My recommendations for Lowlands 2010

Lowlands is coming up! Though the line-up is not quite everything I ever dreamed [quite a few of the bands I've seen already and there's a lot of shit bands], there's still enough to see, so I made a little recommendations list.

Friday 20th of August

13.45-14.30 Lowlands University: Greg Marinovich [Echo]
Lowlands University is the part of the festival where you can attend lectures in the morning, which always seemed quite cool to me, but I never went, because there were always bands playing I wanted to see or something. This year I'm going to try to go to this lecture by South-African photographer/documentary maker Greg Marinovich. The theme is 'the impact of media in developing countries and war zones', which I find a very appealing topic. I've been interested in this topic for a while, having read Joris Luyendijk's 'Het Zijn Net Mensen' about the manipulation of media and misunderstandings this creates about the Middle East, and having seen the 'Episode 1' artproject by Renzo Martens, in which he questions the morals, motives and implications of the news media during wars (which I wrote about here). And perhaps it's also has connections to Susan Sontag's essays on photography; in which she compares photography to murder, camera being the weapon. Oh man, this should be so interesting!

16.50-17.40 Broken Bells [Alpha]
This is something I wouldn't go see in concert. But that's the fun thing about festivals, that you can take a peek at bands you normally wouldn't buy a ticket for, and let yourself be suprised, if it's bad, you walk away and go see something else. If it's good you might find your new favourite band and maybe even buy a ticket to their next show. I think I will probably like Broken Bells, only not sure about the big tent they're playing.


17.30-18.30 Band Of Horses [Grolsch]
Band Of Horses is a band I've listened to a lot in the past and I still quite enjoy their music. I saw them live for the first time a while ago, at the Roundhouse. It was a good gig and if they'd play at a festival I'd definitely go see them again (well, lucky me I guess!). The new album is nothing too special, but BoH are definitely worth attending. And they have beards, which is always a plus.


19.00-20.00 Caribou [X-Ray]
I've seen them once, it was okay. I prefer Caribou over Jonsí [who's playing another stage at the same time] I think, though I might not find both of them interesting enough to watch a full set and I'll probably do a bit of half/half. Caribou's album 'Swim' was pretty cool though. So we'll see.


21.15-22.00 Tame Impala [Charlie]
Lowlands is the perfect festival to discover new, upcoming bands and even though this year doesn't seem to feature many of those, I've found one band a day I'd like to explore. Tame Impala is the one for the friday. If the Beatles were the parents of MGMT, and they would start a family band, this might be what it would sound like. The more I listen to them, the more they're probably going to annoy the shit out of me, but hey it's either this or Snow Patrol.


Alternatives: Jonsí, Cymbals Eat Guitars, FM Belfast, Flying Lotus and Frightened Rabbit. And Marcel Dettmann B2B Ben Klock will guide you partying into the early hours.


Saturday 21th August

14.50-15.50 Laura Marling [India]
Laura Marling is only 20 years old (though she has the maturity of a 50 year old) and already released two albums. I saw her at Lowlands 2008 (which means she was just 18 at the time), in the same tent, so it should be interesting to see how much she's grown. We already know she has musically and physically (going from a blonde girl with a sweet voice to a brunette with a joni mitchell-voice), and though the new album didn't leave me feeling utterly thrilled to see her again, I'm sure her lovely voice will manage to steal my heart again. On top of that it's great music to start off the day with.



17.20-18.10 The Hundred In The Hands [X-Ray]
And this will be my discovery for the Saturday. I don't know many of their songs (probably because they don't have many), just whatever I could find on youtube, but it sounds great, hopefully something that will stay with me after the festival.


19.00-19.50 Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip [X-Ray]
Scroobius writes the poetry and Dan controls the beats, creating a sound somewhere between electro and rap. It's clever, politically engaging and thought provoking, in short: interesting music. I'm still not too sure about the new album, it's a lot more electro than the first, but that's not necessarily a bad thing... I saw the duo at the Borderline in January, and they hadn't practiced the new material much back then, they needed their time to get the sound right and everything, so I'm curious what it sounds like now. Looking forward to this!
Don't worry about the clip too much, it's kinda lame.



21.00-22.10 LCD Soundsystem [Grolsch]
If there's something I'm utterly and entirely looking forward to, it's this. I've never seen LCD Soundsystem and I've been frequenting listening to his/their albums over the past half year, can't believe I never saw how great LCD is...... I'm curious what James Murphy is like live. EXCITED.



22.00-23.00 Holy Fuck [X-Ray]
TIME TO DANCE MOTHERFUCKERS


Unfortunately Holy Fuck clashes with Beach House, who are climbing the India stage from 22.00 till 23.00. I hope I'll be able to catch the last bit just after Holy Fuck. I love both bands so much and have already seen either twice. I'm quite pissed off they're clashing (the line-up's shit enough as it is already), but somehow I'm more feeling towards going to see Holy Fuck again, not sure why...


Well, actually, after choosing the clip I'm starting to have doubts...

And if this is not enough for you: The Soft Pack, Local Natives, Villagers, Miike Snow

Sunday 22th August

14.00-14.40 Surfer Blood [Charlie]
They've managed to create one of my favourite debut albums of the year so far and that one time I saw them at that very short instore at Pure Groove was not enough, so after a bit of contemplation about whether to go to the Ingmar Heytze poetry-on-music thing or go see Surfer Blood for a second time, it's probably going to be that last one.


17.10-18.10 The National [Grolsch]
This is definitely going to be one of my highlights of the weekend. The National is one of my favourite bands, last May in the Electric Ballroom was fanfuckintastic and they we're pretty awesome two years ago at Lowlands as well. Matt Berninger's deep barritone voice will even warm up the coldest of souls, and if it doesn't, well.. than you're just a cunt.


19.00-20.00 The XX [Grolsch]
I'm quite looking forward to this, solely for the fact that I've never seen them live before and really enjoyed their album (though haven't been listening too much lately). Not sure if their romantic dialogue-like singing will manage to touch me in a big tent though. This is probably either going to be a treat or a disappointment. I'm hoping the former ofcourse.



21.00-21.45 Sleepy Sun [Charlie]
My musical discovery for the sunday. Psychedelic shizzle from San Francisco. Sounds sickkkk.



And also: Placebo, Queens Of The Stone Age, Massive Attack, Mount Kimbie and Yeasayer.


Filmwise it's not much exciting either, too bad 'Splice' is on at 3 o'clock in the afternoon already, otherwise it might've become this years 'Drag Me To Hell', which was one of the most memorable things about the festival last year. I'm sure I'll have a great weekend anyway: great atmosphere, chillwaving in the grass, friends, drinks, camping, weed, loempia's, tosti, and hopefully a lot of sun.