The sight of hundreds of people raving under a bypass in broad daylight is enough to give even seasoned wreckheads the chills. You shouldn’t still be out at midday. The party was last night. Except for this one, which is the Red Bull Music Academy Major Lazer Soundsystem show at the Notting Hill Carnival.
Underneath the Westway in balmy sunshine between midday and 7pm, superstar DJs such as Toddla T, L-vis 1990, and Diplo and Switch (AKA Major Lazer), offered a final chance for the capital to go a bit nuts in the great outdoors. And go nuts they did.
Stepping off the tube into the thronging masses, you’re instantly reminded that Notting Hill is the second-largest carnival in the world behind Rio's. The streets are rammed with performers and food stalls offering traditional Caribbean fare, and they sit side-by-side with sound systems that could shake your teeth out. That might also explain the dodgy toothless men trying to sell you a warm six pack of beer every five metres.
But the drinks run ice-cold in the Red Bull event, in a space that a day beforehand would’ve been an abandoned concrete wasteland, Diplo and co’s party manifesto to make the ground “vibrate like a Nokia” is in full effect. Striding up to the DJ booth, the man himself looks unassuming in a suit jacket and T-shirt.
“It’s an amazing space,” he quips, looking out over the crowd. But now’s no time for pleasantries. As the tunes fire up, Major Lazer, the fictional cartoon commando moniker for Diplo and DJ partner Switch, rears his head. He’s not here in physical form, obviously, but this bastard son of dancehall and 1980s electro seems suddenly to be everywhere in spirit.
He’s in the crowd’s aggression as they invade the stage, he’s in the dancing girls that have climbed on top of the speaker stacks… he even seems to have invaded the body of Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, who’s dancing on his own out in the crowd like the soul of the party. And you don’t often get to say that about Radiohead.
The pace is ferocious, the bass is ridiculous, and as Diplo is hoisted onto a fan’s shoulders and carried away from the decks, the set descends into a gloriously chaotic mess, which is the definition of any good street party, really.
Just spare a thought for whoever had to clear it all up.
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