Best Concerts of Sziget 2016 #4 Ceza

The temptation to portray yourself as a sophisticated know it all of the festival circuit has led many to pen list upon list of the least known, but obviously most exciting acts to grace a particular event- although the season now draws to a close, rosters are still born uncovering the hidden gems of the summer’s last festivals. I confess to having lived with such a temptation in the run up to Sziget, but finally decided against it, because truth be said, you’ll usually end up with a list of things which were less known to you, out of all people, and might have otherwise been very familiar to many.

Wikipedia’s English version is however also confused on the artist who landed at number four on the best of concert list, and feels that Ceza’s notability might need to be verified, as if the highly esteemed online resource would find it hard to get its head around the concept of Turkish rappers and what to do with them. I would say listen to them- for a start.

I would even go as far as to introduce the Ceza rule as a general test: take a person who does not speak the language of the rapper, have them listen to a relevant batch of songs and ask them whether they can still enjoy it and consider it a valuable musical output. If they do, the rapper in case has to be doing something right.  It was this momentous discovery that made me realize why I have always strongly disliked Eminem’s music: there is something hysterical and overbearing in the way he shouts and enunciates his various pain points over the music, which every so often is but a meagre chorus sung by some angelic female voice. Like that moment when he rants about tornadoes and volcanoes and you go, okay, just a few more seconds and the suddenly decidedly lovely Rihanna will chime in, yay.  

But enough about those irrelevant to our present discourse (though really, Eminem on the main stage, one of us would have the opportunity to have the mother of all rants, we just have to find out who), Ceza’s Europa Stage concert had a pretty spectacular crowd- the hardcore nucleus was of course formed by Turkish fans, with whom Sziget has been becoming increasingly popular, but as the evening wore on, ever more people decided to stop and join in because they simply enjoyed the music- coming back to the Ceza rule, the most frequent remark was that they do not understand a word and only came for the food (the Mexkitchen stand next to the Europa Stage was pretty sweet, indeed), but his sounds awesome nevertheless.

I for one went for Ceza specifically (okay, I knew the stand was there as well), since I’d listened to him previously after he was featured in Fatih Akın’s documentary Crossing the Bridge: The Sounds of Istanbul and although I did expect the show to be enjoyable, I did not count on it being quite this good. There’s always a Sziget concert with a slightly undefinable elemental energy that gives you that stupidish grin of this is it and I am so glad it’s happening to me.

I still have no inkling of what the man is saying, or, more precisely, I have been informed on the general outline of his topics but will not be able identify them on the go, but he sure as hell delivers it all as if his life depended on it. It might be my proverbial weak mindedness taking the stage yet again, but I still love a good melody with a good chorus, and Ceza delivers on the level as well, which is probably very necessary for that kind of appeal which transcends the borders of language to which rappers are bound to a certain level. So yes, Wikipedia, this was notable, thank you very much.

Best Concerts of Sziget 2016 #5: Chvrches

There comes that silly moment in your life when you’re facing Sziget’s main stage on which Noel Gallagher is performing some mighty nice music and you feel comfortable and at peace with the forces of the universe and therefore decide to look back in anger and promptly storm off to the A38 tent for some almost twee Scottish snythpop by a band who found it fit to spell the word Churches with a v. Insert here drunk Dutchman trying to pronounce the word accordingly- ccchvvvrches, I mean you can’t do it, and then everybody stares at him in disbelief, of course you can, out of all the people in the world someone speaking Dutch should be able to do it if they applied themselves just a little.

Linguistic discourses put aside, we might have had a slight tinge of remorse over The Desertion of Noel, but then again, Liam was always my favourite bloke in Oasis, basically because he’s an infuriating oaf, and what would the world of modern music be without a court jester extraordinaire. But it was not all about Oasis either- Chvrches were one of the bands whose arrival on the island filled me with genuine enthusiasm, partly because I found their records enjoyable and partly because they haven’t graced the island before.

Speaking of which, I just noticed the other day how on the brand new 2017 Sziget event page people who have started sharing their wishlists tend to go for very many acts who have already been to the festival, even quite frequently- they apparently even want Martin Garrix back which is wrong on so many levels that I immediately banished the thought from my mind. While I’m also happy to have many bands back (almost spoiler: this year’s number one is a repeat offender too), I’m always keen to discover new bands or to find out how bands whose records I like translate their magic into a live performance.

Chvrches, for one, do it particularly well. Although I must confess that lead singer Lauren’s voice might occasionally feel a tad too squeaky for me, her stage presence is utterly compelling- three piece bands often feel like there’s something or someone missing from the stage, but Lauren basically manages to be two people at once, or at least to store and release the energy of two. The sound is also dense and well-forged and they travel seamlessly from one track to another, with the notable exception of when Martin Doherty takes over as lead to deliver a couple of songs. It’s not that he’s bad at it, it’s just that he doesn’t work as a driving force quite in the same way as Lauren does, and a bunch of people suddenly decided to stream out of the tent, and that’s really not nice of them and I hope they got lost on the way to wherever they were going.

The band also committed the sin, already mentioned in connection with the Bloc Party gig, of not playing my favourite song, and they’re even more adamant about it, as I found no incidence of Lies in any of their sets since February this year, when for some reason they thought the good people attending the GoodVybes festival in the Philippines were worth the honour. Since everything else was there in the very best doses, I will forgive the offence for now. Also, I am guessing like this I can put them on the wishlist to repeat offend and maybe they’ll play it for me the next time.

Best Concerts of Sziget 2016 #6: Bloc Party

It kind of ups your indie credential if you have a song, possibly from an old (read: first) album, possibly a big hit (read: your biggest hit ever) that you then conscientiously refuse to play live.  It paints you in fashionable faded grays as a difficult, tormented artist producing over catchy hits which you then almost regret, but well, you’re good, you just could not help it.

But let us not be too harsh on Bloc Party- they do actually play Two More Years every now and then, just not too often, and not on Sziget this time. Just as they don’t always split up, but when they do, it’s not really forever- indefinite hiatus is one of the terms which keeps popping up so often in their biography that they might as well name a song in it’s honour.

They also tinkered with the line up a bit, confusing some of those in attendance, who stared into the mysterious depths of their beer looking for an answer as to whether the band’s drummer was always female. And that’s a no- Louise Bartle joined the band after the slightly acrimonious departure of Matt Tong in 2013, of which Kele Okereke enigmatically said to have involved disagreements over cocaine.

The one obvious thing though is that this fresh incarnation of Bloc Party definitely seems to be in a better place than the late troubled version of the previous line up. They sound better as well, the songs following each other in a strong, clear sequence, with Kele’s voice still being one of the most distinctive ones to have surfaced from the seas of noughties indie. And then there’s the punch, the moment when you feel that a song becomes a bit of a festival anthem, with the crowd singing along and swaying to the rhythm- this happened around Banquet, incidentally my second favourite Bloc Party song, and I almost forgave them for that Two More Years omission- I say almost not because the set itself did not make up for it amply, but because I occasionally indulge in holding harmless grudges.

In case you wonder whence the silly love for Two More Years, well, it happens to belong to a very elect and select list of indie songs which I have decided to use as the basis of fundamental existential guidelines, sort of a replacement for holy texts and self help books, which I find a nigh impossible to read. The relevant bit is 'You don't need to find answers for questions never asked of you' and I dare you to argue with it, because, of course, it's pointless and you will lose.

The backbone of the set was obviously built on the older albums, maybe a bit conspicuously so for a band theoretically promoting their latest release, but then again festival playlists are always a bit of a compromise and leave space for less experimentation, which given the onslaught of acts following one another does make sense in the grand scheme of things. And in this very grand scheme of things we are glad to have Bloc Party back with new faces but good old vibes. 

Best Concerts of Sziget 2016 #7: Die Antwoord

I once spent a good bit of a flight trying not to watch Chappie, Neil Blomkamp’s disturbed brainchild involving Ninja and Yolandi Visser.The reviews had been pretty bad and I felt like a flight with possible turbulence over Oltenia calls for something lighter and more straightforward, which happened to be a rather bland comedy involving Tom Hardy. The blog’s industrious co-photographer had however opted for Chappie and as we progressed southward I realized I simply can’t take my eyes away from his screen. There is something utterly compelling in Die Antwoord’s deliberate otherness, a constant feeling of ‚'what the flying fuck have I just seen, let me look again'.

As so many splendid things these days, their endeavour began with identifying a breach in the market. No one had internationally promoted South African zef culture, building on its potential of uncool that is so terrible that it becomes cool in the process. Enter the Ninja- the band’s 2009 hit single and its video burst onto the interwebs and earned them a cult following. Die Antwoord then duly delivered a small army of mind-bending songs and videos and here they are in 2016 entertaining a soggy but decidedly enthusiastic crowd on Sziget’s main stage.

The first phase of the concert was still a bit tentative, partly because those who had scarce knowledge of Die Antwoord tried to figure out what parallel dimension they had landed in, partly because those already in the know were a bit scared that a muddy Frenchman would hug them.  Once it was settled that we are in Land Zef and the mud is drying, things got rolling. While diminutive Yolandi kept patrolling the stage like a tiny supercharged dynamo, Ninja delivered deadpan solos and some mind boggling posturing, all of this being accompanied by beats from DJ Hi-Tek, who has grown positively rotund in the past years and wore a charming mask in line with the production’s overall feel.

Unlike other acts, whom we will not name here being graceful as we are (this is definitely the longest phrase I ever wrote trying to avoid typing Rihanna), they filled their allotted time slot to the brim and also outdid the unnamables in wardrobe changes, which included everything from onesies to shiny hot pants (thankfully not worn by Ninja) and garbage disposal uniforms.

They packed all their hits in the performance, interspersed with some samples and less known songs, and any illusion that this thing could be taken seriously at some level dissipated by the time they got to playing Happy Go Sucky Fucky-well, okay, it kind of dissipated with the monks chanting during the intro, but some people are hard to convince in spite of evidences.  The whole point of Die Antwoord seems to be taking things as ridiculously and tantalizingly un-seriously as humanly possible and then somewhere, somehow through the gritted teeth and Sziget’s sticky mud some kind of elemental truth will shine through. 

Best Concerts of Sziget 2016 #8: UNKLE

All I can remember about the previous time I saw UNKLE on the island is that I was very tired and I liked it. Well, not being tired, but the concert itself. Speaking of being tired- it is pretty much self-understood that as you age, you are supposed to become worse at festivaling and will slowly but certainly turn if not into a Kafkian beetle who doesn’t quite understand why it ended up in this hell of fire and dust, but at least a morose individual complaining about back pain and the quality of rosé.

In my experience, however, as Sziget edition followed Sziget edition, I started to recall ever fewer concerts where I was devastatingly tired and I put this down to have becoming, well, wiser:  cans of beer are now regularly followed by water, I do rest during the day as well, and I’d rather eat a decent meal at a decent hour rather than wait for that absolute festival hunger to kick in and then stifle it with the first greasy sandwich that comes my way- those sandwiches were somehow invariably the worst meal anywhere on the island and I always regretted them dearly.

This process can of course also be called becoming boring, though for me it would have been great to be boring at twenty, because I always preferred enjoying a concert to passing out in the party tent- as a matter of fact, I only discovered the very existence of such party tents after several years of szigeting, and visited them more out of anthropological curiosity than anything else.

Given that UNKLE hail back to that golden age of trip hop of the nineties, it was then quite understandable that those in attendance in A38 were often of that wiser sort, happy to submerge themselves in the soundtrack of so many past festival summers. As a matter of fact, UNKLE could be called the soundtrack band by definition- although their album output might seem scarce for such a long career, the songs they did make ended up being used in films, TV programmes and even commercials at an astounding rate. People completely unaware of UNKLE’s existence will nevertheless instantly recognize a good many of their songs, perhaps from an episode of CSI, or Top Gear or a BMW advert.

Some might say that this discredits their endeavours, but I actually quite like the idea of UNKLE being catchy in a subversive way- just as I liked their pretty smug delivery during the concert, for they are the type of band who sounds good even when, or especially if, not trying too hard. This was the main complaint I heard voiced against them by those who had finished blasting the rosé: that the show seemed to be played too clinically. The sound was great, the visuals were great, there was banter too, but it seemed a bit too clockwork. So it might have been, but then again much of UNKLE’s music sounds like cruising through life being superlative (hence the tantalizing efficiency as soundtrack material), and you can’t be superlative if it looks like you’re trying too hard.