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.