Cloud9 Festival takes place at Love Lane Farm somewhere between Alsager and Sandbach in Cheshire. Now in its third year it's a small one day festival with two stages, dance tents and a heavy bias towards all things indie.
The first thing that hits you as you enter the arena is how small it is! With a capacity of 5,000 it's a rather compact affair with the whole site taking a cosy 5 minutes to walk around. The advantage of this however is that it never gets too crowded, you're never stuck for a good view of the main stage and the queue at the bar is never more than a couple of minutes, all of which make a refreshing change. Having successfully negotiated Guilfest I drag along my two year old to see how Cloud9 compares on the family friendly front.
The weather stays good apart from a 20 minute downpour mid afternoon and that helps keep everyone in party mood. The beer is just over £3 a can, not cheap but considering at Guilfest it was £4.50 it's not bad either. There aren't too many food stalls but what there is is good stuff so no complaints on that front. The small capacity also means that the queues for the loos aren't that bad either, a definite bonus!
If indie music is your thing then it's a pretty fine line up throughout the day. You can't really go wrong with flavour of the month Ed Sheeran, The Sunshine Underground and headliners The Futureheads. The only real problem is the tents around the edge of the site that house the second stage and the dance areas. These were really popular all day but the tents are long and narrow and designed in such a way that they have a big dip in the middle, which means that only 30 or so people can get in the front half near the stage and everyone else has to stand at the back or outside where you can't see anything! This is a real shame because it means that every time we try to check out what's going on in there we only get a half hearted impression from peering through gaps in the crowd or getting watered down sound from outside. So whilst I'm sure there were some good performances in there we didn't see much of it with the exception of the Scratch Perverts, who had the place bouncing and the enigma that is Bez. Bez's set, such as it was, consisted of his trademark dancing to a selection of songs including Happy Mondays (of course!) and Kasabian whilst continually cajoling the crowd and saying "Come on Macclesfield!", which would have been fine were we anywhere near Macclesfield! The crowd love him though and he goes down a storm.
On the main stage there are some solid performances from the likes of Black Daniel and Rotating Leslie. The sound is good, loud enough without ever being over bearing. It's largely up beat indie with that trademark indie sound, sharp dressing and jerky rhythms are the order of the day. The stage is quite small and space is at a premium so it doesn't really allow for particularly energetic performances although Manchester's Paris Riots attempt to rectify this with rather amusing results. Singer Toby stands up on a monitor and it promptly collapses beneath him leaving him flat on his back! To his credit he keeps singing and eventually gets up and just carries on as if nothing has happened. One of the big draws this year is Ed Sheeran and he gets a large and enthusiastic crowd. His set is interesting, mixing folk with beat box rhythms and the odd sing along chorus. It's a nice break from the more traditional indie sound and he gets a great reaction, particularly from the young ladies down at the front.
Clint Boon of Inspiral Carpets fame does a DJ set to keep the crowd going before Sunshine Underground and he does a decent job without ever really whipping the crowd into a frenzy. The Sunshine Underground get a good crowd and go down well although I'll admit they do little for me. It's well executed however and they don't appear to show any ill effects from losing bassist Daley Smith earlier this year. Unfortunately by now the stage times are running well behind schedule and as it's well past 11pm before the Futureheads take the stage I have to bunk off early to get the little fella back to Manchester. By all accounts though they turned in the kind of polished performance you would expect and no doubt rounded off the main stage bands in fine fashion.
A couple of areas could do with some work, the aforementioned tents and the chill out area for example comprises of little more than a garden size gazebo next to a huge pile of sand and a bouncy castle (which quickly disappears mid afternoon at the first sign of rain). Not really much room to chill out in! The sand does however provide good entertainment for the kids and the odd punter that launches themselves into it head first. A couple of people got ejected later on in the evening but this was efficiently dealt with, as was the couple of all day casualties that we saw getting attended to by paramedics but aside from that there was no bother or attitude. It was a safe and secure environment for kids although had it rained all day there wouldn't have been much for them to do.
Overall Cloud 9 is a good day out and for the ticket price you can't really go wrong. The line up was a bit too indie for my taste, it would have been good to get a couple of rockier bands in there to mix it up a bit. Well worth checking out though if it continues to a fourth year and as it seems there are no aspirations to grow in size it should remain a pretty chilled and attitude free festival. Amen to that.