It's Almost Here… Field Day 2011, The Preview

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Field Day is one of the festivals that we get the most excited about, here at The Line of Best Fit. Not only is it an easy one to get to thanks to its handy East London location, but the line-up has never failed to be anything but spectacular. This year is absolutely no exception, with festival organisers Eat Your Own Ears outdoing themselves in the ‘amazing line-up’ stakes. Now into its fifth year, Eat Your Own Ears – along with partners Bugged Out!, Bloggers Delight, Lanzarote and Village Mentality – have found the perfect recipe for combining a diverse range of extraordinary musical talent with the feel and festivity of a village fete.

Field Day takes place on Saturday 6 August in East London’s Victoria Park, and this year shows the fruits of a blossoming friendship between Australia’s Laneway Festival, who are joining forces with Last.fm to curate a stage featuring Twin Shadow and The Horrors amongst others.

Last year, the weather was outstanding and the day, all round, was glorious. So what has Field Day got in store for us this year?

The Line-Up

In previous years, Field Day has boasted the likes of Justice, Caribou, Phoenix and Battles amongst many other artists that weren’t necessarilly very well known at the time. As such, the festival has proven itself to have a great track record of producing interesting, diverse line-ups, as well as having a knack for tracking down artists that are going to do great things over the coming year. Whether it’s dance music you’re after, guitar-driven-yearny-pop, folk, dub or DJs, it can all be found in this leafy corner of Hackney for one day, and one day only.

This year, Field Day will be playing host to Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Erol Alkan, Matthew Dear, James Blake, Gruff Rhys, Cloud Control, Jamie xx, Mount Kimbie, SBTRKT, Villagers and Wild Beasts amongst many, many MANY more. Electrelane, after having played the first ever Field Day festival back in 2007, make a highly anticipated return this year, and Anna Calvi will also be there, hot off the back of her recent Mercury nomination. Other acts that are sure to impress include Ducktails, Echo Lake, Spectrals and recent Sub-Pop signings/TLOBF faves Still Corners. With more than 80 performances lined up on one day, make sure you grab one of the festival’s bespoke programmes to ensure that you catch everyone you want to.

For a full run down of the line-up, head to Field Day’s Line-up page, and keep your eyes peeled over the coming days for The Line of Best Fit’s very own guide to unmissable performances at this year’s fest.

Village Mentality

Although taking place in the middle of the capital, one of the founding ideas – and something that the Field Day organisers strive to maintain to this day – is a Village Fete feel. Over the past four years, the festival guests have had the opportunity to participate in Carrot Eating Contests and Meringuathons, and the prizes are a bit better than a goldfish or a coconut, too. Last year saw winners head home with a Gibson electric guitar, or a year’s worth of tickets to Eat Your Own Ears events. So, what kind of festivities can we hope to involve ourselves with this year? Well, there’s the Coconut Shy, for one, and not forgetting Bowling For Bacon where the prize up for grabs is a week’s worth of tasty fried breakfasts.

A Blindfolded Tea Drinking Relay Race, Tug of War and Sack Racing will all be taking place on the Village Green, so if you can tear yourself away from the sumptuous line-up, we’ll expect to find you in the Real Ale Tent.

Grub

The food at Field Day is provided courtesy of Clapham Common’s Venn Street Market – voted one of Time Out London’s Top 5 in their Food and Drink category last year. Now that’s a bit more interesting than ‘Burger and Chips’, is it not? Serving a range of food from around the world, from Chipa Cheese dough balls with Chimichurri Sauce to Creole Fish Cakes and Banana Fritters, this is the perfect opportunity to sample one of South London’s finest street markets, moonlighting in East London for one day only.

Field Day Mix

Field Day is one of the year’s best opportunities to catch artists that are going to be very important over the coming year. Some of these acts are already fairly well known to us, but others are quite new. ‘Up and coming’, we believe is how their press releases would describe them.

In order to help us get to know the festival’s acts – both the known ad the lesser known, Field Day have kindly published some interviews with various artists taking part. In the same place are a numer of mixes created by some of this years acts, including Jon Hopkins, Connan Mockasin and The Sea and Cake.

The Apple Cart

It always seems a bit sad, the Field Day team putting up the tents, setting up the lovely grounds and spending a lot of time and energy in making Field Day look great – to then have to take it all down again, after one day. This year, however, the Field Day family have decided to keep everything up for an extra day, and to invite the under 18s that can’t come to Field Day to come to a festival catered for the whole family. With music from Saint Etienne, Chilly Gonzales and Steve Mason amongst many others, The Apple Cart will be combining music, magic and family fun for everyone. There’s also a comedy stage where the brilliant Tim Minchin, as well as Jon Richardson and Doc Brown will be providing the laughs and merriment.

Keep an eye out over the coming week for the rest of our Field Day coverage, including exclusive interviews and our guide to the unmissables, to get you excited in the countdown to Saturday 6 August.

And finally, here’s special interactive guide to Field Day. By scrolling over the flyer you can view or listen to content for each artist all within this very page.