All this combined means that Clockenflap is best treated like dim sum: 20 minutes of French electronica courtesy of Air, then a quick jaunt over to the other main stage for Japanese Hip-hop phenomenon Creepy Nuts amping up the crowd with some of the most up-tempo rap we’ve heard in years. Along the way, maybe you could get a photo with the giant illuminated mushrooms, or stop off at the silent disco where your questionable dance moves will help charge peoples’ phones.
If you did want to approach it like a traditional festival, there’s plenty of huge names to see, although mileage may vary on the quality of some big hitters. Banks gives a technically good, but pretty flat, performance on the main stage, especially when contrasted with the bubblegum exuberance of J-pop group Sakurazaka46 who were in the slot preceding her. St. Vincent, on the other hand, delivers in spades. Flanked by a live band which adds depth (and multiple guitar solos) to her sound, she’s bantering with the crowd and proclaiming her love for Hong Kong to a rapturous response. It’s real headline material, and one of the best things we see all weekend.
Maybe the biggest crowd reception of the festival goes to Suede, with the Britpop legends apparently visiting Hong Kong early in their career and coming back regularly since then. The result? A dedicated fanbase who not only turn up to see them on stage, but also arrive at the airport with gifts like the band are visiting dignitaries. Singer Brett Anderson justifies the huge crowd, drenched in sweat and swinging the microphone like a circus performer. “A new generation of fans!” he enthuses, with the band powering into ‘Animal Nitrate’, almost drowned out by the singing masses.
Away from the Western household names, Japan’s Yama is a blue-haired, mask-clad pop singer who brings an upbeat, but stripped-back pop set to the festival. At the other end of the musical spectrum, Hong Kong post-hardcore band An ID Signal manage to provoke some of the only crowd surfing we saw at the festival, with an enthusiastic crowd clearly just as willing to go ballistic for homegrown talent as they are for international chart-toppers - especially when you consider their set takes place at exactly the same time as Jack White is thundering through his back catalogue at the other end of the festival site.
UK acts get a good showing, too, with former Dork cover stars Glass Animals proving that they’re far more than just “that band who made ‘Heatwaves’.” Hysterical screams erupt from the front row as Dave Bayley goes down to the crowd barrier, the singer grinning and asking, “You gonna catch me if I fall?” Cuts from the new album are greeted like old favourites, but of course it’s still ‘Heatwaves’ which gets the biggest response, with the massive crowd chanting every word back at the band. Closing out the festival on the second main stage is Jamie XX. No words to chant back this time, and no crowd interaction, either. Instead, he treats a festival main stage like a sweaty club, with an almost uninterrupted stream of bangers for the crowd to dance along to. The festival ends before 11pm, so it’s not quite as wild as a late night at Fabric, but the crowd is still bouncing throughout.
Hong Kong is a city renowned for its diversity, with hundreds of years of immigration and cosmopolitanism giving it a unique character matched by nowhere else in the world. In the city, basement dim sum restaurants rub shoulders with global fashion brands, Taoist temples, and even a branch of the Forrest Gump-themed restaurant Bubba Gump Shrimp. On the line-up, this diversity is mirrored - where else in the world would you get just as enthusiastic a crowd for raucous nonsense-peddlers Fat Dog, global DJ sensation Jamie XX, and East Asian hip-hop sensations Creepy Nuts? Answers on a postcard please, because we can’t think of anywhere but Clockenflap.
