Jamie xx brings ‘good times' to Victoria Park for first ever LIDO festival
If you have ever watched old videos of 90s raves taken on VHS and felt a pang of nostalgia for a time you weren't even alive, Jamie xx is the musical equivalent.
The DJ and member of indie trio The xx had curated the music lineup for the second day of LIDO festival in Victoria Park on June 7, and saw off the event as headliner.
His music will always be nostalgic for me. Not because it is associated with any particular time, nor did it play a pivotal moment in my life.
The lightshow brought the crowd on stage with Jamie xx with huge screens (Image: Miles Rebeiro)
But something about the echoing sounds coming through the beats, like a party heard next door, makes you sentimental about old times.
A sunny day turned soggy with rain in typical festival style. Fortunately, the two smaller stages were sheltered from the elements.
As Romy appeared on stage, the sky seemed to lower the lights, and a downpour created a claustrophobic crush under the tent.
Romy drew a huge crowd for her retro-infused synth (Image: Miles Rebeiro)
Like Jamie xx, her retro synths also blurred the lines between looking back and living in the now.
Walking over to the main stage, some drops still fell but a faint sunset cracked through the gloom.
The main stage was a feat of engineering, with a huge movable ceiling that lowered itself just above the DJ.
LIDO has three stages and a capacity of 32,000 people (Image: Miles Rebeiro)
All over and behind, drone shots of the crowd and close-ups of people looking like they are having the best time of their lives are projected, flickering and fading in and out, adding to the sense of being in a good memory in the present.
Jamie does not just play his album live, but plays a set of solid, original dance music that would be more suited to a club than a concert venue.
The past had not escaped him as he was joined on stage by xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim.
The festival avoided becoming a mudslide in the rain (Image: Miles Rebeiro)
But for someone with so many collaborations on his albums, he was mainly alone, apart from the huge images of the crowd dancing all around him.
There were the recognisable hits - Girl, Loud Places - woven in enough to grab a friend and sing the lyrics you know.
But seeing him play was not just a play-through of his music but a very different experience from listening to his album.
This is music to dance to and to create those good times his songs sing about. Even as you watch him, you are always aware that this is going to be a good memory.
Jamie xx may evoke a time you are not sure you were a part of, but this was a party everyone could join.
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'It wasn't just about the music,' he adds. 'It was, 'How the hell do we hold this together?' So we moved on to a place on the Welsh border when our time ran out at Heavy Grange. I think it's a place called Glasspant Manor. And we moved into a house which was semi-derelict.' Among Hackett's contributions to The Lamb were 'Cuckoo Cocoon' and 'Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist,' according to Petridis' liner notes. 'Cuckoo Cocoon—yeah, I had that,' Hackett says. 'I'd submitted some words to Pete because he tended to sing other people's words. He said, 'Well, I really want to write the whole story. Do you mind if I do my own lyrics?' 'Fine, fine.' I was thinking of [the song] as a rather more sort of West Coast-sounding thing with harmonies, etc. It didn't come out at all like that. We had some effects put on things by Brian Eno, who came in for a day. That was a lot of fun working with him. The classic Genesis lineup (clockwise from the bottom center): Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Mike ... More Rutherford, Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel. 'There were various other things I'd come up with. 'Supernatural,' at least that instrumental, that was something I was working on with Mike Rutherford. Many other things [I did]: atmospheric sections, playing backwards vibes and stuff I didn't credit myself with on the album. On the album, we even used something that we'd recorded on cassette that was very, very lo-fi. You've got an idea of that really big distorted bass sound that Mike had at the time, and repeat echoes and odd experiments.' Hackett also provides several memorable guitar lines to the record, including on the majestic 'Hairless Heart.' 'The first part is my melody,' he says. 'And Tony plays wonderfully on it with organ, with repeat echo on the organ, light touch. Really, really good, very wonderful.' 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