What is it that Jarvis Cocker sang in that Pulp song? Oh yeah. Tugging on strands of blissed-out escapism, Cocker links rave’s field-trip culture to hanging around aimlessly on grass, neatly summing up every major (and minor) English festival as he does so. For some the summer music season feels like a passage into an untold future, while for many many more it’s just about hanging around on former farmland, watching some bands.

I’d had the Primavera festival’s merits rammed down my throat for a long year, but besides the quality of bands the one thing that kept reappearing was the twisted scale and space it sits inside. Between all of the talk of concrete and structure it seemed the strangeness of being Not In A Field had been overwhelming for some. But could it really have changed the music/audience/experience as much as they claimed? Continue reading →