Tramlines festival
Sheffield (various venues)
Date: 21/07/2013
So this was my 2nd tramlines festival and I was looking forward to seeing some old and new favourites. Similar to dottodot it's loads of different bands playing in various venues throughout the city.
We arrived early, but sadly not early enough to catch kagoule who opened up the second stage at the O2 academy. Last time I went to the academy was to see the legendary jello Biafra!
After arriving we paid to get our wristbands and went to check out what was on and then we started to wander around sheffield to see what we could find.
First of all we headed to the millennium gallery where 65daysofstatic had an instillation, basically it was a set up of a video screen showing google maps, but with a soundtrack played on 16 different speakers. They were gonna play live in the evening so this was put in the diary.
We decided to check out the main stage just as Theme Park were starting, they were terrible, bland indie pop music so not for my taste so we moved on.
After wandering around sheffield we ended up in the Harley never been here before nice little venue, and it has a piece of art by mr penfold on the side. Checked out a band whose name I can't remember and decided to head back to the academy as some bands we wanted to see where on shortly.
On the way back I spotted this piece of art by the legend that is phlegm a local sheffield artist!
I love phlegms work and the characters that appear in all his pieces. Like this one just off brick lane in London that I snapped last year.
Anyway I digress.....
These sort of festivals to me are about finding new bands that you may not of heard of before, and the first of these were called The Wytches!
After googling them I read an article form the guardian that described them as tapping into the dark side of psychedelia and painting it black! So these were in my to watch list.
I really enjoyed their set it was obvious they were I influenced by the grunge scene and but I love that style of music and I was impressed with them musically.
After checking out The Wytches we went upstairs to see another band whose name I can't remember but they played a zeppelin esq blues rock music, they were ok but obviously not that memorable.
Looking at the posters on the wall it was like being transported back to 1993 with upcoming gigs from shed7, happy Mondays, the wonder stuff, PWEI and Jesus jones!
It was back downstairs and into the main room to check out one of the must see bands wet nuns! I'm a sucker for a 2piece rock band no frills, no messing just straight up rock n roll.
Wet Nuns were awesome and I spent most of the next day listening to them
Massive riffs a plenty.
After milling around for a bit it was time for rolo tomassi! I have seen these must be 5or6 times now and they never disappoint. The first time singer Eva Spence walks on stage and starts to sing always makes me smile!
They make a right racket but are always entertaining!
After rolo tomassi Dog is Dead were the headliners, but after the disappointment of seeing the lead singer wearing a black flag t-shirt last year and then sound well the exact opposite, I wasn't in a hurry to see them because they are what some might describe as well a bit shit.
While taking part in the mass evacuation after rolo tomassi from the O2 I must have heard 6-7 people agreeing with this fact and the general consensus being that dog is dead are in fact shit.
So after leaving the O2 it was back to the millenium gallery to see 65daysofstatic perform sleepwalk city and wow it was amazing 30 minutes of amazing swirling soundscapes to images projected onto video screens.
This was an amazing experience that is hard to describe but the video screens and sound through 16speakers was an amazing audio visual experience.
You couldn't really follow that so it was time to call it a day.
Until next year!
