This year Beach Boutique saw the likes of Beardyman, Layo and Bushwhacker and The Whip take to the stage with Brighton’s finest resident DJ Fatboy Slim. I’ll be honest I was far more intent on, how should I put it? “Enhancing my mood” for the night ahead in the pub, rather than seeing the support acts. So as the sun went down 20,000 beach party seekers and myself trekked over to Madeira Drive for the main event.
Whilst scrambling through the human traffic the familiar bars of ‘Praise You’ blare out of the colossal amps places strategically around Madeira Drive – the crowd stir into excitement. A sea of bobbing heads begins to rise up like a Mexican wave from the stage followed by a rapturous applause to this fitting opener.
Old favourites such as White Stripes‘s ‘Seven Nation Army’ and Gorillaz‘s ‘Dirty Harry’ crop up spliced between classics such as ‘Rockafeller Skank’ and ‘Right Here Right Now’. The light show to match this was inspired with green lasers that seemed to transcend into the night sky and trippy films clips flickering across the screen. Tracks seemed to meld from their original state into electro house drenched treats, which were seamlessly mixed into the next with teases of his own anthems.
Surprise random track of the night has to go to ‘Love Is In The Air’, no fancy mixes to make Paul Young‘s 1978 cheese classic sound cool. He plays it in its entirety and incredibly the crowd love it, by far the biggest singsong of the night – believe it or not.
Another surprise track was again a barely touched version of Arcade Fire‘s ‘No Cars Go’. An interesting choice of track and perhaps risky considering the ear palette of the majority of the audience but the anthemic chanting vocals went down a treat.
Unlike previous years, this year “Beach Boutique” was more of a “Concrete Boutique” as no one was actually allowed on the beach at all. The amps were not used to their potential and it finished just after 9.30pm, apparently we have the council to thank for that one. Nevertheless this didn’t affect anyone’s mood – another year, another blinding set, another laser reached for, job done.
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