1234 Festival, Shoreditch

1234 Festival

July 24, 20201

The 1234 Festival has a rather unusual ambience, set in a smallish London field and overlooked by the Hackney council estate tower blocks. It has a very definite selling point though: it is the festival for the credit crunch. Twenty quid is all it takes to gain entry to a day of musical treats ranging from Peter Hook galloping through ‘Unknown Pleasures’ to hardcore favourites Fucked Up and Rolo Tomassi tearing it up.

In the ‘Rough Trade’ tent I catch Mazes and Comeanechi, two guitar-and-drums duos playing with real energy and venom. These New Puritans headline the tent but don’t play at all. The sound cuts out halfway through the first song and no amount of frantically scurrying roadies can restore it.

Those playing in the tents are better off in the afternoon than the headline acts playing on the main stage. The sun is unforgivingly hot for the crowd and the sound for S.C.U.M, The Dum Dum Girls and Vic Goddard is rather limp and flat.

Rolo Tomassi have a rather bizarre billing in the early evening at the New Bands tent; Eva points out to me afterwards, “we’ve been a band for five years!” The band are in their element in the over-crowded circus tent, though. They rip through a lot of their most aggressive material, pausing only for Eva to exhort the crowd to climb the central support and dive back down. Afterwards, Eva is full of praise for the crowd and the energy in the tent. Despite the sound problems that leave her microphoneless for the middle of the set, she claims it’s been a great gig.

Back over on the Main stage, a sizeable crowd draws for Peter Hook’s trawl through ‘Unknown Pleasures’. Initial scepticism is mostly deflated by the enthusiastic way Hook launches into it. He’s not an enormously accomplished natural singing talent but then, let’s be honest, neither was Ian Curtis. He finishes the set by dedicating the last song to a newly engaged couple before, without a trace of irony, ripping into a superb ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. He seems to have been able to move on from the emotional resonance of Curtis’ life and death and to be challenging us to do the same: just enjoy some damn fine songs.

Following on from this, Wavves can’t help but feel like something of an anticlimax despite a high speed charge through ‘So Bored’.

Fucked Up headline the Main stage. Not that singer Damian spends any time on the stage itself. A fat, naked man, bleeding from the head while barreling through hordes of moshing fans is a great way of finishing the night in style.

Despite the regular sound issues, the 1234 has hit on a formula that makes for a good festival: the pile-em-high-sell-em-cheap philosophy means that you can see a large number of great bands for a minimal fee, and no camping is required.

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