With festival season upon us but rendered null and void by COVID-19, green field events are looking for ways to present themselves and, this week, in different ways, a couple are doing just that. Also there’s new material from Gorillaz and a virtual electronic music extravaganza. Dive in!
Download TV
Of all music genres, metal has perhaps been worst served by the current crisis. It’s a cathartic music, best enjoyed in the moshpit, played loud by bands working tight together via stacked amps. Not, then, ideal for at-home acoustic shows on basic kit. Britain’s premier metal-fest, Download, which would have taken place this weekend, have risen to the challenge of gathering a wealth of online material for metallers to enjoy this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. From midday until 6.30 PM there’s a range that emanates metal’s jovial sense of community - Doom Yoga, vegan cookery, a tutorial to do your make-up like Kiss, bands’ quarantine diaries, quizzes, cocktail-making, a guitar tutorial from Sepultura, and more – then from 7.30 to 11.30, a solid selection of live footage and interviews, much of it exclusive, featuring Kiss, Iron Maiden, System of a Down, Biffy Clyro, Baby Metal, Lacuna Coil and many more. Check here for full details.
Isle of Wight Festival on Sky Arts
The Isle of Wight Festival would also have taken place this weekend and Sky Arts are providing three evenings of non-stop archive festival action to make up for its absence. Hosted by Edith Bowman and Will Best, from 7.00 PM until midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, there will be ten half hour sets from some of the biggest names in rock and pop. Culled from festival performances between 2004 and last year, the list of names on stage includes David Bowie, Rudimental, Amy Winehouse, Jay-Z, Paul McCartney, R.E.M., Iggy Pop, The Specials, Pharrell Williams and Rod Stewart, but also many others. Full schedule and timings available here.
Gorillaz Song Machine: Season 1
Over the course of the year Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s animated supergroup Gorillaz have, every once in a while, been releasing a new track and video under the Gorillaz Song Machine heading. This week the fourth episode appeared, a hemp-flavoured number called “Friday 13th” with French-British hip hop artist Octavian, filmed in quarantine. Previous episodes have featured ex-New Order bassist Peter Hook, Midlands MC slowthai, Malian singer Fatoumata Diarwara, punk rockers Slaves and alt-pop explorer Georgia. All are available here alongside Machine Bites, which are snippets of “conversation between cartoon band members and collaborators, overheard in Kong Studios”.
Digital Mirage Online Music Festival
At the start of April, Blake Coppelson’s hugely successful YouTube EDM channel Proximity joined forced with L.A. promoters Brownies & Lemonade to put on their first Digital Mirage online club music event. This weekend they’re back (it was going to be last weekend but was held back out of respect for the Black Lives Matter protests). The event will run here from 8.00 PM UK-time on Saturday 12th June to 8.00 PM on Sunday 14th, so a 48 hour rave, and features DJs and producers such as Hot Chip, Baauer, Chromeo, A-Trak, Oliver Heldens, Zhu, Boys Noize, as well as many more. Donation monies will go to “Plus1's COVID-19 relief fund and performing musicians”.
