All Points East, London’s 10-day long music festival and community extravaganza in Victoria Park, commenced this past weekend, giving music-hungry Londoners some outdoor revelry before the sun recedes behind the clouds with the close of summer.
Gorillaz had the headlining slot on the first Friday of the festival, opening the event alongside diverse and impressive acts like Turnstile and Yves Tumor. On Saturday, Aug. 20, APE joined forces with Field Day, a dance music celebration that’s been running strong since 2007, to host electronic idols including the Chemical Brothers and Kraftwerk alongside notable DJs including Peggy Gou and Denis Sulta.
All Points East continues Thursday through the following Sunday, Aug. 28 with artists like Tame Impala, Nick Cave, The National, and Disclosure. GRAMMY.com attended APE's first weekend; read on for some of the best moments and what you might expect from weekend two.
Squarepusher’s Intelligent Dance Moves
Tom Jenkinson — better known for his erratic and eccentric electronic music project, Squarepusher — inhabited the tented North Stage for a live performance during Field Day. He is still going strong after releasing his debut album Feed Me Weird Things in 1996 on Warp, maintaining and upholding the intelligent dance music (IDM) genre with a voracious attitude.
While it may seem difficult to dance to Jenkinson’s fast-paced and random hitting breakbeats, he proved it’s possible with contortionist movements on stage. It didn’t matter that Jenkinson had a six-string bass around his chest; he found time to dance as the jittery flashing strobe lights matched the music in quickness and intensity.
Remi Wolf Goes "Crazy"
California’s Remi Wolf captured the full range of the crowd's emotions on Friday afternoon. She went through the blissful indifference of adolescence with the Sublime-esque alt-rock jam, "Liquor Store," and into raucous female empowerment with the hip-hop soul of "Sexy Villain." Both songs are from her 2021 LP, Juno.
At one point she asked the crowd if they ever felt like badasses before asking in the next breath if they felt like whiny c—. Both queries received exuberant cheers. But the culmination came in her cover of Gnarls Barkley’s hit, "Crazy," an emotion that the crowd was happy to exude when Wolf matched Cee-Lo’s power on the high notes in the chorus.
Fjaak In The Daytime
Aaron Röbig and Felix Wagner, who produce and perform in the underground dance project, FJAAK, generally play music fit for the deep hours of the night within grimy industrial warehouse spaces. They often swap between hard-hitting techno and twisting, left field breakbeats, and on Field Day 2022, they brought their nighttime james to a 4 p.m. mainstage slot.
Devilish beats soared across the fields of Victoria Park as the DJs were broadcast on a triad of LED displays. It was as if they were the lead singers in the various rock bands who would inhabit the same space at different times throughout the event. A complete 180 from where FJAAK is normally found, but they definitely pulled it off.
Femi Kuti Keeps It In The Family
There are certain names that will live on forever throughout the evolution of music, and one of them is Kuti. Since the Nigerian master musician Fela Kuti pioneered Afrobeat back in the late 1960s by combining traditional African styles of music like calypso and Yoruba with funk, soul and jazz, his surname has never been far from the musical conversation.
On the first day of All Points East, Femi Kuti performed with his own Afrobeat ensemble. Just as his father, Fela, did for him, Femi welcomed his son, Made Kuti, into the band. Made performed the final song of the set wherein he held a note on his saxophone for so long people were taking out their phones to time it.
Highschool In The Quad
Alongside the major stages, APE also had small stages for the rising acts. One of such acts was the indie outfit, HighSchool who performed on the Firestone stage for a quick 30-minute set mostly consisting of songs from their debut EP, Forever at Last.
Cordoned in a wholesome nook of the festival near a collection of tables and benches where attendees could rest and eat, the name HighSchool was rather fitting. As the band performed their first-ever set with a live drummer, it felt like one of the times bands would come to play in the quad during lunch in high school.
Chemical Brothers Made Their Own Avengers
The buzz around the Chemical Brothers’ headlining set at Field was palpable, to say the least. As the sun went down and the other stages closed, thousands of people descended on the mainstage field to revel not just in the music of the U.K. favorites, but in the grand, intricate visual show designed by members Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons.
"Block Rockin’ Beats" opened the set, which was particularly spectacular given Dig Your Own Hole celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022. Classic favorites like "Go" and "Hey Boy Hey Girl" followed soon after. Each track carried with it a unique visual design that seemed to grow more and more impressive and enthralling, but a highlight in that regard was surely "Eve Of Destruction" from the GRAMMY-winning LP, No Geography.
In a popular culture where superheroes are becoming increasingly banal, the Chemical Brothers managed to design their own team of superheroes and supervillains that entered epic combat live on screen. Kevin Feige and the rest of the people at Marvel Studios should take note.
Gorillaz Bring Out Tame Impala (Among Others)
Given the nature of their recordings, every Gorillaz show is likely to have a special guest or two. Prior to All Points East, Damon Albarn and company confirmed not one, but nine different guest artists, including Popcaan, Clash bassist Paul Simonon, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, and the Pharcyde’s Bootie Brown.
Yasiin Bey took down vocals on "Sweepstakes" and "Stylo," his two tracks from 2010’s Plastic Beach. Pos, one of the three members of De La Soul, handled his verses (and a rather jovial intro sermon) to the hit single "Feel Good Inc." from 2005’s Demon Days.
Yet even with so many friends coming together for Albarn’s hometown show, there was still room for a few surprises, one of which was Kevin Parker of Tame Impala who performed Gorillaz upcoming single, "New Gold" for the first time ever.