Festival Review: Wide Awake Festival 2024
The magnificent diversity of modern music on full show in London’s favorite alternative festival.
Another year of the widely acclaimed London-based festival, this year hosting the versatile Australian group King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, a true symbol of the music that Wide Awake has put forward since its inception.
The incredible lineup also included the Mercury Prize winners Young Fathers, the extravagant mixture of electronic and rock music of Squid, and some of the most renowned DJs in modern music with Ben UFO and Helena Hauff.
The day-long festival included six different stages, amongst them big collaborations such as the iconic North-American radio station KEXP , Bad Vibrations, Manchester Psych Festival and Corsica Studios, with the illustrious Cheryl Waters hosting the main stage for the day.
The day started off with London-based Deep Tan, and the superb Plantoid on the Bad Vibrations stage with an extremely captivating sound, blending fiery guitar tones and smooth vocals on various time signatures which evolved throughout their set.
With Grace Cummings having to cancel her set, an opportunity for smaller bands arose, London group The Itch putting on a show on the Corsica Studios stage with their groovy mixture of punk and electronic influences, whilst New Orleans-based punk group Special Interest also took advantage of the bigger crowds on the Disco Pogo stage.
Shortly after, Australian psych-rockers Babe Rainbow’s smoothly layered 60’s inspired melodies filled the air at the Desert Daze stage, whilst Brighton punk trio Lambrini Girls showed their pure ferocity and dedication to their raw sound as the crowd roared and soared along to “God’s Country”.
With Crumb ending up being the first to make use of the main stage, the Brooklyn-based group made good use of the opportunity, shining a light on their latest album AMAMA which sees them take on their most distinguished and innovative sound yet.
On the same stage, Dry Cleaning showed their prowess as one of the most recognizable post-punk bands to date, the energetic basslines brilliantly covered with the vibrant AC30 tone and vocalist Florence Shaw’s spoken word tales of life in modern day Britain.
The madness didn’t stop there, as the next hour presented a choice of some of the fastest-growing acts of today, with names such as Fat Dog, Eartheater, OK Williams and La Luz. It was the last four hours which, in classic Wide Awake fashion, presented the hardest of choices for music fans.
Squid on the Desert Daze stage played their first show on home soil in over 7 months, and it couldn’t have been any better. From the incredible electronic jams spread throughout the set, to the superb use of percussion which sees all of the band involved at many stages, along with the incredible flow shown across so many time signatures, there was no doubt left as to how great this group really is.
Singaporean songwriter and producer Yeule gave ambient and glitch-pop fans a taste of her innovative view on modern pop, a fiery display of just how far the boundaries of the genre can be pushed and pulled back and forth almost effortlessly.
Scottish progressive hip-hop trio Young Fathers’s vibrant performance on the main stage blew away the London crowd, showing just how much work really goes into their music with incredibly high energy on every song they play.
Slowdive’s magical shoegaze sound threw the crowd back to a different era of music, as the iconic group played through songs off their newest records Everything Is Alive and Slowdive, as well as older gems such as “Crazy for You”, “Alison” and “When The Sun Hits”, ending on a magical performance of “Golden Hair”.
It was then on to Wide Awake’s “most requested band ever” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, all embracing and hugging Cheryl Waters before kicking off their set with their perfected thrash metal sound. “This Thing” shows the group’s undistinguishable skill in perfecting so many genres, as things slowed down before leading into the lovecraftian “Lord of Lightning”.
The last 40 minutes of the set consisted of what seemed like one big jam, as the Australian’s unrelenting drive saw them go through older and newer material all meshing into one as they tease little segments in every section, before ending on the unreleased “Sad Pilot”.
It is this spirit of non-stop dedication and hard work that Wide Awake always puts on show every year, and the wide selection of crafty musicians from all over the world shows just how much this festival has evolved since its creation.
Words by Jay Cohen
Images provided by Listen-Up
