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Reading Festival 2006

Friday 25th to Sunday 27th August 2006
Little Johns Farm, Richfield Avenue, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 8EQ, England MAP
£135 for weekend (including camping), £60 any day

Daily capacity: 55,000

I’m only able to watch the first twenty minutes as Pearl Jam and these Mercury Music prize nominees overlap. Plus I saw their set here last year in the Dance Tent when I was one of only twenty watching them. They’re less static tonight – clearly trying to lose the Stephen Hawkins band tag of sitting behind their laptops. Some of them even don guitars at one point.

They’re also no longer dressed in the eye hurting shell suits. The tent is hot and the crowd ready to dance to this lot whose light electro pop reminds me of Lemonjelly’s first album and makes everyone feel happy and there’s lots of smiling.

It’s also pretty funky and there’s loads of folks shaking their booty to this energetic disco flavoured music is fun and rather reminiscent of both the Seventies and the Eighties at the same time. You could get lost in the number of samples their laptops are kicking out.

In twenty minutes they’ve played bits of every tune I can remember playing in people’s kitchens at parties. I reckon they’ve rifled through their record collection and stolen everything they liked the sound of.

They're clever little electro-nerds who are looking much less geeky these days and are making great music for today’s kids to play at parties in kitchens.