On the first night of Longitude, taking place in Dublin's Marlay Park from Friday to Sunday, the weather gods smiled. Close, muggy air and a rare stretch of hot weather added fuel to the fire of that rare thing: an Irish festival in the sun.
The setup has changed little on previous years. The main stage has shifted to allow more people access. The small pockets of the woods stocked with the Whelan's and Red Bull stages remain in place, with the huge crowd wandering over small wooden bridges and into the woods to find their way around what's on offer.
Sunday newspaper columnists might have a coronary with the crowd's dress code, but black is the main theme on stage. Early doors act Daughter look too cool for school until a massive singalong of what seems every line forces lead singer Elena Tonra to break out into smiles.
Queues for the bar are swift, with everyone it seems holding their IDs aloft to keep things moving. Most of the muttering is also quite tame: plenty of people are swapping taxi numbers and arrangements for getting back into town with a level of subterfuge usually reserved for racier intentions.
Underpowered
On the main stage, the strong early evening draw is Chvrhces, as safe a festival booking as can be imagined. The set though even in the windy sunshine seems underpowered, and it's not a surprise when large chunks of the crowd start drifting off.
Most festivals these days have a strong culinary offering and Longitude is no exception. On the Heineken stage, Armenian chef Action Bronson is sharing his thoughts. Not, though, from his brilliant TV show Fuck That's Delicious (available on Vice). Instead he's ripping into a set of hugely aggressive hip-hop and rap.
In recent years plenty of acts have gone for a stripped-back set up with just a few people on stage to carry a sound that rarely amounts to something substantial. Bronson has the nuclear power, furious speed and ceaseless flow to make it all work. As multicoloured images spin behind he repeatedly tells the crowd that they need to “Smoke that shit”. Despite the day job, he might not be talking about duck breasts.
This is the perfect tee-up for Friday night's headliner, Kendrick Lamar: not afraid to mix the political with the personal he's the red-hot draw for the weekend.
In the build-up to Longitude, some 2,500 local residents had signed a petition calling for an end to large-scale concerts on Marlay Park. On Friday night, roughly 30,000-plus people would surely have disagreed.
