It’s the time of the season and features edior Marc Gallagher takes a look at our own home-grown, unique boutique festival, the Electric Picnic.

The summer is nearly here (even if it doesn’t look it) and the festival season is fast approaching.

For those who have been keeping tabs on up-coming shows in Europe,
you’ll be more than aware of what’s on offer: Roskilde
(Denmark),Benicissim (Spain), Melt (Germany), Pukklepop
(Belgium)……the list goes on and on.

Ireland however, boasts one of the summer’s most anticipated
festivals — Electric Picnic. Celebrating its fourth birthday, it is
set to return from August 29 - September 1, with one of the most
diverse line-ups for the whole season.

“We’re more interested in quality of performance, rather than
this year’s big or trendy names. We’re trying to keep the
atmosphere unique and I think that’s reflected in the line-up,”
says Declan Ford, the festival’s booking agent, who got his start in
the music industry as a teenager by writing for music magazines and
working as a DJ.

Declan has been present since the festival’s conception in 2004.
“The first year was probably the most difficult,” he said,
“Trying to sell something that wasn’t proven. No act would confirm
until a bigger act did. A bit like the chicken and the egg.”

This is no longer an issue as  the Picnic’s reputation has
grown as time has passed. “Now when you contact an act they know
about the event, or in some cases the headliner will get in contact
with us first,” he said.

The line-up of nearly 200 acts are now all close to confirmation,
with headline bands such as Sigur Ros, Grinderman and Franz Ferdinand
already announced.

However the most interesting aspect of this year’s festival seems
to be in the amount of reunited bands attending. The Breeders have
returned from a six year hiatus with new album Mountain Battles. Steve
Mack of That Petrol Emotion announced in March that they the Electric
Picnic would be the only show they play this summer.

My Bloody Valentine’s place on the bill however seems to be the most eagerly anticipated.
“They
haven’t played in Ireland in 17 years and they’ve been very
selective about the shows they play, and we’re fortunately the
festival they wanted to play,” said Declan, who I think has a major
grá for the band.

Declan continues on to say “The amosphere will be the like of
seeing a band for the first time.” My Bloody Valentine’s 1991
release, Loveless, was recently voted number one in the Top 40 Irish
albums ever made.

The Electric Picnic is organized by Pod Concerts, who branched out
into live acts after much time spent of promoting dance music. 
For the past seven years this has been Declan Ford’s brief and
although it took a few years to come to fruition, 2004 saw the opening
of the Crawdaddy venue in Harcourt St (the same year as the inaugural
Electric Picnic).

The mission statement for the event was to keep it small, communal and interesting.

Declan says they wanted something similar to, “The first couple of
Witness festivals, that were small and fairly music driven, elements
that are not really detectable in what today’s Oxygen festival is.”

Indeed Electric Picnic seems to come across as the (musically) wiser
and more relaxed older brother to the petulant and hyper younger
brother that is Oxygen.

“We want to avoid where Oxygen is now, with a huge number of
teenagers that aren’t really into music,” he says and compares it
to his teenage experience of the Féile festival “waking up in a
puddle of puke, thinking it was great.” Declan reassures, “our
crowd are going for something else.”

There has also been some competition between the two festivals for audience and acts.

“It’s a big part of it every year. People have to make a choice
between the two, and last year we went hell for leather after Arcade
Fire (who had massive success after performing at the 2005 festival)
and Oxygen ended up getting them,” he says.

Oxygen also has the advantage of being associated with the T in the
Park festival in Scotland, meaning they can attract bands with a sort
of ‘two for one’ package.

There are also external factors that affect the booking of acts,
especially bands from outside Europe. Tour dates could mean they are
playing half-way across the planet at the time of the festival.

One of the most beneficial aspects of the festival is its
size.  The organisers flatly refuse to expand their capacity,
opting instead to maintain the personal atmosphere.

“Small is an advantage. In Glastonbury it can take 45 minutes to
get from one stage to another and at Electric Picnic it takes more like
five minutes,” says Declan.

The capacity is holding at 35,000 (Oxygen is more than twice this
number) but they are adding more stages, like the ‘jazz and world’
stage, making the festival a bigger event without having to increase
the population.

With every year the festival offers more than music. The Body and
Soul healing area will help with hangovers and the International comedy
tent will return, although no line up has been released yet.

The LA based vaudeville act Lucent Dossier, a collective based on
magic and inspiration, will be making their first appearance and the
festival regular Leviathan Think Tank will return with debates chaired
once more by David McWilliams.

The Electric Picnic is one of the more environmentally conscious
festivals, concerned with trying to offset the damage by working with
Cultivate Ireland and Friends of the Earth to make the event carbon
neutral.

There are no one-day or non-camping tickets. Tickets are