Friday 2

After some rather bland, inoffensive pizza from the most popular foodstall, its back to Freedom to decide on what my plans are for the rest of the evening. Most of the night's good music seems concentrated around the Sipho Gumede stage, with at least four cool-to-super-cool acts performing from 7pm.

Warming the crowd up first is Richard III, who mixes indie-pop favourites (The Strokes, Feist etc) with harder beats, which works pretty well most of the time - serving up dancable tracks people recognise and sing along to.
Next on the heavily green-lit stage is Tasha Baxter, whom I miss due to a reason I don't remember. An interesting side note, however, is that the funniest T-shirt at Oppi read "I Want To Pound Tasha Baxter In The Vag". Simpler, better, faster.

I get back for Mix & Blend - out of Cape Town I think. Mix & Blend are made up of three (?) DJs and were joined by one vocalist (and honestly, they could have done without him). Their "Blend", ahem, of hip-hop beats, horn samples and vocal loops were properly funktastic - in the way of intelligent mixmasters before them, they didn't need an overweight dude shouting "Yo yo, outta Cape Town y'all, all original!" at every other moment - they were instrumentally diverse and creative enough with their tempos and timing that they really stuck out - 3 DJs and a crowd of millions... They entertained, though, despite the single flaw.

DJ Nisker: one and Natalia followed M&B with a simiar set-up (though with two fewer DJs and a sexier singer) and were pretty impressive. The dreadlocked spinner kept things in good stead, with deep beats and some pretty interesting samples. The vocals this time were better suited to the tracks, and actually added to the music, instead of detracting as it had with Mix&Blend.

A quick stop at the rather lively Most Amazing Myn Stage to catch a bit of Fuzigish (conclusion? Eh, not for me.) before I'm on my was back to Sipho Gumede for Twelv & Thesis, a new-ish duo out of Jozi. They delivered an hour of deep, lung-shaking drum and bass, and scattered vocals, urging the healthy crowd to drop it, shake it, etc. Which they certainly did. It was aggressive and intense, and if we were exhausted afterwards, I couldn't imagine what they must have felt like.

Finally, Friday wound-down at the Gito Baloi stage, which benefitted many acts due to its smaller, more intimate size. Yesterday's Pupil provided last-night indie vampires with electro-funk, loops and vocals, which as I recall (all I recall) impressed me enough to keep me awake.

Finally, with god's grace and the devil's cold closing in, Sassquatch took to the recently vacated stage - all 7'8" and yeti like growls. Ok, not really. But the part of his set I did catch was freaky-cool and ass-shakingly approved.


And then I fell asleep.