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Bluedot Festival
Jodrell Bank Observatory
WITH its haze of colourful happenings, all curiously framed beneath the 3,200-tonne Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank, there's a sense of wonderment in the air at the Bluedot festival.
Running parallel with the live programme fusing music and sound, there's a raft of educational programmes and talks on quasars, gravitational lensing, warps in time and space and intergalactic radio waves Luminaries such as Richard Dawkins, Philippa Browning and Alice Roberts are on hand too.
If that doesn't make the mind reel, then the breath-taking interstellar performance by the Chemical Brothers concluding the festival certainly does.
Before then, and away from the manicured headliners, Mancunians Age of Glass grab their moment, meshing smart and frenzied synth electronics with Rory Charles’s blissful, soulful vocals — living proof that a band hell-bent on dance music grounded in synth technology and acoustics can cause absolute delirium.
The psychedelics on offer are of the finest order and come in the shape of the wild textures from the freak-out guitar of Kawabata Makoto and Jyonson Tsu‘s cosmic vocals, as the Acid Mothers Temple from Japan both blow the crowd and any notion that space rock is from another age away.
Total electro tastes are sated by Hamburg-based smart-house techno musician and DJ Helena Hauff, who launches a blistering blast of graceful and beautified rhythms syncopating within a blend of deep and very heavy dance music.
But it's the synth-a-phonic power of Roger Limb et al from Radiophonic Workshop as they hold court which is the most surprising of revelations.
A collective of former BBC sound artists and musicians, the band seem taken aback not only with the audience’s reaction and affection but with the immensity of what they've just achieved.