Lana Del Rey hasn’t even got her debut LP out and yet, somehow, the backlash has already begun! We say ‘somehow’; we know exactly why it has started – she makes really awful music and she’s obviously getting very famous because she’s easy on the eye.

Naturally, that’s not a new criticism against pop-music, but who cares? If Lana Del Rey can rely on the same tired cliches of the alt.pop of yore, then we can certainly chide it for the same old boring reasons.

And oddly, we’re not the only ones who think that Del Rey has a whiff of Emperor’s New Clothes about her. The Also Makes Lousy Music actress, Juliette Lewis, has criticised Lana Del Rey’s performance on Saturday Night Live.

Lana Del Rey appeared on SNL performing her drip-hop tracks, ‘Video Games’ and ‘Blue Jeans’. Lewis didn’t hang around waiting to have a pop at her via twitter:

Wow watching this ‘singer’ on SNL is like watching a 12 yearold in their bedroom when theyre pretending to sing and perform #signofourtimes

The irony here, of course, is that Lewis wouldn’t have a music career if it wasn’t for her being an already famous actress. See also: Zooey Deschanel in She & Him.

In the interests of fairness, hecklerspray would like to see Lewis, Deschanel AND Del Rey all shutting the frig up, forever and ever amen. Lousy music made by people with a fast-tracked career path, thanks to something remarkable away from their mediocre musical prowess.

What we’re saying is, if you like Lana Del Rey’s music, you must be either 8 years old or too proud to admit that you fancy her.

Not that Del Rey agrees.

”I got it because I’m a good musician. And I may not have a record out now, but I have been singing for a very long time, and I think that ['SNL' creator] Lorne Michaels knows that, and everyone over there knows that.”

Yes. But would the fanboys and doting girls still fizz themselves into next week if you had a hare-lip and an iron claw?

Either way, if you include our involvement too, this is the most pointless spat in the history of anything, ever. Seriously. We should all be taken into a public square and flogged to death.

Until then, Lana Del Rey sucks and you’re scum for liking her music.

Lana Del Rey is the latest hot young thing that has a myriad of jaded twentysomethings tying their genitals in knots! She writes her own songs AND is kinda good looking! What a treat! What an unusual treat!

Yep, pop music totally doesn’t have a habit of giving attractive people record deals, despite the negligible talent and persistent dullditude.

But that won’t stop the pouting freight train that is Lana Del Rey! She’s going to become gigantically famous whether she actually gets around to writing a song or not! It’s almost admirable really. The perfect anti-pop star. The Lady GaGa for the supplement reader. AND SHE HAS A NEW VIDEO OUT AND WE’VE WORKED OUT WHAT IT IS ALREADY! Watch it over the jump and we promise to irritate you.

Okay. So what’s Del Rey done with her new, very expensive video for Born To Die? Well, one viewing should tell you everything you need to know about her target audience.

Throughout the video, you’ll cry…

Tigers! Tattooed hipster man! Plugged ears! Side boob!

You’ll notice the terrible lyrics. The awful, woeful, sixth form poetry 101 lyrics. You’ll cry…

Kissing in the rain! Getting high! Girls being sexily mental! Dying! Death! DEATH! DEEEEEEATH!

Yessireebob! You guessed it! Lana Del Rey has gone and done the most zeitgeisty thing ever, ever, ever! She’s only gone and made Tumblr: The Movie.

WATCH. It’s awful. We’ve not even looked at the re-emergence of 9p trip-hop flanked by flat, dead-eyed, tuneless cooing smothered in saccharine William Orbit-esque orchestrations… we’ll leave that for our inevitably scathing review of her massively successful, but utterly awful debut album.

Ever get the impression that we’re in the worst period of music in mankind’s history? It’s all beige schmindie, stadium turdrock, predictable dubstep and, worse still, maudlin drip-hop like James Blake and the latest sweetheart, Lana Del Rey.

In the case of the latter, everyone is busy pretending that they like her music for what it is (they say ‘beautiful’, we say ‘Sneaker Pimps b-side’) when really, they just like jerking off over pictures of her.

And her next single, Born 2 Die, will have the masturbators in a frenzy when they hear Lana sing the line “let me fuck you hard”. And yes, you can hear it over the jump and start fiddling in your trousers LIKE NOW.

Lana Del Rey (real name, Lizzy Grant) has revealed that her next single will be called Born 2 Die and, to be perfectly honest, having heard it, a huge chunk of our insides wished it was already dead.

Seriously. This is music so boring that there’s a chance your ears will fold themselves inside your head in a bid to listen to something more interesting, like your fading heartbeat as your very constitution wills itself into oblivion.

BUT HEY! DON’T LET THAT PUT YOU SAPS OFF!

You can still have a trouser fumble while she sings “Let me fuck you hard in the pouring rain, you like your girls insane.”

It’s like that meme that’s been going ’round isn’t it?

“Give me a blowjob.”

“How romantic.”

“Okay, give me a blowjob in the rain.”

Anyway, if you’re curious or stupid, here’s Lana Del Rey singing Born 2 Die. BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH.

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Have you heard the first 10 seconds of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’? Well done, you’ve lasted twice the length of most people who fell asleep, face first into their laps because she’s gone and created the most tedious record in history.

Of course, those hipster swine who pretend they don’t like watching her on YouTube because ‘she’s well fit’ will watch it to the end over and over. Not with the sound off. There’s no need. Her music is barely able to make the most rudimentary noise as it is. It’s like watching TV static. With a great rack.

Naturally, her looks have become something of a talking point. She thinks that its cruel that we pick holes in her face (especially those lips that resemble someone having an allergic reaction to nuts while ingesting two whole lilos). So what’s the beef?

The New Yorker has appealed for fans not to be ‘rude or cruel’ about her image, or hold her overnight success against her and says that she’s been teased over her ‘fake lips’.

She says:

“In general, you don’t want anyone to say anything bad about you”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened if I were a man. What other people think of me is none of my business but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt my feelings.”

It wouldn’t happen if it was a man. Really? Have you seen the things people say about Iggy Pop’s torso? Have you seen the dogs abuse doled out to Justin Bieber? Anyone recall someone poking fun at Thom Yorke’s eye?

Basically, shut up moaning you sodden follow-through.

Del Rey is, no question, going to be gigantic and will no doubt play the festivals this summer, leaving those sad, sad saps who liked her before she went big able to crow about how they liked her before anyone else, which of course, is the greatest music industry marketing scam ever.

It happened with Macy Gray, when everyone was under the assumption they’d discovered her for themselves, before it dawned on them that a very subtle PR campaign had fooled them all along. Same goes for Adele. It’s a clever, clever ploy that has made stars out of many ‘real’/boring singers.

But y’know, you losers can enjoy your masturbatory sessions while they last, soundtracked by music so beige that it makes stagnant water sound like a choir of angels.

AND LOOK AT THOSE LIPS ETC

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Five teenage boys are standing in a circle, arms locked around each others shoulders but this is no group hug.

They are all urinating into the centre.

They are ten metres away from the toilets.

Welcome to Leeds.

Another teenage boy is enjoying the comforts of a campfire.

A tent sits barely twelve inches away from the pile of burning rubbish.

“You’re brave having that so near your tent” a concerned passer-by ventures.

“It’s not my tent” comes the reply.

Yep. This is definitely Leeds alright.

This is not a festival where common sense prevails, but one where chaos reigns. It also routinely has one of the best line-ups a fan of what was once called ‘alternative rock’ but what could only be referred to now as ‘not metal’ could desire.  There are thousands of indie kids who are individually polite and considerate but as a collective are a drunken malco-ordinated tsunami of excitement. We’re only brave enough to come for one day.

Perhaps being the first band on the NME/Radio 1 stage is a prestigious slot? It’s the only to explain why Pulled Apart By Horses would be so low on the bill with the sound turned down to ‘morning’. Quiet noise-rock? Pity, since they’re one of more exciting homegrown live acts to have appeared in the last few years. We always undervalue British bands when they choose making a noise over striking a pose. We hope that’s not the case here.

Does it Offend You, Yeah? really are the perfect act for Leeds. With their anarchic attitude and childish techno-rock they provide the perfect antidote to The Blackout’s exercise in danger-free genre adherence playing simultaneously on the main stage. The kids get DIOYY in a way that suggests that they’re a critic-proof party band. On this occasion the kids are all right.

Dublin three-piece The Minutes are the first of several bands that we catch on the BBC Introducing stage. They’re another one whose sound requires more volume. Their brand of rock n’ roll would be better suited to a venue that’s wet as a result of perspiration rather than precipitation.

Employees of the hair conditioner industry aren’t the only people grateful for Bring Me the Horizon. The band earn such devotion from their fans, but presumably from their metalcore anthems rather than singer Olly Sykes genital fixation. We’ve not seen this much simulated masturbation since late ’80s Madonna.

After briefly checking out Cerebral Ballzy’s supremely energetic take on ’80s skatepunk, we catch a couple of songs from the dreamy piano-playing piece of girl-bait that is Tim Minchin before the heat of the tent gets too much.

Yes, they sound like no-one else, yes they are the thinking man’s metal band but after years of trying to like them, we’re just going to have to come clean- we find Deftones boring. Dreadfully boring.

The Vaccines remind us of so many bands that we can’t even be bothered to work out whether they’re any good. This may seem like a betrayal of journalistic responsibility but there’s only so much musical analysis we can do. If we think any more about the Vaccines we might miss the next Beatles.

It’s a good time at the moment if you like music with fuzzed-up early 90s guitar on. If you enjoyed the Yuck album, but want something more lo-fi but with a (slight) nod towards Velvets, you could do a lot worse than the Milk Maid album. There’s something pleasing about albums full of great melodies that are knowingly under produced- a reminder of how bringing joy to a few is better inspiration than redundant (and unrealistic) rock star fantasies. Live, they make it look effortless, which is not the same thing as uncaring.

Jared Leto really is a preposterous individual. I’ve never seen someone get so into rock star posturing that they can’t find the time to play any actual music, but that seems to be what passes for a performance from 30 Seconds to Mars. He invites fans on stage (a drawn-out, logistically challenging patience tester), makes long speeches about how awesome we all are, and thanks us for helping sell out their recent tour (complete with list of venues). It’s the most expensive award ceremony speech we’ve ever seen! We should point out that silly as this all is, it’s rather endearing.

My Chemical Romance are one hell of a pop band. We don’t mean that as an insult- they’ve amassed an arsenal of catchy 4 minute sing-a-long songs, and play them like a balls-out rock band. We don’t know whether we’d ever buy an album but they’re certainly welcome in a world with plenty of big-selling artists but not many worthy headliners.

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Argghhh! Panic! The festival industry is dying! Run for the hills (well, the cities)! So, then Big Chill- what are you about? Should we be impressed or not?

You’re run by Festival Republic who really aren’t the leftwing revolutionary group that your name would like us to infer, but your line-up isn’t exactly the warmed up Radio 1 tedium soup of V.

If our weekend was anything to go by, it’s where the kind of punters who used to frequent Glastonbury now like to er.. chill.

They may be from a different generation but the crowd at Big Chill are the same friendly, tasteful and, importantly, hedonistic crowd that Eavis used to woo. Imagine a Glastonbury where it’s small enough that parents can walk with the children from the kids’ area to see a band in the arena without three days worth of rations and survival training.

Those without children can party hard into the early hours, relaxed in the knowledge that the friendly security staff are there for your actual safety and not to police you to ensure your ‘safety’.

Okay, so the organisers seem to have taken a gamble and splashed out on Kanye West at the expense of interesting mid-level main stage acts but in doing so, they may have sold enough tickets to ensure its future.

Hecklerspray spent most of the time enjoying dubstep and drum and bass into the early hours although our favourite DJ set of the weekend was Alex Metric and his selection of electro house in the Bacardi Tent.

We’re embarrassed to say that we didn’t see as many of the live acts as we normally do. Fine by us since we got our kicks regardless, but it might make the review a little less interesting. Don’t worry, we’re not going to review the DJs.

Friday’s main stage boasted Empire of the Sun purveying us with their psychedelic pop to a visual feast that matched the admirably pretentious noise they make. Whilst they garnered hyperbole from many quarters with their debut album, like their psych-pop brethren MGMT we thought it was filler with some hidden gems. Looking absurdly out of place and over the top on a stage in Herefordshire however they make total sense. Perhaps a revisit to the album is in order?

It seems obvious to point out how good the Chemical Brothers are live these days. Although to be honest we don’t think anyone could balls up if they had (a) their back catalogue (b) a field full of people ready for a party. You do the math(s).

The first act we caught on the Saturday was Janelle Monae, whose album is easier to admire than love on account of it not sounding like anyone else. Shut up, idiot reviewer and sum it up in one of those pithy hack metaphors you lot love! Okay- if Andre 3000 had kept R & B in a cellar from 1981 to 2004, not allowed it to hear the radio during that time but had instead just continuously humped its leg like a horny puppy, it would sound like Janelle Monae. Except the bit about leg humping, but it’s the sort of thing he’d probably do. And it’s definitely something he’d pull off. Live, it all just sounded like the sort of thing that gets Jools Holland aroused.

As soon as Jessie J starts, a cavernous generation gap cracks open through the field. 500 cool teenagers (and about 100 uncool adults) stand on one side swearing at us and quoting internet memes that we don’t understand. On our side it’s just us, trying to decapitate them with records made by people with lesser voices who make genuinely great pop music.

We’re sure Kanye West has good reason for being thirty minutes late, but that doesn’t make it seem any less inevitable. We would like to think he was somewhere nearby and could hear the the cries of “do you like fishsticks?” but suspect he was probably having a pedicure whilst lying on a bed of velvet-skinned eunuchs or whatever it is that the mega-rich do these days.

His current stage show consists of various dancers running around a white stage whilst he plays songs whose lyrical content can be summed up as “I’m a genius/No I’m a douche” and “You bitch, you betrayed me/to be fair it was all my fault”. Luckily, portraying himself in two dimensions with interesting, if clumsy, lyrics to faultless production, is a hell of a lot more interesting than so many of his peers portraying themselves in one dimension with predictable, if well structured, lyrics to average production. This being the case, why are we not feeling it? Is this not the man that delivered arguably the best album of last year? Why do we feel like we’re watching a good performance on TV, hard to find fault with but ultimately uninvolving? The answer is presence. Kanye is a studio nerd, not a rock star. All that awkwardness that makes him so fascinating in his songs has the opposite effect on a stage. He’s not poor as such but as international superstar Kanye West, we have a certain expectations.

Oh well, we’re sure if he reads this, he’ll take it well- we hear he’s good with criticism.

He also has the worst finale of any set we’ve witnessed. After a daft dedication to a series of dead people (McQueen, Winehouse and Jackson if you’re interested), he played half of two Amy Winehouse songs. Not performed, just played the original versions over the loudspeakers. Say what you want about Elton John, but at least he thought the corpse du jour deserved the effort of singing.

Besides, if we have to hear someone else’s records can he not just leave, and let 2ManyDJs start on time? Eventually the Belgian Soulwaxers arrive and play a typically astonishing set, with songs they’ve remixed for maximum power and with specific visuals. The two guys next to us sum it up best-

“Are we watching two men who have come from Belgium just to press play on a mix CD?”

“Shut up and keep dancing, it’s still awesome and shits on Kanye West”.

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It’s ironic that the golden rule of capitalism is at work in something as historically left-of-centre as festivals. This summer the power of the market is separating the wheat from the chaff in festival-land.

The beauty of it is, that whilst money may be able to book a big headliner,  it requires imagination to create a festival that fills a gap in the market. Sure, the results might not always be nice (the unwelcome rumours that the marvellous Truck Festival may be bust for instance) but it’s sure to guarantee that no-one’s complacent.

Camp Bestival was started as a more family-friendly version of Bestival. As the popularity of taking kids to festivals has grown, so has this (now medium sized) festival. The Sunday Best lot know their audience and they have enough confidence in their own instincts that they don’t feel the need to schedule the acts in order of record sales. An obvious example is the headliner on Friday night. Other festivals might relegate Blondie to a tent, and stick the flavour of the year on the main stage, but Sunday Best know their audience. Obvious really since the man in charge is a DJ (Rob Da Bank) and therefore has an intuitive grasp of what the next tune should be.

The audience are mainly grown-ups with small children so the audience find themselves watching Primal Scream on the same stage as Zingzillas had been on seven hours earlier.

As well as a smart line-up, there’s the detail. Everywhere you turn there’s something else to gawp at or examine which makes the place feel twice as big.

The upside to the family focus is that it’s very safe and there’s distractions in every direction. The downside is that having hundreds of families on site is that they are essentially hundreds of self-contained units. They’re harmless, polite and friendly but can be a bit insular. They’ve planned everything, but at festivals, being a bit unprepared gives you a great excuse to talk to strangers. Anyone can have fun there but the people getting the most out of it were parents enjoying the chance to party with their children present and then, once the parents are in bed, teenagers enjoying the chance to finally party without them present.

Who did we see? Well here’s some one-sentence reviews…

Blondie reminded everyone how much they loved Blondie. Ed Sheeran seems to have become a teen idol for people who think Frank Turner’s too old. Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer is still making knees bend and lips giggle with his ‘chap-hop’. House of Pain have turned into a funk band with rapping and damn it, it works! Ms Dynamite has made the standard (but successful) move towards dubstep, but needs to be aware that having recorded backing vocals is where live hip-hop is in danger of becoming karaoke. Primal Scream are pure nostalgia- Screamadelica may sound of it’s time but it was a time that the audience are getting to enjoy again. The Wonder Stuff may have never broken barriers like the Scream but for our money they’ve got more pop classics. Beardyman is a clever clever bastard and the perfect man for a party.The Correspondents is like a hip-hop jive bunny winning Britain’s Got Talent- we don’t know if it was awful or brilliant but we couldn’t stop watching.

If you want to have a weekend where you can have as much fun as your kids, Camp Bestival is still the obvious choice.

Early Bird tickets (with a 6 mth family payment plan) for next year’s event can be found at the Camp Bestival website.

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Ah, festivals. Possibly the best thing about living in Britain is that because the weather is so dreary most of the year we party like idiots as soon as the sun comes out.

We used to have to either choose between about four festivals or go to Ibiza to combine hedonism and music. Now we are as spoilt for choice as a footballer in a lapdancing club.

So where are you going? There are small ones, big ones, dance ones, rock ones, ones for has-beens, ones for soon-to-bes. There are stupid amounts to choose from, but here are the ones that we would suggest…

The Big Chill, 5^th-7^th August, Herfordshire

This is strange, we remember Big Chill being an incredibly atmospheric weekend but with a line-up designed to make muso types stroke their goatees and congratulate each other on their impeccable taste, but damn it when did it get THIS good? Kanye West? Chemical Brothers? Metronomy? Wild Beasts? Kanye West? Have they found a suitcase of money in the woods or something? Hopefully we’ll be there. If the bastards approve our press pass request. Are you listening, guys?

Y-Not, 5^th- 7^th August, Derbyshire

A nice little one that we confess, we’ve not been to before. 5000 capacity so as ever with the smaller ones, the line-up is everything. Bands that we-like at y-not include Art Brut, the always entertaining Beardyman, The Duke Spirit, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Dananananakyroyd, Go!Team, and Maximo Park.

Standon Calling, 12-14^th, Hertfordshire

Okay, we’d never heard of this one but here’s a bunch of reasons why it’s worth your time. Headliners are Spiritualized, Lamb and Battles (all of whom are ace in different ways). They have a swimming pool! The bars are open all night. It clearly has that winning formula of people that are experts in how to create an atmosphere combined with an instinct for upcoming bands.  We’ve got a good feeling about this one.

Beautiful Days, 19-21^st, Devon

Regardless of how you feel about the Levellers, it stands to reason that they would know how to put on a festival, does it not? The headliners are normally aimed at your festival veteran crowd (this year sees Carter USM, Big Audio Dynamite and Gogol Bordello) while there’s plenty of variety further down the bill. Every non-corporate festival in the country owes something to Beautiful Days.

Green Man,  19-21^st, Brecon Beacons

Traditionally the strongest indie-folk line-up, this year’s acts include Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes, The Low Anthem, Holy Fuck, Josh T Pearson, Explosions in the Sky and The Antlers. There’s also plenty of other genres spread around, but it remains a folk festival at heart.

Reading/Leeds 26-28^th

One of the original rock festivals and its identical Northern twin still pull in one of the best line-ups and a massive crowd. Where once it was peerless it terms of line-up, these days there’s a lot more competition. The headliners this year are My Chemical Romance, Muse and The Strokes which, with the possible exception of MCR is a pretty poor show for Reading. That said if you like left-of-centre rock music you will find enough bands here to justify the ticket price. Worth going  for The Joy Formidable, Pulled Apart by Horses, Jane’s Addiction, Interpol, Odd Future and Deftones. And at least they’ve stopped calling it the Carling Weekend.

Oh, and one more thing. Enough with the festival chic bollocks. If it’s not muddy, don’t wear wellies.

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Remember we were giving away some tickets for Global Gathering? Well, you can stop entering now! That’s because Tilly Price has won! And Tilly sent us a picture, showing us her celebrations, having some tiny drug-dealer fish eat bits of her feet off, which is just lovely.

We asked you to come up with a new genre, which saw most of you pathetic swine simply shouting “PLEASE! PLEASE LET ME WIN! I WANNA GO!” which isn’t even entering the spirit of the thing. As punishment, we’ve forwarded your names and emails to nefarious spambots.

Amongst the suggestions of ‘pro celebrity goat felch house‘, ‘Flaccid core‘ and ‘Please-don’t-do-this-I-have-3-kids-and-my-wife’s-got-spinabifida-step‘, Tilly shone out with her admiration for Ethiopian long distance runners, with the marvellous ‘Highly Gabberpsychlassie‘. And so, Tilly will be able to now stand in a disgusting field with her manky feet, surrounded by youths filled with chemicals dancing to the likes of Underworld, Pendulum and Bernard Cribbins. N-JOI!

As you may have noticed we’ve thrown ourselves into festival season like nobody’s business this summer.

We’ve already had some great weekends and it’s still so early!  If you still haven’t decided where to go this summer, then please allow us to make some recommendations! So what’s in store for July then?

Apart from shouting ‘bollocks’ in a field and hoping everyone will join in, as opposed to bricking your tent to death…

If you’d like to spend some time with some dogs-on-string, people in awful novelty hats while drinking warm cans of lager which cost you £20, roll up, roll up, step right this way…

Wakestock 8-10 July, Cardigan Bay

Curious one this- music and wakeboarding. No, us neither but you have to admit it sounds interesting doesn’t it? And at £100 a ticket, pretty good value too considering music-wise you get Biffy Clyro (who are the closest thing you get to a sure thing at a festival), Subfocus, Chase & Status, Kelis and of course Ed Sheeran who, it has been predicted, will have been seen by every man, woman and child in the UK by the end of the summer.

Sonisphere, Knebworth 8-10 July

The one remaining essential weekend for metal. They’ve bagged themselves an outrageously good line-up this year including the big 4 (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax), Biffy Clyro, Slipknot, Mastodon and (cleverly) Bill Bailey.

Latitude, 14-17 July, Suffolk

Always a great bet for grown-up left-of-centre music, the heasdliners aren’t up to its usual high standards (Suede, The National and Paolo Nutini) but there are plenty further down the bill including My Morning Jacket, Iron & Wine, Foals, British Sea Power, Deerhunter, CW Stoneking and Ed bloody Sheeran. The atmosphere is very friendly but sometimes it’s a little too polite and is like spending a weekend inside a Guardian music supplement. Not for those who think Glastonbury has gone too middle-class.

2000Trees, 14-16 July, Gloucesteshire

Along with Oxford’s Truck festival, our best bet for underground rock and pop. Our favourites include Frightened Rabbit, Los Campesinos!, The Twilight Sad and Amplifier. A line-up put together by people who clearly spend too much time listening to music so that you don’t have to. Trust them.

Camp Bestival, 29-31 July, Dorset

Run by Sunday Best who know their festival shizzle, this is the ultimate family festival. We don’t mean it’s the ultimate kids’ festival, simply that it’s utterly inclusive. If you want to dance to the early hours or would rather hang out with your kids and retire early, all options are available. Everyone can have fun without having to compromise. Line-up wise they’ve got Primal Scream, Blondie, Beardyman, The Wonder Stuff, Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer and obviously Ed “I’m actually just following you around at all times” Sheeran.

Global Gathering, 29-30 July, Stratford-Upon-Avon

If you prefer telling strangers you love them all night whilst dancing to a line-up that features every kind of dance music we can think of, then this is the one for you. Big name-wise they have Underworld, Ritchie Hawtin, Pendulum, Sasha and others but at this kind of event it’s about the quality of the lesser-known DJs that make the night. The buggers have got them too.

Hyde Park’s a funny old place, what with it seeming to have two festivals sharing the same field. And as we walked in, there was a Radio 1 style pop-event going on. Ke$ha was on stage. She is profoundly irritating. Do we really need to justify this with serious journalistic observation? Well, according to her wikipedia page she cites Banksy as an influence. What kind of name-dropping wank-sack musician cites a graffiti artist as an influence*?

Needless to say, her performance successfully manages to reflect the pretentiousness of this notion. She puts on a show, and makes more of an effort than a thousand Snow Patrols but after watching her, even Nelson Mandela would have to murder a stranger just to let off some steam.

Retro electro**-pop duo Chromeo are a charming act on record, and on stage some of that charisma does come across but the intricate production that distinguishes their sound is lost in the field today. Their albums take the ‘eighties if the eighties had actually been any good’ vibe that Les Rythmes Digitales pioneered and add a sprinkling of synth-funk on top of it. Bands can sink or swim in open air, and even tracks like Fancy Footwork and Bonafide Lovin’, the Canadian duo fail to do themselves justice.

The other festival here was one catering towards the more discerning dance fan. Poor old Battles. Although loved by chin-strokers and journalists and promoting a second album which has already got itself a comfortable spot waiting for the ‘best of 2011’ lists, today was a genuine opportunity to steal some new fans. Sadly technology took umbrage at their art-rock doing electronica shenanigans and speakers blew during the opening song.

This was followed by the frantic fiddling of an army of exasperated engineers. Drummer John Stanier filled the silence with drum solos until they managed to start playing again, but clearly not everything was fixed properly as recent single Ice Cream sounded messy and muddled rather than the highlight it should have been. Two more poor-sounding songs and they walked off with long faces and apologies to the audience.

If he had wanted it, the world was once Aphex Twin’s for the taking. To his artistic credit he is the living embodiment of the ‘making songs for himself and if anyone else like it, that’s a bonus’ mantra that litter interviews with lesser musicians. Aside from playing Windowlicker, he’s still indulging his love of acid breaks and tempo changes that challenge your dancing feet.

Chemical Brothers don’t share Aphex’s love of esoterica, they want you to dance, and they still know exactly what you want to dance to. They are one of the best singles acts of the last twenty years so a festival headline slot is their natural environment.

They also have that wonderful advantage over rock bands in that they can mess around with their songs and as long as the new version simply has the essence of the original, your body will react all the same. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be for a rock band to stick chorus A into song B while playing the a guitar solo from song C? It would be like the world’s most annoying mash-up. A great electronic act can take advantage of this liberation. There’s a reason why the Daft Punk live albums are an essential part of their catalogue.

With last year’s Further, Tom and Ed made their finest album since 1996’s Dig Your Own Hole because they stopped trying to tick all the genre boxes and just got on with what they were best at and that’s it- they seem to know exactly what they’re doing at the moment. Making albums like that, doing film soundtracks and still headlining festivals after 20 years it must feel good to be a Chemical Brother at the moment.

*= aside from old-school hip-hop artists that is,

**= erectro, anyone? OK maybe not.

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Is there any more fun to be drawn from rap/rock? Judging by Hyro Da Hero, the answer is “Fun, yes. Essential music, perhaps not.” This is the straighter end of alt/noise rock (think a less experimental At the Drive-In) with rapping over the top rather that the normal approach of recreating hip-hop’s bounce and swing with live instruments.

A welcome change on a rainy morning after all the white men shouting, but ultimately inconsequential.

Norway’s Kvelertak describe themselves as Black n’ Roll, and it’s a good a label as any. Rock n’ Roll with metal vocals. Like a less-pantomime Turbonegro, they sound like Satan’s favourite blues band. Another feather in Scandinavia’s already feather-stuffed cap.

We stick around for Gwar as it would foolish not to. We hope we can be forgiven for not paying too much attention to the thrash/hardcore music they were making. This was the first time we’ve seen them so we were too busy enjoying the violence and blood-letting on stage. People were stabbed, monsters disembowelled and the Queen had her breasts cut off.

A memorable afternoon’s entertainment.

It’s easy to see why Frank Turner is such a divisive figure. He lacks any of the detached cool of more traditional alternative icons and his lyrics are so humble and earnest he makes Kermit the Frog sound like the Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

What is less obvious is why metallers ‘get’ him, but get them they do. Maybe it’s the lack of cynicism with which they approach their music? Either way, if you’re prepared to experience sentiment and an anger sprinkled with optimism then there’s enjoyment of a very affecting sort to be had from Frank live.

Songs from the new album England Keep My Bones sound promising after his last album’s disappointing lack of hooks, and Photosynthesis with its rousing choruses is a fine way to end the weekend.

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Why are metal bands of such a high quality when playing live? We’ve lost count of the mind-numbing quantity of indie bands we’ve seen over the years that sounded passable on record but dreary once they sheepishly shuffle onto a stage.

Benji Webb knows how to work a crowd and Skindred are an amazing vehicle for his talent. The self-styled ‘ragga-metal’ [Jesus fucking Christ, really? - Ed.] band understand completely the musical forms with which they are playing.

Webb’s versatile vocals (roots crooning, rapping, metal roaring) allow the songs to change tempo all over the place so they are free to drop drum and bass rhythms without it sounding in the least bit contrived. Extra bonus points for getting a metal crowd doing the robot.

We love listening to Clutch records. Neil Fallon’s backwoods bark and those tight rhythms just fit together like simultaneous roars from the same beast. But as soon as we turn the album off we can never remember a single song. That super-cool sound just turns to smoke. They make a far greater impression here though with a set as convincing as it is too short.

Down pull a surprisingly unresponsive crowd. Maybe they’re offended by the band playing the riff from Walk by Pantera but not seeing it through. Phil Anselmo seems to be having a ball. Not that he has ever been in shortage of balls. His masculinity intimidates us.

Avenged Sevenfold are just too much for us. The rest of the crowd clearly think they’re nothing short of triumphant, and there’s passion at work, but their brand of operatic bombast just seems silly to us and the pyrotechnics too affected.

Much has been made of the importance of System of a Down’s current tour. The word is that it’s make or break, and all eyes are on them for any indication. It’s like watching a Dickensian rock opera with two Fagins (one of whom, guitarist/singer Daron Malakian, is absolutely mesmerising).

Intense as they are fascinating to watch, they are still utterly unique. No-one else does anything approaching this. Radio/Video may be the one that rocks the most but Lost in Hollywood is the highlight and, alongside Tool’s Aenema, the best ever poison-pen letter to LA.

Part three of this review comes tomorrow. You must be wetting yourself in anticipation.

“Oh, goody, a festival review! I was there! I can’t wait to see whether this review entirely shares my opinions, or whether it has its own mind. Tell us what you think?”

Thanks for asking! There’s an inclusivity to heavy metal that makes spending time with fans of it a total joy. They don’t sneer at how you’re dressed, and their music exists in a vacuum. Metal has had varying popularity in different forms but it hasn’t been ‘cool’ since Nirvana were knocking around.

Free of the need to conform to notions of cool, they are also free to concentrate on rocking. Kurt Cobain was consumed with an exaggerated attention to the subtle cultural and intellectual differences that separated his band from the ‘corporate’ rock that it (temporarily) replaced. And look how that ended. Heroin addiction, history of depression, and permanent physical pain aside, we always got the impression that Kurt killed himself because he couldn’t live in a world where Nevermind outsold Doolittle. The fact that it was outselling Dangerous meant the poor beautiful bugger didn’t stand a chance. What we’re trying to say is that Kurt missed the point. By a massive distance. You know the distance between the interesting idea of Lady Gaga and the piss-poor reality of her actual music. About that far.

“er, hecklerspray, you’re doing that thing again where you would rather detail the history of popular music than actually review anything”.

Alright, alright, we’re getting there. We’re just trying to get you to see why metal festivals rule- we’ll try to come back to it later. We walk past CKY and notice that they seem harder than we remember. That’s all we’re going to say since we were on our way to see Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, purely on the strength of their name. Remember Dominic Monaghan’s unconvincing rock star character from Lost? Well him + irritating voice + slightly shouty emo rock = this band. Still think they sound good? Well that name that initially seemed awesome shortens to D.R.U.G.S. Our thoughts exactly.

We grab some lunch and sit down. Puddle of Mudd just happen to be playing near us. Is there a word for the opposite of serendipity?  Puddleofdipity perhaps?

You know how your parents thought all your music sounded the same. Well Young Guns do that to us. Are they the archetypal emo-rock/pop band or are we just too old? We ask a nearby 14 year old. A response of “fuck off paedo” doesn’t specifically address the question but manages to answer it regardless.

Does the world need The Darkness right now? Embraced by the mainstream rock press for having their tongues firmly in their cheeks, they were abandoned when their audience started including fans of the genre they were lovingly satirising. Unlike the NME, the masses have no difficulty in rocking out and laughing at the same time Then their audience abandoned them when they started taking themselves seriously. But even they abandoned the band when they started taking themselves too seriously. They certainly remind everyone what made that first album so damn fun, causing the first big sing-alongs of the weekend. Occasionally we find ourselves thinking “this one sounds like if the Darkness had made a second album”, before realising that they did and this one is from it. Maybe the band having fun again is the first step on the way to a successful comeback?

Bored with joy and laughter we check out Korn but the change in mood doesn’t really work for us. It’s not that Got the Life doesn’t rock, it’s just that we’d prefer to see it somewhere with sweat on the walls.

We never expected Pendulum to be the band that steal the day. The only distinction they have normally is of being rubbish at multiple genres but right here, right now they make total sense. Maybe we’ve been missing big electronic sound, maybe it’s the fact that they are making an effort to entertain but whatever it is, these guys are making us dance like idiots- a worthy festival headline act. We like being surprised by a band and retire happy.

Tune in tomorrow for views on Saturday and Sunday if you can possibly stand the it. And yes, Glastonbury was on this weekend wasn’t it? Everyone’s talking about that aren’t they?

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Yeah, we know it’s already June, and that with each passing day, the notion of it being a preview becomes more absurd. Shut up and read, because these are the festivals that you should be thinking about going to this month.

Arguably if you actually use us as some kind of tastemaker, then perhaps it’s best to stay in and not inflict yourself on the wider public.

With that in mind, here’s what everyone should be doing while you stay in, looking at old photographs and wondering where it all went wrong.

Festival for those about to rock – Download 10-12 June, Derbyshire

You’d be hard pushed to find a less pretentious crowd, metallers know how to have fun in an wonderfully inclusive way. And metal bands shit all over indie bands when it comes to playing live. Headliners this year are Def Leppard (if you’re not afraid of cheese), System of a Down (who are just great) and Linkin Park (if your tastes are more mainstream). Other acts include Avenged Sevenfold, Pendulum, Korn and the divisive cynicism-free zone that is Frank Turner. Oh and Clutch. Who are quite a long way down the bill but worth mentioning because they’re bloody marvellous.

Festival for those who prefer beats to riffs – Glade Festival 10-12 June, Norfolk

Not content with running the best dance bits at Glastonbury, the Glade crew have been running their own event since 2004. This is definitely our June tip if dancing all night is high on your agenda. Sub Focus, Andrew Weatherall, Krafty Kuts and Hybrid who amongst those going whumpwhumpwhump in the night.

If you don’t mind travelling – Rock Ness – 10-12 June, Loch Ness

OK, we know it’s the same weekend again, but if you want a line-up that’s a bit more..er.. festivally, then you could do a lot worse than this bad boy. Highlights include Frightened Rabbit, Fake Blood, Two Door Cinema Club, DJ Shadow, Simian Mobile Disco, and Chemical Brothers, who are still one of the best live acts about, and creators of a recent ‘return to form’ album. As in their best in ten years. As opposed to ‘return to form’ when it means sound-a-bit-like-they-used-to-but not-as-good, for example “have you heard Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy, it’s a real ‘return to form’”).

Camping? No thanks! – Parklife Weekender – 11-12 June, Manchester

Platt Fields is a great location, and this weekend includes Chase and Status, Metronomy, Darwin Deez, 2manyDJs, Everything Everything and Grandmaster Flash. The weekend is sold out but there are still day tickets available.

If you want more than just music – Goldcoast Oceanfest 17-19 June, Devon

Tunes-wise this reasonably priced one has The King Blues, Seasick Steve, and Ed Sheeran. There’s also lots of sport. Don’t worry it the kind of sport that cool people in baggy clothing play, and is more fun to watch.

If you’ve never been to Glastonbury, then you really should go – Glastonbury 22-26 June

We could write a great deal about why Glastonbury became a great deal better when the big fence went up, but how it’s been losing it’s vibe over the last few years. However if you’ve never been before you’ll probably have the best weekend of your lives and think us insufferable bores. Luckily everyone who agrees with us seems to have started their own events.

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