©BratvegasArriving at about 330pm on Friday, the festival for us started for BV with Puding pani Elvisovej. Actually, the festival really began on Thursday evening with an unsuccessful search for wellington boots, reports of gloomy weather for the weekend causing a run on Bratislava’s wellie stockists. Their catchy songs got the O2 tent dancing straight away. They play danceable indie with beefy kickdrums and instant choruses, more shout along than song. That may sound like an attempt to mimic what’s cool now but they’ve been doing this for 8 years so there can be no accusations of bandwagon jumping. If the 4/4 stuff could get a bit samey but excursions into hip hop and baggy influenced sounds kept things interesting. Changes in vocalists and languages kept the set varied, fun but without being gimmicky. A fine start to the festival.
Next up was Jana Kirschner at the Tatra Banka. She drew a bit crowd and like many others we watched it on big screens outside the tent. The best thing I can say is that it was inoffensive, but then music so deliberately inoffensive is itself offensive. Her voice is technically sound but indistinctive, lacking depth or character, the lyrics a string of clichés and meaningless platitudes. She’s signed to a major label and last years album ‘Shine’ contains all English songs, so there’s clearly a global plan here. She may well get success in the UK or the US. I can imagine hearing her music on commercial English radio stations that celebrate the inoffensive, the bland, the insipid. But that doesn’t mean it’s good, quite the opposite in fact.
Gossip next and another act who disappointed me. There’s no doubting that singer Beth Ditto has a rare old voice, and the combination of a ballsy soulful voice with a garage rock dynamics makes for an interesting sound. There was song great drumming and guitar work and when Ditto belts them out she really belts them out. All sounds good so far, it’s just that they’re missing some songs. Unfortunately that’s a pretty crucial thing to be missing - they make make an interesting racket but when you get beyond that there’s really not a lot there.
UNKLE make a good comparison. They combine elements that haven’t traditionally gone together, with their combination of electronic sounds with guitars and song based structures. The difference is there’s more to their sound than the novelty of contrasting influences.
We spoke to UNKLE’s main man James Lavelle after the performance and asked what he thought of the festival.
“everybody was great, really enthusiastic audience. All the places you don’t sell records you seem to be pretty popular.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s interesting, I was talking to people from the old Eastern Bloc about why DJs are so popular there. People are so anti the past where everything was so rigid and negative and this music is new to them. Computer literacy is so good in these countries that it offers a way out. It represents something that’s never been seen or heard and there’s an excitement to it. We’ve gone full circle in the UK and after the explosion of it in the 90s it’s gone back round to bands.”
“The performance felt like a good old fashioned rock gig, was that a conscious decision?”
“Yes, the references were more things like Nine Inch Nails and Massive Attack, not like Underworld or the Chemicals. The last record was quite guitar led. I think it’s about how you translate your records and for us it’s not going to work in a traditional dance arrangement.”
The songs did indeed translate well. The more indie style vocals of Gavin Clarke and use of live instruments made for more of a show than the traditional live electronic format of a couple of blokes stood behind laptops.
Friday headliner Fatboy Slim’s DJ set attracted the biggest crowd of the weekend. I reckon he’s a bit past it but the reaction of the crowd suggests I’m in the minority. The music he played was clearly aimed at a crowd of non dance music aficionados and was good in parts. ‘*69’ for example has all the hallmarks of him at his best – irresistible groove, catchy vocal hook, accessible but still innovative. Some choices were predictable and took us into cheese territory. Playing House of Pain ‘Jump Around’ made me think of being in ropey student clubs ten years ago - I think we should expect more from a top DJ. Still, maybe that’s a bit harsh, straddling what’s cutting edge and what’s accessible to the mainstream is no easy thing to do and Fatboy Slim does it better than most.
Some of us here at BV are dance music snobs and for such people the Devin FM tent was the place to be. It had the intimacy of a good club and people grooved away to drum ‘n’ bass, breakbeat, house in it’s various forms (tech house, minimal house, click house). We were especially impressed with Junior, Milos and Skank and 4Elements DJs. Speaking to Milos before his set on Friday night he said he and Skank would play a slightly different set than at their monthly Milkshake night at Sub Club, a retrospective of their last 12 months. “Here we have a crowd from all of Slovakia and maybe Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, so it’s more a time to introduce ourselves and what our music is about.” Asked about his highlights from the last year Milos says it’s the show on radio fm, which has been running for nearly a year. “We receive promos from different labels across Europe and they appreciate that there is a radio station in Slovakia where their music can be heard.” As for the future plans it’s “starting our own Laporelo label [the same name as the DJ agency he runs with partner Skank], that’s our main activity at the moment and the first release will be in September.” Lots to look out for then!
It was about 5am when we decided to retire for the evening and there were plenty of people still going. There'd been no rain, some good music and a great atmosphere. The search for the tent proved trickier than I might've hoped, but otherwise no complaints.
Saturday begins with a hunt for coffee and food. During our search for sustenance we stumbled across the Slovak National Theatre’s collaboration with the UK’s Royal Choral Society. It was an unexpected treat and helped sooth our heads as much breakfast did. A perfect start to the day.
The best thing about festivals is discovering new things. We may all go to them to watch personal favourites but the acts who leave the biggest impression are often the ones we see for the first time. At Pohoda for me, it was Slovak ska band Polemic, who were celebrating their 20th anniversary. I’d been told by my Slovak festival companions that I had to see them and I was glad I did. Their music is feelgood without being cheesy, it has a sense of fun and wit (like their reggae cover of Aerosmith’s ‘Crazy’) but with no hint of novelty. They got the crowd dancing, jumping and singing songs like ‘Gangsta ska’ and ‘Ako to prezijem’. We grabbed them after their performance, and spoke to Petko, singer and trumpet player.
“Today we prepared a special program, there were 6 songs we played 10 or 15 years ago and today we had our singer who has been out of band for 4 years. We were very surprised by the atmosphere, there so many people singing and dancing at 2pm, it was perfect.” It certainly connected with the crowd and Petko reckoned this was because “we’re not as good musicians as someone who plays in the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra but people believe in what we do. When we play our music we are doing it seriously. When we are smiling, really we are smiling, we are not actors.”
Talking about the early days of the band he explained that the band were first influenced by the British ska bands of the early ‘80s like Madness, The Specials and Bad Manners. Then after 1989 Petko says “our eyes were opened and we saw the Jamaican roots of the music and we learn more about the history of it.” Since then they have travelled all over the world and clocked up over 900 gigs. Petko explains that “it doesn’t matter if the audience is speaking Slovak, Czech, German or English because ska music is special, and from the music you can understand everything.” On the basis of Polemic’s performance at Pohoda I can't see how anyone could argue with him!
Next up on the main stage are Irish band Bell X1. They’ve been to Slovakia before, on what singer Paul Noonan wryly describes as an “ambassadorial mission”. They were sent on behalf of the Irish government to welcome Slovakia into the EU in the most obvious way possible - by playing a gig at the Slovak Pub (the band couldn’t remember the name of it but they remembered the garlic soup). They didn’t overestimate the gravity of their ambassadorial duties but they enjoyed it and were happy to be back in Slovakia.
Bell X1 play to a small but appreciative crowd. It’s emotive indie but without the worthiness or over sincerity that makes so much of the genre unappealing. For my money, their third and most recent album ‘Flock’ is one of the most underrated albums of recent times. They start the set with two songs from it ‘My First Born for a Song’ and ‘Rocky Took a Lover’. Beautiful songs, beautifully sung with lyrics rich in Catholic imagery.
We ask Paul if it was conscious. “Growing up in Ireland at the time we did,” he says “it gets into you by osmosis. One of my favourite books as a younger man was bible stories for children, some of those stories are wonderful stories so we plagiarise them, it’s out of copyright you know!” he says. Keyboardist Dave Geraghty adds that he’s drawn to “their fable quality, the songs are like stories, like Nick Cave, they’re simple stories but they make you think.”
We talk a bit about the other acts playing the festival and admit to being disappointed with Fatboy Slim. Paul agrees but Dave’s not so sure, saying “that may be so live but the real magic happens in the studio. He revolutionised the whole dance thing and made it mainstream, when he first came out I was really into it.” Still, I’d rather listen to his own band. They’re huge in their native Ireland and are starting to make waves in the US. Their music isn’t inaccessible so it’s hard to fathom why they’ve had so little success in the UK. Maybe it’s better not to worry so much about being able to crack that mystery and just enjoy being in on a great little secret.
Next up we meet up with some friends to see The Cribs. The band look bored and so are we, so we don’t stay for long, but long enough to be convinced we wont miss anything. There’s nothing to set them apart from the thousands of other style over substance indie rock bands who can be defined more my their haircuts than their music. My companion Mr Fowlds sums it up nicely when he says “I think they think they look cool. They just look immature.”
Guitar bands from the British Isles seem to be the order of the day on the main stage and next up are Editors. They do shimmering guitars and a Joy Divisionesque sense of space but always suffered from the fact that American band Interpol arrived with a similar sound before they did. A poor man’s Interpol they may have been, but they were still a decent band who wrote decent songs. I’ve always quite liked them but, having not seen them play for a few years, I was amazed how much they’ve improved. Singer Tom Smith’s voice is bigger, stronger and richer, and the band played with vigour and precision. They were playing in Slovakia for the first time and the crowd reaction was fantastic, especially considering they would be unfamiliar with the music. The band almost seemed a bit surprised themselves. Many acts falter when making that step up from big indie band to proper stadium band. On today’s evidence, Editors will have no such problem.
Next we shuffled over the Metoo stage for Lou Rhodes, the folk singer who made her name in the 90s as the singer in trip-hop duo Lamb. We spoke to her before her performance:
“You played at Pohoda last year; you must’ve enjoyed it as you’re back again?”
“It was really nice but I had a really sore throat before the gig. It was on one of the smaller stages and it was just me and a guitarist. This time they asked me to come back with a band.” Lou’s second solo album ‘Bloom’ was released in Europe on her label Infinite Bloom, as was her first. She says the reason is creative freedom: “I’m in charge of everything including the artwork and the videos. With Lamb we were on a major label and we’d always have a marketing manager phoning up saying you need to do this or that.”
Her voice is powerful, but what makes her stand out live is her presence. She’s seated and still throughout the performance, but you are drawn to her. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is, some performers just have that special something. The band played beautifully, Lou said before the show it would be “stringtastic” and the arrangements matched the tenderness in the lyrics. Some of the crowd were really into it but some seemed a bit baffled. It was strange to listen to such mellow music at 11pm, not least after a day of drinking with Slovak gusto, and it would have sounded perfect in the blazing sunshine we’d had earlier that day. Still a fantastic performance though.
This moves us onto Saturday’s headliners, The Streets aka Mike Skinner. The set opened with ‘Turn the Page’ the first track from the first album ‘Original Pirate Material’ and opening track of his live show since time immemorial. Recreating a record made in a home studio live with a band is something few people manage to do well. It’s hard to get that sense of a show, but Mike Skinner is quite the showman. Not letting the language barrier put him of ripping through his repertoire of audience participation, attempting a great range of language than any other English speaker over the weekend. He has us jumping, crouching and hugging strangers. The set is greatest hits affair with songs from all 3 albums, including “Let’s Push Things Forward’ and ‘Fit but You Know It’. I was a wee bit disappointed not to hear anything from the new album (an entry on his blog a few days before said it had just been completed) but after the show he put on I cant grumble. The showmanship was befitting of a headline act and we were treated to a fine finale - Skinner getting the crowd to part, red sea style, walking to the back of the crowd before crowdsurfing back to the stage. It’s a good climax to the festival. Actually, not quite the climax, the headliner may have finished but there was plenty more fun to be had. 4Elements DJs had us bouncing away in the Devin FM tent and L Plus and MC Coppa got the drum ‘n’ bassheads going in the O2 Arena.
We’re at the end now, so time for me to pass a final judgement, in a self important Kent Brockman sort of way. What’s good about the festival? You don’t get ripped off! Beer is cheap, and not just cheap in the way all Slovak beer is cheap, a velky pivo at the festival was cheaper than in most bars in Bratislava. And a large wine = half a litre. I’ve been to dozens of festivals in Britain and a fair few in Europe in my time and Pohoda has to win the prize for least time lost to queuing.
The crowd were friendly and enjoyed themselves but, though there was no shortage of drink, it was less hedonistic than others (be your own judge as to whether that’s a good or bad thing!). There’s not the rawness of atmosphere or crackle of expectation you get at other festivals but the crowd are open minded in a laid back way. The great thing is that it allows for some interesting scheduling of the acts. It was great to take in so many types of music and each stage had a lot of variety. It’s hard to imagine that happening in Britain, where obsessive trendiness and pigeonhole fixations mean bills of bands who all look and sound the same. Pohoda’s a unique proposition, we’ll be there next year, maybe see you there too...
