Reader review: Field Day festival in Brockwell Park
Ahead of our full photo coverage of last weekend’s three days of festivals in Brockwell Park, here’s a personal account of their Field Day experience by Buzz reader Ronan Sullivan: …
Black News 
Ahead of our full photo coverage of last weekend’s three days of festivals in Brockwell Park, here’s a personal account of their Field Day experience by Buzz reader Ronan Sullivan:
[Above: The South Stage at Field Day as Interplanetary Criminal performs]
Note for Readers: if, at any point, it seems as though I lack expertise on the artists, it’s because I do: I have no experience or, indeed, interest in electronic music. Please continue to read.
I’m sweating from – it feels like – every pore, as I tap repeatedly on my Lime app to ‘Find Parking’.
The sun is beating down on me at Herne Hill, right next to Brockwell Park, where, from its depths, bass thumps.
‘End Ride’ the app offers, finally. I breathe, sit down on the curb in quiet relief.
I’m here at Field Day, a festival focused on electronic music and club culture founded in 2007, and located at Brockwell Park since last year, after moving from its previous home in Victoria Park, east London.
Headlining today’s edition is Floating Points, a British electronic DJ from Manchester, whose Ph.D in neuroscience might inform his orchestral and atmospheric tracks.
[My bottle of grape Soju shortly before being drunk]
Entering at around 6pm into the festival proper, after a half-hour ride from my journalism course in the City, a bottle of grape Soju – and the fabled Espresso Martini BuzzBall just prior to said entry – I’m greeted by a site in full swing.
With temperatures hovering around the thirty celsius mark, men’s t-shirts have been swiftly removed and tucked into their waistband; people everywhere are fanning themselves, as the unmistakable tart redness of sunburn predominates.
Those people, sweating and hydrating via Madris and White Claws, are milling about between five stages: my friend and I make our way to the South Stage, where IPC – Interplanetary Criminal – are playing.
[the Bowl Stage signage]
[the Bowl Stage as Partiboi69 performs]
Plenty are sat down around us, as the British musician blares out from the dotted-around speakers. My friend – my spirit guide for today, being more au fait with electronic music – leads us to the Bowl, where Aussie Partiboi69 is playing.
She dances, clearly more enthusiastic about the DJ from the Land Down Under than IPC. I ask her why.
“I just prefer this to the other one”, she says, shrugging.
“Fair”, I respond.
“I like the name too”.
I’m unsure.
We sit, far away from the stage, and I watch the people milling until Partiboi69 finishes:
The cigarettes being shared absentmindedly between partners, their eyes locked onto whatever stage they’re going to next.
Men in plaid shirts, Madris in hand, hug each other like just reuniting after going over the top in war.
The many bedecked in Arsenal shirts after last week’s title win, smiles broad.
(I, as a Spurs fan, find the latter sickening).
Joy Orbison, on at the Grove – a tent at the back of the festival – is so crowded that, by the time we get there, a worker in a hi-vis is holding two placards reading:
STAGE IS FULL
NO ENTRY
We sit outside as people arrive to the tent, see the signs and the huge crowd inside, and either turn back or sit down outside like us.
[The Grove Stage, where, having refused us entry, I insisted I had never wanted to be in the first place]
Honey Dijon is on the South Stage and is playing well-known songs, but sped-up and more bass – this is my idea of what electronic is: nostalgia dressed up in catwalk-clothes.
After chips and an £8.40 Jagerbomb – the reusable cup costing £1 – Floating Points comes on late, at about half nine. The sun has set now, its pink glow dripping across the distant skyscrapers now a black-blue screen.
The Manchester-born artist shows that electronic music can be great, his light display synchronous to the rhythmic crescendoes and peaks of his tracks.
[Sunset at Field Day, Brockwell Park, with skyscrapers in the background]
He produces an atmosphere enveloping the 30,000-capacity site, with arms raised and people dancing to his tune.
We leave after about half an hour of his set.
After a day of studying, obnoxious e-bike UX design, and a BuzzBall-boost failing to do its job – amid record-May heat and a genre with which I lack even the faintest notion of familiarity – I’m pooped.
My friend and I go to Denmark Hill, lazing on the Windrush line’s bright lights and still-orange motif, meeting our friends at the pub in Hackney.
“How was it?” They ask us on arrival.
We look at each other before responding in unison:
“Fine”.
They nod, before the conversation turns away, and the drinks slip past me unnoticed, until, before long, I’m home, in bed, unable to sleep on this near-tropical night, wondering if Partiboi69 is a good name or not.
[Article and photos by Ronan Sullivan]
