') and now they have come into their own on this brief but very impressive debut. With 13 tracks in just 30 minutes, it's a jazzier, more fun, flipside to the Shabazz Palaces album.

Grimes 'Visions'
listen via Spotify
Still only 21, this is Clare Boucher's third record as Grimes, and the first to get a major release (on 4AD). It's an impressive, genre-defying album, which manages to combine the sound and feel of left-field indie bands (Cocteau Twins in particular) with commercial RnB and underground lo-fi dance music. This is another one that is going to be around all year.

Fanuelle (re-issue)
listen via Spotify
I wouldn't normally include re-issues in this, but as this is a re-issue of an album from 2005 hardly anyone ever heard I reckon I'm allowed. This was the debut album by Matthew Fanuelle which disappeared soon after release, and it has been found and remastered by Swedish label Emotion. It's a mix of great songwriting, lo-fi production, movie samples and a wall of Casio keyboards. Imagine Daniel Johnson, Momus and the Magnetic Fields as a starting point, then go and investigate this lost gem.

Lost in the Trees 'A Church That Fits Our Needs'
listen via Spotify
A haunted but stirring album, written as a cathartic experience after the suicide of frontman Ari Picker's mother - that is her face staring out from the cover. It's a very beautiful, musically complex album. As you might expect given the subject matter, the lyrics are personal and very impressive.

White Hills 'Frying on this Rock'
listen via Spotify
my review (the 405)
I didn't rate this as highly as their last couple of albums, but there are enough highlights to warrant its inclusion here.
"Some of the song structures remind me of the likes of Loop, Hawkwind and Monster Magnet, although it is on the extended pieces that White Hills become something more distinctive and start to forge their own identity. "

The Bowerbirds 'The Clearing'
listen via Spotify
This is a more expansive and more strange than previous Bowerbirds releases, and none the worse for that. Apparently the couple behind the band, Beth and Phil, separated and got back together during this album's gestation period and Beth also suffered a mystery illness which nearly killed her. THey have been able to turn those hardships into something pretty beautiful.

Andrew Bird live review (the 405)

I'm pausing my ATP posts for a few hours to link to my review of Andrew Bird in the Barbican last week. It can be found on the 405, click here to read it.

review: Andrew Bird, Break it Yourself

The first striking thing about Andrew Bird's eighth album 'Break it Yourself' is the cover. It’s a photograph of a child pulling a rocking horse around a yard; an image which, judging by the quality of the print and the setting, could be around 100 years old. Although Bird's music does cross many genres he is rooted within folk traditions and this cover image underlines that from the outset.

Another striking thing about it is the way that 'Break it Yourself' sits together very well as a set of songs. It's not a concept album but there is a sense that it is loosely about the passage of time, the ageing process and our own personal memories.

This time around he has recorded it mostly himself in his barn outside Chicago and at the heart of it, like most of his albums, is his deceptively simple song writing which gets constructed into something complex and clever because of his work with loops and his interweaving melodies.

The understated opening of 'Desperation Breeds' sets the tone for much of the album, where his gentle violin and guitar lines accompany a song that wonders what will happen "without bees".
'Danse Caribe' is interesting in that it takes traditional music and twists it into something different. The chords remind me a lot of a Van Morrison song 'The Healing has Begun', which in itself was probably based on some older tune, but Bird has created more layers with his banjo and violin and the melody gets subtly changed. It is also the first showcase for his fine whistling!
'Eyeoneye' has a more familiar sound for those people who know his earlier albums. It starts with a flurry of electric guitars, and is practically a title track with its chorus of "break it yourself".
'Lazy Projector' has some more great whistling and muses about how we remember our own lives, and it leads into 'Near Death Experience Experience' which is inappropriately catchy, with it's refrain about "dancing like cancer survivors."
'Lusitania' is a great duet with Annie Clark (St Vincent), taking its lead from historical events and focusing in on individual relationships, whilst 'Orpheo Looks Back' features duelling violin tracks and squeezeboxes and comes across as very authentic gypsy-folk. The phrase 'jug band' comes into my head every time I hear that one.
'Sifters' is more downbeat and very beautiful, with some delicate electric guitar and lyrics that dwell on the ageing process and our own memories and our place in time.
'Hole in the ocean floor' is maybe my favourite track. It builds into something epic, from pizzicato strings and a really open arrangement with violin and whistling sketching out the melody.
The closing instrumental 'Belles' just floats with delicate dulcimer (or maybe it is a xylophone) taking centre stage.

I think it's fair to say that this isn't the most immediate music Andrew Bird has ever released, but it is a thought-provoking and musically rich addition to his body of work. I suspect that it is an album I will return to a lot in the near future.