Rockness

The festival season kicks off with an electro fuelled monster mash up

After a long wait in road works just after Perth then a fight with the tent to put it up, we finally made it into the site
I was excited to see Beardyman as I have a few times and know how talented the guy can be, unfortunately today he wasn’t on best of form, after some very funny quips and a bit of a sing-along the rest of his set sort of just petered out.

I took in the festival site for a small while, forgetting that Rockness is a really small festival compared to others in Scotland, everything was within 5 minutes walking time maximum, perfect. The layout this year was brilliant

One of the new features to the festival was the Red Bull studio stage; they had a hand picked array of DJs who were playing with their various bands and had own slots over the weekend. One act in particular was the wonderful Glasgow based Kobi Onyame, he really got the afternoon crowd going, a lot of people dancing, he had great interaction and split the crowd getting them to sing various part of his songs. he was up against DJ Fresh who was getting a huge sing along to his recent hit single with Dizzee Rascal ‘The Power’

Justice had the tent packed and had an amazing stage production with the most amazing lights which I still see when I blink…
Arguably their biggest smash hit D.A.N.C.E went on for so long, the crowd did not let up though! The tent was jumping!

The later curfew allowed Deadmau5 to bring in a huge stage set up that worked well in the dark coming over the idyllic festival site. ‘Ghosts & Stuff’ and ‘The Veldt’ getting the biggest cheers of the evening, the rest of the set had everyone bouncing to bass heavy electro including my entire party! The Havana and the Tyskie defo aided this experience!

The incredible After burner then came into a life of its own, with what felt like the entire festival population congregating at the metal with all the pyrotechnics, like worshipping at the gods of techno! James Holden and Ben Sims kept the crowd dancing.
Another walk round the site and we ventured into ‘Howards End’ where they were having a Scottish party with a ‘guy dressed as a big baby’ who only told us every 4 minutes. Tunes such as ‘Loch Lomond’, ‘500 miles’ and ‘Take Me Out’ made this feel like a new year party or aunties 50th, we didn’t care though and it was a great end to an evening.

Sunday service with the Cuban Brothers encouraging everyone to touch one another, their comedy come dance show spectacular is always a great start to the Sunday proceedings at Rockness!
Friendly fires brought their Disco tunes to the party, a great band who had the half cut crowd dancing.

Rob Da Bank had a massive crowd at the Red Bull stage and played some excellent hits.
Zane Lowe had the crowd going mental with a hands in the air style set.

Knife Party smashed it, starting on Rage Valley and racing through their hits from Centipede, Bonfire and the viral sensation that was ‘Internet Friends’ a well oiled dub step, junglist, drum and bass, electro machine, the iPod generations Prodigy.
Sing alongs with Antidote, Save The World and Labrinth also featured in the set that had the crammed tent shaking to its foundations

Roll on 2013…

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