It’s that time of year again. The time when city festivals come trickling out of the woodwork as a nice, gentle preamble to a summer of hardcore outdoor festival frippery.
Not only have the kind organisers of Land of Kings provided us with our very first festival of the season, they also managed to cram the entire proceedings into one bite-sized one evening. And they housed it in the quirkiest venues in London, all of which were a literal stroll away from each other. And it was in Dalston, which everyone knows is the centre of the universe right now. Surely a winning formula?
For those who missed it last year – pretty likely, as this is a festival in such infancy it hasn’t even toddled beyond two years – Land of Kings is a one wristband, thirteen venue, fifty artist extravaganza held on a half mile stretch of Kingsland Road in East London.
Even collecting your wristband was exciting. The ticket office in the Dalston Boys Club was transformed into a post-war bunker featuring, interestingly, jive dancing cross-dressed pensioners, DJs and a very well-stocked bar.
From here we were sent off on our merry way. First stop was the Vortex Jazz Bar to see the Hackney Colliery Band for a “close-your-eyes-and-you’re-in-a-Hovis-advert” moment before completely destroying our eardrums with ‘bangin’, modern music. Next we tottered along to Bardens Boudoir for Yuck, one of the only guitar-based acts in a line-up dominated by DJs and general electronica. They proved to be rather excellent low-fi indie surf poplets who, incidentally, looked about as young as the festival itself.
Tottering back down the Kingsland Road, we found ourselves in the ghoulishly named Dungeon of Discovery. This turned out to be an underground art installation, submerged in complete darkness, featuring a UV ping pong table and inevitable subterranean dampness. After fumbling around for a while, we surfaced with a fetching veneer of cave slime, taking Dalston’s ‘grime’ vibe to a whole new literal level.
We then popped into Visions Video Bar to shake a tail feather to the offerings of the music collective Soft Rocks. Continuing the party train we ended up at Alibi for the Girlcore Land of Queens, a raucous celebration of girrrrls and rather eclectically naff music courtesy of the 12-piece collective who regularly run amok around the East End.
Next door at rave cave Juicy we pop in on Clancy, an upcoming remix aficionado, then to Stone Cave, officially Dalston’s most booming Turkish restaurant, which swapped belly dancing for that of the disco variety for the evening (some might say sadly).We then cram in Rory Phillips and Nadia Ksaiba, up and coming electro stars.
Our trotters in dire need of some rest, we head back to trusty Moustache Bar for some soothing indie. No such luck as Lovvers play a noisy selection of grunginess, resulting in an over-excited ‘moment’ to three Dinosaur Jr tracks in a row.
Those not wishing to retire at a respectable hour then head to the Shacklewell Arms – haunt of Kate Moss and celebration of all things ‘rasta’ – where the party continues until 5am (helped along by several snifters of probably illegal Irish moonshine).
We sadly missed DJ sets from big name acts Little Boots and The Horrors, but it didn’t really matter that much in the end. Land of Kings is a festival planned with such finite precision that everything you manage to catch is exciting and fresh-sounding. This absolute treat of a festival can only get bigger and better and is a diverse, exciting celebration befitting of an area experiencing its very own ‘moment’.
Words by Natalie Hardwick
