Festival Report: Sziget Festival 2016 // Day 2

It’s day two. Groggy, tender and excited for today’s headliners, we spent the first half of our day on the Island of Freedom being crafty.

As I have mentioned before, Sziget is not simply a festival for music, but for art, culture, history, food and film as well! To kill time before the major acts (Jake Bugg, Parov Stelar and Rihanna) hit the stage, we visited the adorable and very pastel H&M @ Sziget stall. Here one can get crafty, and let out their inner child with T-Shirt-Making, swing sets, and the opportunity to mount a unicorn! Paint covered and with T-Shirts in hand, we decided to carry on being creative, and headed towards the Art Zone where there was all manner of sculptures and stalls for every taste. Some of our personal favourites were the bamboo drum-kit, unicorn headband workshop, and the gorilla made entirely of flowers.

When it was time to hit the Main Stage, we chilled out on the grass and listened to Jake Bugg do his thing. Opening with ‘On My One’, Bugg’s vocals are bang on, practically identical to his pitch-perfect, nasal, record counterpart. Props have to be given to the sound technicians too for the insanely well managed sound boards. You could hear every instrument and vocal at the perfect volume and all were clear and crisp, complimenting each other beautifully. The crowd were most appreciative of older Bugg classics such as “Two Fingers” – where the singer’s chorus was greeted with a sea of people flashing the duces back at him- and “Trouble Town”. With a cool, and laid back attitude, Bugg didn’t make much interaction with the audience, but maintained a chilled stage persona, letting us know that he’s ‘seen it all before’.

Whilst the set was vocally excellent, Bugg struggled to hold the attention of the audience, losing them in around his fourth song, Love Hope and Misery, before picking them back up with stand-out songs “Trouble Town”, “Simple Pleasures”, and his most famous, and final song in the set: “Lightening Bolt”. All in all, this poor boy from Nottingham who never quite grew out of the surfer dude hair phase delivered a solid performance musically, but could use a little work with his bedside manner and set organisation. Whilst there’s a certain charm in his “getting the job done” attitude, it didn’t do too much for the crowd here at Sziget.

The next act was, in my opinion, the best of the night in a lot of ways. Although – I think it is safe to say – everyone in he crowd watching Parov Stelar was waiting for Rhiannah, not a single one of them was able to keep still during Stelar’s set. The Kings and Queens of Electroswing truly brought their A-Game to the Sziget Main Stage, with some killer horns, incredible drops, and something for everyone. As the band joked on stage, the whole spectacle of the crowd moving and shaking to the music was “like the Olympics” but an Olympics of “ass shaking”.

Brought back on stage for an encore, Parov Stelar and his crew must have done something right, and it was apparent the crowd would have welcomly received another set from them. There’s just something about ElectroSwing that brings a little piece of joy for everyone, no matter what their tastes. It’s got horns for the Jazz-lovers, beats for the drum and bass enthusiasts and drops that any House hipster would be happy to shuffle to, and, although a perhaps strange and ecclectic choice to precede Rhiannah, they certainly got everyone fired up.

Finally, after being 30 minutes late to the stage (because what headliner would be a headliner if they didn’t make you wait for them?) Rihanna took to the stage, looking a little like a death eater with her hooded frame poised over the microphone. She delivered an explosive set of what can only be described as snippets of her hit songs, driving the crowd crazy – in more ways than one – with her sassy pop anthems.

Whilst her vocal performance was very good for the parts of her set she did manage to sing in, there was a bit too much backing track, and slightly too little Rihanna for my tastes. The spectacle on stage of dancers and lights, put together with the upbeat and powerful songs was definitely something to behold and the set was definitely one of the best of the day. However, I felt as though she tried to squeeze too much into her slot and, in the process, actually began to frustrate her fans because she struggled to finish a full song throughout the set. All we were delivered with was a tantalising collage of her discography which, whilst good in many ways, was also slightly overshadowed by frustration. However, the performance was undeniably memorable and unfalteringly entertaining, and, overall, she didn’t disappoint.

Words by Daniella Bassett, pictures courtesy of Rockstar Photographers