» Loop Festival 2008 review
Nick Alwinckle reviews this year’s Loop Festival in Brighton
From the looks of it, this second year of Brighton’s very own electronic music festival has ironed out the few teething problems from last year’s event. The stages have been opened out, with bigger tents to let more people see the bands and the first event’s evident sound problems have been eliminated. The only thing that could spoil things, then, is the acts involved.
Bristol rockers Turbowolf **, unfortunately, are a less than perfect band for the early afternoon, starting proceedings shakily.
Transformer
Providing big riffs and some punkish energy, their sole qualification as an electronic band is in having a keyboard player providing the odd plinky-plonk flourish, though this is disjointed and wholly separate to the main musical body.
Their songs simply aren’t strong enough to make them last in memory after the set, and things can only get better from here. Brighton boys Transformer ** are next up and have a lot on their shoulders.
80s Live! is a new one day event taking place in Eastbourne’s Winter Garden on Saturday, 13 September.
Canada’s Martha and the Muffins came to prominence back in 1980 with their hit single ‘Echo Beach’. It was their only hit over here but one of the group’s albums Danseparc is being re-released. Unique sounding, their Talking Heads style off-beat new wave and punk funk is quite experimental in places, and works well throughout the album. A lost treasure being resurrected, from an unlikely source.
