Offset Festival. A Review.

Oh Offset, bless your little soul. Last Saturday & Sunday will be celebrated as the weekend of the festival with lovely font. Allegedly Offset planned to bridge the gap between the bands young people with good hair listen to with the bands those bands see as inspiration. & it worked - you couldn’t go wrong with Gang of Four headlining the last night. Aaaand of course Gang of Four were really rather good. I know I was inspired; my dancing will never be the same again, & I can think of a few people who will look at the humble microwave with new eyes (They sound well with baseball bats…). But aside from the list of credible bands (& some questionable bookings) there was little to complain about. Even the weather was in peoples favour most of the time, and the tiny village was pleasantly spacious & welcoming. In fact those without tickets had a perfectly good view of both the main stage & the guitar hero stage (as graced by Fightstar & My Vitriol - the stuff of someone elses dreams!! Really!). Plus it was located next to a Farm which homed chickens labelled as owls.
So who was good? My Top 5 Acts of the weekend :

Hot Club De Paris
Gang of Four
Slow Club
Metronomy
Johnny Foreigner

Most of these bands were on Sunday. It’s nice when a festival has an array of musical acts which feel new and exciting - here is was so (& you wouldn‘t expect it from an elongated what-used-to-be-TMF-Music-Festival) but as the organisers had done there best to stagger artistes so as to avoid clashes as best as possible (which of course was in the end impossible), there was a great feeling of being able to wander round one tiddy tent to another always getting to see something new. Good to see the locals Ghost Frequency, I liked them, & it was a shame to have to wait a squillion years for Glam Chops (one shouldn’t compare, but dare I say: not as good as Art Brut).
Perhaps next year the food & booze will be cheaper & copious, (or enough, at least).

Tim Burgess was seen waiting for a bus outside Hainault Tube station

Joshua Third’s hair was seen on Joshua Third.
Steven Ansell (new hair!) was seen absolutely loving Gang of Four.


That was my review.



lucie gs stolen photo of STEVE - isobelas stolen photo of JOSH - gaz clarks stolen photo of TIMMEH!