Offset Festival 2008

Brought to you by the people who organised the TMF festivals in Orsett from 2002 to 2005, Offset is a new venture in a new setting - Hainault Forest Country Park, just outside Romford in Essex and (sort of) just across the fields from us here at Phoenix towers in Brentwood! Eddie Curry, Arran Goodchild, Nick Field, Bryan Powis and Alex Fletcher were among those interviewing bands over the weekend.

Interviews

You can listen again to our interviews with:

Wire | Young Knives | Future Of The Left | Glam Chops
Jake Shillingford | The Rileys | Retrofin | Swines
States Of Emotions | My Passion | The Valours | We Move As One | Stereo Decade

A few words from Eddie Curry:

Sunburnt on the Saturday, not quite soaked on the Sunday ... isn't the British weather marvellous!

For me the stronger line up was on the Saturday - Young Knives are always a fantastic live band, one of the best at the moment. Former My Life Story frontman Jake Shillingford always puts on a great show, and the headliners Wire sounded good to me even though I didn't know much of their stuff!

A hidden gem and probably the best live show of the weekend for me was Saturday's headliners at the New Bands tent, Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man. Big things probably won't happen to this band, as they are a bit off-kilter with their tales of woe, but that doesn't stop you enjoying them to the full. Should have been on the main stage ...

One big grumble for me was with the problems in Colin's Tent, which ran over an hour late on Saturday night, meaning that the fantastic Glam Chops clashed head on with Young Knives, forcing me to watch a bit of each set. The sound was terrible too by this point with Eddie Argos gamely apologising for the backline problems although the crowd were just happy to see them on stage. Judging my the numbers wanting to see them and the number of people in the band, they should have been on the main stage too ...

One big thumbs up was the sound and light show in the New Bands tent - Soundman Jim showing how to make a big noise in a tent and leave everyone happy.

Sunday had more great acts and the highlights for me were Future Of The Left and Fight Like Apes on the main stage.

The real joy of the festival though was stumbling into tents and finding great bands I knew nothing about - the Siouxise-ish Kasms, the frantic double drumming of Your Friends Are Architects and the brilliant Japanese cardboard robot of Sputniko were three good examples of this!

A few photos from Eddie Curry: