I didn’t have time to write about Electric Picnic before heading to Bestival and I was so impressed with it that I thought I might have found my favourite of the year (an accolade usually bestowed upon Bestival), so decided to do an Electric Picnic Vs Bestival write up of the two. I have to say though, now that I’m back from Bestie, at the risk of being like one of those annoying people who tells you the football scores before you get a chance to watch the game… I was foolish to ever doubt its standing.

Electric Picnic

As I can’t actually remember a large chunk of Electric Picnic and saw few bands or DJs, it is possibly unfair to pass any kind of judgment, but then I don’t really have anything bad to say so I shall carry on regardless.


The Festival is in County Laois, a couple of hours outside Dublin, and has been going since 2004. This was the first time I’d been but had heard great things beforehand so had quite high expectations. They certainly weren’t dashed by first impressions.

The site, especially the Body & Soul area contained some beautifully crafted stages and general artwork, my favourites being the Lucent Dossier circus stage and one that was built around a big tree. A fine selection of Festival favourites including Chai Wallah, Lost Vagueness and the Inflatable Church were present, as was the Arcadia DJ Booth from Trash City in Glastonbury, which I am determined to DJ on at some point – for those who haven’t seen it this is a fire spurting metallic beast of a booth that looks as if it was stolen from the Thunderdome straight under Tina Turners nose.


Now I hardly ever plan to see acts at festivals and remain content in bimbling around discovering new and exciting things but there were a few unmissables artists playing at Electric Picnic such as Diplo, The Roots and Modeselektor. Unfortunately I missed all of them and some how managed to watch uninspiring performances from Gomez and New Young Pony Club. I did manage to go and see Toddla T on the first night but with only 4 other people in the tent I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to stay long.


There were a few others: Spearhead still remain one of my favourite live bands; The Congos niced up the place beforehand and I was slightly gutted to have missed most of their set; Funkadelic / Parliament were great but with a lack of George Clinton to bring them focus for a good 20 minutes I kinda lost interest. Bootsy provided some quality bitching entertainment by bringin out a ‘F**k George’ banner on stage but I was disappointingly informed he was just a lookalike; and aside from my sets on the Time Machine and The Asylum (Lost Vagueness) that was pretty much all I caught. For much of the time I fell victim (if you can really call it that) to the infamous Irish hospitality and got royally wankered in a small karaoke bar run by a true party prince called Duncan (McGuire I believe). Didn’t actually see any Karaoke but there was a lot of bar.

So you see, even though Electric Picnic had the potential for greatness and was certainly a good craic, I didn’t quite get the most out of its attractions. Still I think it would have been hard pushed to top Bestival, even with all the problems I had there.

This post is going on longer then I expected however so like a bad soap opera you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what happened next.

(YSI) The Roots - Get Busy (Featuring Dice Raw, Peedi Crakk & DJ Jazzy Jeff)

(YSI) Diplo - Brew Barrymore

(YSI) Modeselektor feat. Puppetmastaz - The Dark Side Of The Sun