Feel Good Friday
“It’s fair to say that there was a difference between The Whip playing to a new audience in an attempt to win them over and The Whip who were playing to their own crowd,” a line from an R13 review from their UK tour that followed hard on the heels of the long-awaited release of their debut album. Another way of looking at that statement is that, with a headline tour, The Whip had more room to show off all aspects of their work, whereas club nights and festival sets see them having to aim for concise as much as creative. Back on the festival circuit, the prediction made by that same review that they would kick back into top gear came true, for this was another impressive display from Manchester’s new electronica heroes.
So concise was this set in fact that the fantastic, New Order-esk ‘Frustration’ didn’t make it to the start line, but the Daft Punk-like ‘Divebomb’ was unleashed early on and got a reasonably sized turn out dancing.
The Whip are at their best when they’re playing in a small venue, when it’s almost impossible to move due to the numbers in attendance. The Dance Tent at Leeds was far from packed meaning the atmosphere didn’t hit the heights of their memorable Camden Crawl performances in 2007. That said as ‘Trash’ blasted out you could be left in no doubt that here is a band who, on their day, are a match for anyone when it comes to dance music played live by a full band.