Core. Festival in Glasgow has returned for the second edition where noise gets celebrated, with a line-up that once again includes a lot of various genres and goo mix between local bands and the more well-known bands. As I was driving along the M8 from Edinburgh in the Fudlip Mobile, I was chatting to my gig partner in crime Bruce about last year’s edition, which was a success but also had a couple of small hurdles such as fire alarms that kept going off on the first day, security staff not showing up, and a merch room that was a bit off the beaten track and therefore not that successful.
This year the main venue has changed to the Woodside Halls, and upon entering I already knew things would be a lot better. For starters, the Woodside Halls has an actual stage, like a proper high stage, whereas last year’s main stage looked a bit like it was cobbled together and it was quite low. Second thing I noticed was the lack of barrier, which would enable great interactions between the bands and audience throughout the weekend. The merch area has also moved into the main stage room this year, which hopefully means people are able to engage more with the bands and distros. Similar like last year, the Friday had a short line-up with 4 bands playing, and whilst last year’s Friday was pretty much emo day at Core., this year things got a bit more louder and energetic with a bigger focus on post-hardcore and punk, with one notable exception which I’ll come to in a bit.
First band on were local Glasgow noise punks Nü Cros, who describe themselves as playing alternative rock, but definitely a version that was leaning more towards the noisier punk side of rock. Not long after they opened their set before I got reminded of the classic early Pixies albums, with that same level of rawness in their sound, and I could spot more influences form classic rock bands such as Placebo, Deftones and Nirvana, but Nü Cros definitely had their own sound, including great melodic parts as well. Their energetic on stage performance quickly opened up the floor to the first mosh pit of the festival.
This was followed by “the odd one out” of the night, London based Whitelands, who played a great set of dreampoppy shoegaze, which gave a nice moment of more relaxed music, which in retrospect was needed knowing now what was still to come. The band has recently toured with Shoegaze masters Slowdive, and during that tour they must have picked up a number of new fans, with one of those fans explaining to the band in between songs that she came to Glasgow to see just them after she saw them play with Slowdive, which the band appreciated a lot. They were selling tapes of their Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day, and I’m a sucker for merch, so happy I picked up a copy of said tape.
After these 30 minutes or so of Shoegaze goodness, we were treated to some up-tempo loudness again with Glitterer taking the stage. Glitterer started off as a solo project by former Title Fight bass player and singer Ned Russin, and now has grown into a full 4-piece band. It was nice to hear they came from Washington to Core. and then booked a tour around their Core. appearance. They played a very energetic set of poppy punk rock, which the crowd enjoyed a lot, especially towards the end of their set where more moshing was starting again.
Show Me The Body rocking the banjo
Though I suppose the crowd was saving their energy for the Friday headliners Show Me The Body, which was one of the most intense shows I’ve seen in a very long time. I’ll admit here that Show Me The Body is a band I had heard off a couple of times over the last years, but never really listened to that much. Based on the madness of this show, I think I was one of the very few who wasn’t that familiar with this band. Basically, on stage there was a mad looking bald frontman called Julian Cashwan Pratt, who started the gig with some spoken word before the bass player started adding heavy layers of synths followed by the drummer laying down an almost hardcore sounding drum beat. Things got very interesting when the frontman picked up a cello and started riffing like a mad man whilst continuing with his impressive vocal delivery. It didn’t take long for the crowd to erupt in an enormous whirlpool with loads of moshing, violent dancing and stage diving aplenty. What impressed me the most perhaps was the huge crowd that had somehow appeared and there wasn’t a single person in that crowd who wasn’t singing along word for word with the lyrics. Show Me The Body’s music was an impressive mix of hardcore, punk, spoken word, hip hop and noise and they played the perfect set to end the first day of this year’s Core. edition.
In a couple of hours I’ll be joining Bruce again driving down the M8 for day 2, which has a lot of tasty treats on offer, with a full line-up on various stages. You can read our preview here to find out more.
