Festival review: Parklife Weekender 2011

When: June 11th - 12th

Reviewed by: Tony Bennett

Ever since the success of last year’s festival, the anticipation for Parklife 2011 has been high. And since the announcement that the event was going to extended to two days, the hype has been huge.

As soon as the line-up was announced, people went crazy for tickets. Others, for various unjustified reasons, actually got angry at the headliners not being announced when they should have been; but we couldn’t have it all could we?

We had a peep at the weather forecast during the week before shrugging off predictions of rain; this is Manchester after all. With this in mind we were pretty excited to wake up to blazing sunshine on Saturday morning.

Our first impression of the festival was that it was way more organised than the year before; entry was streamlined and straightforward. On the first look around the site it was apparent that despite the layout being very similar to the previous year, the space had been used much better.

First thing’s first; get the beers in. Bit of a wait, not ideal but we’ll live.

We were in time to catch half of Mistajam’s set, however there was some issue with the sound, as we were having a pretty clear conversation in front of the speakers, which was pretty disappointing. Despite Mistajam being pretty furious about that and a broken mixer, he held it together and worked the crowd better than anyone we seen for the rest of the weekend. Hats off…

The rest of Saturday was spent largely walking around finding and losing friends, eating burgers, drinking our body weight in cider, watching Jamie XX (who was great), Katy B and Kelis (who were a little less great, but they were good for the masses), and then going back to the Ape vs. Metropolis tent to see Toddla T to find Breakage and Donaeo instead – which made me pretty happy on a personal level since Breakage is one of my favorites producers.

**SEE PARKLIFE 2011 PHOTO GALLERIES HERE**

Cue after party, more beers, more music, a few hours sleep on a friend’s couch and it’s round two, only it’s pouring and has been all morning. This wont stop us.

Seemingly, it wasn’t going to stop anyone else either. The atmosphere was much wilder on the Sunday and everyone seemed way more up for a party, which was good since some people were already covered in mud by the time they got through the gate.

After a rather large round of drinks we headed to the Thrasher tent again, to find the sound issues had been resolved and this time it was packed out for SBTRKT & Sampha. This was one to watch and listen to, with SBTRKT playing live drums with the set; a nice vibe.

Despite the number of big names on the line-up, the arena we had been hearing the best things about all weekend was the Juicy tent, which was being hosted by some of the bigger local acts. The praise wasn’t without reason; we passed through briefly to see Broke N English throwing quite a party.

One of the other highlights of the weekend was Labrinth (pictured); the guy is immensely talented and put on a good one-man show, naturally we enjoyed the irony of him performing ‘Let The Sunshine’ in the rain.

To end the day, we (and everyone else) were faced with quite a predicament. Pretty much all of the massive names were playing at the same time between 8pm-11pm. It’s not that we didn’t expect it, they kind of have to do it so that everyone can see something good, but it was disappointing not to get to see Erol Alkan, 2manydjs, Nero, DJ Hype, Grandmaster Flash, Hudson Mohawke and DJ Shadow.

However, Skream, Benga and Chase & Status did go some way to making up for this. The crowd went wild for the former, with the double act causing some pretty large mosh pits, which a lot of people were scared to go in for because of the mud, the poor babies! Chase & Status closed a great weekend with a pretty massive live show, bringing out a number of guests who have featured on their albums.

Other good things we experienced over the weekend: huge mud fights, Caribbean catering van, man being carried out in a wheel barrow, a lot of people falling over, singing in the rain, drunk guy doing back flips in the mosh pit, and not queuing for the toilet.

Altogether a very promising growth on last year’s festival and what should lead to more for next year. We can’t wait to do it again!

See full, live coverage of Parklife 2011, including loads of photo galleries, videos and interviews here.

Tickets are no longer available for this event