It was a bit of a slog, but the 1234 Festival succeeded in re-capturing Hoxton's old magic.
If you thought all of the crazies had been driven out of Shoreditch after the successive waves of gentrification, then think again. Taking over Shoreditch Park for an insane mixture of hipsters, tea-cups, gourmet burgers and bowl-loosening bass music, the 1234 Shoreditch Festival cut through Hoxton’s social strata like a bread knife, forcing a crowd of aging punks, fashion students, confused media bods and drug casualties to ride the dodgems together.
Like a housemate who insists on knocking on your door at 10AM every Saturday morning, the 1234 Festival didn’t care if you’d had a bit of a heavy Friday night. Kicking off at 12:30 by the time 5 rolled around, JEFF the Brotherhood, Dirty Beaches, Boneyards, Porcelain Raft, Crocodles, Proper Ornaments and Gross Magic had already played. Fuelled on a cocktail of beer, Red Bull and noodles (I had to miss breakfast), I seem to spend the entire afternoon portion running from one tent to another in a desperate attempt to watch as many bands as humanly possible.
As any hardened all-day drinkers will tell you, the early evening lull is the killer, and at 1234 it was no different. Either by accident or design, the evening section of the line-up turned decidedly more post-punk and art house than the afternoon session. Bands like JEFF the Brotherhood playing riff-heavy hard rock were replaced by neat-haired bands like Savages and playing compact, thought-out indie rock. It wasn’t a bad thing, and acts like Let’s Wrestle and Citizens! were actually pretty cool, and Bo Ningen were as loud and crazy as they always are, but it definitely felt like the energy levels slacked off a bit after hands on the clock hit seven.
The main stage was kind of a microcosm to what was happening all over the festival. After Deap Vally had wrapped up, punk old timers The Buzzcocks and impressively cool Danish hardcore kids IceAge were meant to see us through to the end of the day. Despite looking like my dad and his friends at a rugby club bbq, the former actually went down pretty well. Songs like 'Boredom', 'Orgasm Addict' and 'Ever Fallen in Love' sound just as good as they did in 1977, but I’ve never been more than a casual Buzzcocks' fan, and as the band went through the album tracks, the set began to drag a bit.
By the time IceAge came around, the crowd thinned out considerably as the old-timers headed off to watch Match of the Day over a pint of CAMRA-approved real ale. Now, I really like IceAge on record, but live they are the Nicklas Bendtnar of music. They may look the part, sound cool and go through the motions of the band, but everytime I see them, there always seems to something missing and not in a Fall-style anti-charisma way either. It’s taken me a while, but I think I can finally explain some of this disconnect; they play really fast music and then just stand there looking bored. I mean that stuff works if one or two members of the band does it, like in At The Drive In, but when the entire band does it, it just looks like they can’t be arsed.
1234 is a unique concept in so far that after spending the day stood in the park like Field Day, it follows it up with a multi-venue festival like the Camden Crawl. Finding my second wind, I headed down into Shoreditch to check out the PNKSLM party at the Old Blue Last. Freed from the need to supply something to everyone, this was wall-to-wall party garage rock, with sets from Boneyards, Thee MVPS, Sex Beet (who seem to have become a super-punk version of Eddy Cochran) and Sudakistan. The first band I’ve seen with a bongo drummer who did not completely suck, they sounded like an unholy mesh of the Oh Sees, Earth, Wind and Fire and one of those Peruvian buskers, they played what can only be described as the ultimate party music and were a great way to float across the finish line to what was a super-long day of drinking.
All things considered, 1234 was a success this year. OK, so all the bands I actually wanted to see all played within the space of 2 hours (which, let’s face it happens at all festivals), and it was a massive test of stamina, but it was a fun way to discover new sounds and was a nice reminder of how Shoreditch used to be, before it became swamped in Essex boys and boutique clubbers.
http://the1234shoreditch.com/
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