Aug 2, 2009 Posted by Herko on Aug 2, 2009 in Personal notes | 2 comments

Ben Westbeech lights up RAW Rhythm Festival 2009

The 2009 edi­tion of the RAW Rhythm fes­ti­val, hop­ing to fill the shoes left vacant by its pre­de­ces­sor DRUM Rhythm, is fin­ished. Two great days filled with good food, good friends and great music and per­for­mances. Here is my review.

Day one: start with a bang

The fes­ti­val started with an early per­for­mance by Lamb, one of –if not the most — my favorite bands. Lamb got back together again after they split up 5 years ago to per­sue other projects (such as Lou start­ing her own label Infi­nite Bloom, and singing on two Cin­e­matic Orches­tra albums, and Andy doing Hoof and Luna Seeds). But now pro­ducer Andy Bar­low, singer Lou Rhodes and bass­player Jon Thorne are tour­ing the fes­ti­vals again, play­ing their old songs. We saw them first at the Cac­tus Fes­ti­val in Brugges, Bel­gium a cou­ple of weeks ago, and the basi­cally played the same set.

Lamb used to be 5 peo­ple, with Ice­landic Oddur Mar Run­nar­son play­ing the gui­tar, and Dane Niko­laj Bjerre as the main per­cus­sion­ist. But now it’s just the three of them on stage.

Lamb had the dif­fi­cult task to play early in the evening, in the largest venue at the West­er­gas­fab­riek, with gor­geous weather out­side. By the time they started play­ing, there were only about a hun­dred peo­ple about. Their audi­ence grad­u­ally grew, but they had to work hard to get the pos­i­tive and ener­getic vibe they’re famous and loved for.

I espe­cially liked Lou’s singing, her voice has matured over the years and become rock solid and frag­ile at once. Her voice is a love it or hate it thing, appar­ently, as a friend who joined us for this per­for­mance told us later, her voice annoys him.

And Andy and Jon were their usual ener­getic selves, with Andy fir­ing up the fans by tak­ing the bongo’s (or what­ever these drums are called) to the front stage and solo­ing a bit.

I loved see­ing Lamb per­form live again, this must have been our 8th time. And I can’t wait for their live CD/DVD to be released (as their Wikipedia page announces). But in all hon­esty, their per­for­mance was lack­ing that bit of extra fire, the inter­ac­tion with the fans and audi­ence, and frankly, the drum­mer. It made a big dif­fer­ence, but not enough to ruin the performance.

There’s one lit­tle anec­dote I’d like to share with you all that relates to Lamb. I twit­tered about the per­for­mance, and I got a spe­cial kind of reply:

Tweet @Herko Lamb was awe­some! As usual @RAWrhythm #RR http://twitpic.com/ca9d6
Reply @Lamb_lover It’s so easy using up roast lamb left­overs, wrapped in foil and kept in the fridge they’re good for two days

Ben West­beech and Jazzanova

The rest of the evening were ded­i­cated to walk­ing from one hall to another, find­ing some good tunes to dance to. Ducth rap­pers Zwart Licht were able to get the crowds going crazy in an instant, but that was just loud noise. Ryan Leslie was a slick smooth talker with a good show on the main stage, and Dizzee Ras­cal was ok, but not my kind of music. Nneka was great, she has a voice like a real soul diva. And then we came to Ben Westbeech.

West­beech is a producer/singer/DJ from Giles Peterson’s Brownswood Record­ings label. His was a DJ set with vocals. Jaz­zanova was there to tweak some knobs as well, appar­ently they know eachother and have worked together for a bit. But West­beec clearly wanted to have a good time. He played an impres­sive set of funk, soul, house, hip-hop and sang in some of those tunes as well. There weren’t many peo­ple in the audi­ence at first (Dizzee Ras­cal was per­form­ing on the main stage), but as the set con­tin­ued, the dance­floor filled up nicely.

And thus ended day one of the RAW Rhythm fes­ti­val 2009. The old Drum Rhythm vibe was there, the qual­ity of the artists was high, the food was good and the weather was too.

Day two: not so much

The sec­ond day of RAW Rhythm started with us get­ting more bracelets, as the pho­tog­ra­phers and crew bracelets we got yes­ter­day appar­ently didn’t cut it for today. So now we got a new photo bracelet, and uniquely a back­stage access bracelet. We looked kinda like a freak­show with all those tags, if you ask me.

This sec­ond day was main spon­sor G-Star RAW Denim’s day, appar­ently. They held a ‘pri­vate’ party, invit­ing a bunch of ‘celebs and babes’ as my brother put it. This meant that there were a lot of peo­ple there who didn’t come for the music, who were more inter­ested in how they looked, and by whom they were noticed, and this didn’t have a pos­i­tive effect on the fes­ti­vals vibe. It became more tense, and more crowded out­side. The effect was that DJs were play­ing in a smaller room, near empt, while out­side were hun­dreds of peo­ple drink­ing and eating.

Any­ways, back to the music, so to speak. Sur­prise soul act of the fes­ti­val was Lee­lah James, sort of a smaller (and younger of course) ver­sion of Tina Turner. She has a great voice, and an awe­some band, but she clearly didn’t like that fact that she had to start off for a rather empty and docile main stage.

And we saw De Jeugd van Tegen­wo­ordig, which was nice (but also not my kind of music), and Chuckie and Lil John. Chuckie is ok, but Lil John is just nasty. And for some rea­son, there’s a LOT of talk and inter­rupt­ing going on, in stead of just play­ing the music and let­ting every­body dance.

We also saw Roni Size, who is clearly still king of the jun­gle. His beats got the whole room up and jump­ing from the very first start. Roni Size was awe­some. For me, it was the best of the whole day.

Any­ways, the sec­ond day just didn’t reach the same high as the first –for me. Over­all we enjoyed our­selves very much ‚and hope to see the fes­ti­val return next year!

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2 Responses to “Ben Westbeech lights up RAW Rhythm Festival 2009”

1. herko says:

   2 August 2009 at 14:43

   New blog post: Ben West­beech lights up RAW Rhythm Fes­ti­val 2009 http://bit.ly/AFrsZ

   This com­ment was orig­i­nally posted on Twit­ter
2. benwestbeech says:

   2 August 2009 at 19:46

   Back from a men­tal week­end. Nice blog about Raw rhythm here http://bit.ly/AFrsZ

   This com­ment was orig­i­nally posted on Twit­ter
3. Ben Westbeech lights up RAW Rhythm Festival 2009 | Herko Coomans … | deepavali says:

   3 August 2009 at 4:17

   […] See the rest here: Ben West­beech lights up RAW Rhythm Fes­ti­val 2009 | Herko Coomans … […]

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