Sun 27 Apr – Love Music Hate Racism Carnival

To combat the post-Prosumer blues, we spent some of Sunday at the Love Music Hate Racism festival, which turned out to be one of the least friendly events I've been to, and one of the most racially segregated. The actual message of the festival was lost amid fanatical 'DESTROY THE BNP' speeches and 'NO FASCISTS IN OUR SCHOOLS' and 'SAY NO TO BORIS' slogans. Uh...not very helpful.

We spent most of our time in the dance tent, where Benga and Skream were laying down a pretty mean set of dubstep and UK garage. Even within dubstep, which to me always sounds forward-thinking, Skream and Benga (especially Benga) sound like they're beaming back from even further into the future. Top stuff.

Unfortunately for us, the police hate music and love racism. They shut down the tent about an hour early just as DJ Hype was getting warmed up. Telling everyone to MOVE BACK, they cut the music for about 20 minutes, leading to most of the crowd slowly emerging from the tent, despondent. Then, just as we were leaving too, they reopened the doors and allowed a whole load of people from outside in - all the people who'd been there for 2 hours enjoying themselves were just replaced for no reason. Useless.

A quick blast of Patrick Wolf (whose anti-racism speech was somewhat counteracted by his hilarious Union Jack suit, which I'm sure the BNP would have loved) we made the trip to Stratford for a quick Burger King (of which I ate approximately three chips) and then on to the IndigO2.