Frequency Festival – Part Two

It’s two o’clock on a Sunday morning and Alice from Crystal Castles is doing what Alice from Crystal Castles does: jerking around a stage spastically, clasping a strobe light to her bosom and shrieking along to a truly spectacular barrage of noise. Meanwhile, along the sides of this vast hanger, numerous tired souls manage to sleep right through it. They’ve had a long few days.

It’s Frequency’s first year at a new site in St Polten, the capital of Lower Austria and a city with enough useful spaces to give this surprisingly large event a useful USP. By day it’s a big rock effort, with Radiohead topping the bill, but come the witching hour everyone then scoots zehn minuten up the road for an all-night dance fest. You need to be pretty rock ‘n’ roll to do the three full days and nights here.

Early-afternoon at the DayPark on Thursday and it’s a more relaxed affair as Glasvegas attract a modest crowd. “I love the girls here,” says James Allen, and gets a mighty cheer. “And they don’t wear many clothes!” Stony silence.

Still, he’s got a point, as there are some serious bikinis among the 50,000-odd sun-drenched revellers, most of whom then make a beeline for Jet. It’s always interesting to see who creates the most excitement at these European events and the Aussie trad-rockers make a bigger splash than subsequent main-stagers the Ting Tings, and perhaps even Kasabian. The Leicester boys are a bit muted tonight, in truth, no doubt due to the swine flu recently suffered by Tom Meighan, who’s sporting a sharp new haircut but also shades and an even more pallid complexion than usual. He, and we, need an early night.

Early afternoon on Friday and clearly the Frequency clientele are pacing themselves across these 15-hour days, as there aren’t too many in yet as Jarvis takes to the main stage, but he keeps himself amused. “Ich heize Jarvis,” says Cocker. “But you know that. Now I get to assign you names” and proceeds to do just that to whichever random bods catch his eye. “You look like a Sharon…”

Friday follows a similar theme to Thursday as about a zillion people suddenly flood from all corners of the site to watch an outfit called Farin Urlaub Racing Team, who are ancient ska-punk types, so we head off to the indoor arena for the ever-excellent Baddies, then an entertaining, very enthusiastic Irish songstress called Wallis Bird who looks like a tiny Zoe Ball channelling the spirit of Suzi Quatro. By comparison Bloc Party are statuesque and slightly dull on the main stage so it’s over to the extravagant Marc Almond instead, who knows how to put on a proper show.

Then it’s back in time for Radiohead, who start in too low-key a fashion for many locals, who chatter loudly and would clearly rather see Jet again. They’re soon won over when Thom and co rattle through the older hits though, and a few brand new ones – a first live airing for ‘These are My Twisted Words’ – and generally create something roughly akin to a religious experience.

Spare a thought for UK rockers Official Secrets Act, though, who started at exactly the same time as the Greatest Band in the World, but still drew a decent 150 or so. They then went drunken swimming in a nearby river at 5am, which Thom and the boys probably didn’t.

Saturday is rainy and awash with obscure local acts so we follow the local trend and head along a bit later in order to be fighting fit for some overnight action. Highlight of the daytime line-up are Warp mentalists Pivot, who make a racket that causes one’s fillings to rattle. “That was a song about catering” says Laurence Pike, who then smashes up his drumkit during the penultimate song, and so has to put it back together again in order to finish the set.

The Prodigy round off the DayPark action in the requisite rabble-rousing fashion – no slow starts here – after which it’s time for our first visit to the splendidly rave-like NightPark. It’s housed in two large concrete hangers, where the likes of Carl Cox and 2manyDJs have been causing a rumpus over the last few days, and one smaller room where we catch the Smiths’ Andy Rourke gently knocking out a few old Madchester classics via the laptop.

He looks positively serene, which is quite a contrast to Crystal Castles, Saturday night’s big draw. We start off packed in at the front and gradually inch back to discover that the wilfully crowd-unfriendly Canadians have packed out the whole, vast, aeroplane-sized hanger.

It’s quite a set, rounding off quite a festival. Pencil it in for next year, if you can take the pace.

-
Join the Clash mailing list for up to the minute music, fashion and film news.