Arcadia – The surreal mix of fire, water and dance beats made for a perfect Friday night wrap.

BJ – In open view amongst the trance heads on Saturday night in the Sibin forest area. Good to see romance is alive, well and proudly rearing its head…periodically.

Closing Time – A most stupendously flawed decision to stop serving at 10pm, sort it out for next year or at the very least allow us to bring our own grog in.

Donal Dineen – The Electric Picnic of DJ’s.

Elbow – 2 majestic Irish gigs already this year, there’ll be a hat-trick before the year is out. ‘Newborn’ provided one of the genuinely spine tingling moments of the weekend.

Faust – Taking art (literally) to new levels, guitars as they were meant to be played.

Gomez – Remarkable crowd for their ‘Bring It On’ reprisal, couldn’t get in and so threw a 13 stone wobble in disgust.

Humour – Are Irish comedians funny or do they just shout a lot?

Insomnia – Faithless blaring out of the Body & Soul bowl sounded so apt on Saturday morning.

Jape – Richie Egan once again floats (!) his genius. He could be about to take over the world on the strength of Jape’s Friday evening show.

Kerrazy – What were those SEBP boys on?

Lavatory – What would have Andy Warhol made of the shit buckets in the campsite named after him. Peering down it almost looked like art.

Main Stage – Somehow it felt wrong, the least atmospheric of all the stages.

New Find Of The Weekend - Hercules and Love Affair.

Orange Faces – Aliens, superheroes and ghost like dancers on wavey poles.

Primal Scream – A decent smattering of Screamadelica, James and Feile t-shirts. Good to see the old guard haven’t retired yet.

Queues – We have it easy lads don’t we?

Rain – Or lackthereof. Hooray!

Sigur Rós – The angel’s in the detail, brass interludes from heaven.

Tinnitus – Hey, you were warned about the white noise apocalypse during My Bloody Valentine’s ‘You Made Me Realise’. 18 minutes of bliss, once you packed the ear spongers.

Underworld – The most euphoric audience response of the weekend came as the curtain feel on their show. Visually impressive and just as vital as a decade ago.

Vibe - The most laid back/friendly festival crowd imaginable, half the fun was watching the world go by on the soft dry grass.

Wash – You must be joking and shur that’s what baby wipes were made for.

Xpensive – EP’s not a cheap thrill by any manner. Burgers for €9, crepes for €6 (even though they kept the hugger boat afloat on several occasions), lager for €8.50 (wherein you can enjoy lugging the souvenir cup around).

You’re Only Massive – 3 gigs in the thisispopbaby tent, voices may have become lost towards the end but many hearts were won in the process.

Zzzz’s – Not many of them over the weekend. The EP crowd mightn’t be a particularly noisy lot but jaysus can they talk and talk and talk. KD


The Dying Seconds - Electric Sheep Disturb My Sleep

More Info: Official & Myspace
Year: 2008