Sun, Sea, Sand and a 3 Day Music Festival

2013 saw the 5th Anniversary of one of Spain's biggest music festivals, Low Cost Festival in Benidorm. Over 20,000 people attended each night and it has just been confirmed that Benidorm will remain the host city until at least 2020. Three nights of amazing music, scrummy food and not a rain poncho to be seen.

If your idea of a festival is being knee-deep in mud, soaking wet and having to take practically every item of warm clothing you own and if, like me, that doesn't sound all that appealing then Low Fest definitely will. Held in a sports stadium/fields at the end of July (with temps of around 35°), you can camp in a wooded shaded area or if that's too much like roughing it then you can book into one of the many nearby hotels.

Though Low Festival, yes they've dropped the 'cost' this year, might not have the biggest names in music headlining, you will already be familiar with some and can rock out to others. It does have a VIP Olympic sized swimming pool, as opposed to an unintentional mud bath, and a separate VIP area.

Last year's line up included Two Door Cinema Club, Glasvegas, Portishead, Belle and Sabastian, Crystal Castles and TOY and some cool indie Spanish bands I can guarantee you definitely won't have heard of. Unlike most British festivals, weirdly Low doesn't even start each night until 6pm and most people don't rock up until after 9, the headliners usually play around midnight, and bands play until around 5am. This leaves all day to be spent chilling on the beach or eating delicious tapas in the Old Town, both only a 15 minute walk from the festival.

Last year's festival featured, for the first time ever in Spain, #ElChipProdigiosoDelLow which means "the prodigious chip". This chip was inside the wristbands and allowed anyone attending to post instant updates and photos to Facebook from Like/Check Points and Photo Stations inside the festival by registering their unique ticket number online beforehand. Certainly enough to make mother's head explode at the technological awesomeness.

So far The Hives and Editors are amongst a lot of random Spanish acts confirmed for Low Festival 2014, however most bands won't be announced until the beginning of May.

So glampers, put your wellies away, book your flight, grab your swimmy and pack some factor 30+. Three day tickets are currently 50€ but act fast as the longer you wait, the higher the price (you know the drill). VIP Pool tickets which include an unlimited free supply of Budweiser (curiously I'm feeling they may be the sponsors again this year) are 125€, if you're a fangirl then this is definitely the ticket for you as most acts lounge around the pool during the day.

Read my interviews from Low Cost 2013 with Two Door Cinema Club here and Glasvegas here.

Purchase tickets from www.lowfestival.es

                   

My Low Cost Festival 2013 (all my own photos)

Glasvegas Talk Glowsticks and Gallagher

I caught up with lead guitarist Rab Allan and drummer Jonna Löfgren backstage at Low Cost Festival ahead of them headlining the main stage on Sunday night. They were most surprised to find out they were being interviewed in English by a fellow Scot! Here's what happened when a Glaswegian journalist (me) interviewed a Glaswegian band (Glasvegas) in Benidorm...

So this is your first time playing Low Cost Festival....

Rab: Yes! We've done some festivals here before like Benicassim, Summer Case, Dia de La Musica in Madrid, BBK Bilbao - It's always been great whenever we come to Spain.

Have you been to Benidorm before?

Rab: No, our manager Denise came when she was 18 and James came as well when he was 16 and I think that was the first time he ever got really drunk and threw up.

What was the first gig you ever attended as fans?

Jonna: It was probably some Swedish act, I don't know, I want to say some cool band like "oh yeah, that was the first gig I went to". [Laughs]
Rab: I saw The Bootleg Beatles, that was my first ever gig in Glasgow, in the Royal Concert Hall, and after that I saw Travis and about ten bands in a month.

Where is your favourite venue to go to in Glasgow?

Rab: Barrowlands, definitely.
Jonna: I've only been to Barrowlands once, I saw The Vaccines there and it was really good.
Rab: I saw Oasis there in 2001, we've played there twice. Once we supported The Wombats, that was good fun, there were lots of kids with glowsticks. All the parents were at the back of the hall and all the kids were at the front, I think James ended up threatening someone because they threw a glowstick at him. It was one of our first ever gigs just before we signed to Columbia and all of the big people from the label were there.

You've supported Oasis on tour, that must have been an amazing experience?

Rab: It was funny because that was the band that we kind of got into music with and then we supported them, so it's a strange thing but it was fun.

Was it kind of "dream come true" or did you get a bit disillusioned?

Rab: They were the sweetest guys, even Liam [Gallagher] is a bit of a pussy cat. He walked around backstage with his leopard print slippers on. He came in to talk to us and was saying that when he was our age he loved The Stone Roses and then he met Ian Brown and we were saying "oh we've met you" and he was really humble. He met my mum and James' mum and gave them hugs and kisses. He's a big pussy cat, he really is, you heard it hear first...

Are you excited about The Hydro (capacity 12,000) opening in Glasgow?

Rab: We're actually playing it with The Proclaimers, I think it's one of the first gigs, it's like the Scottish Showcase kind of thing so it's us and Roddy Hart and The Proclaimers, I think it's going to be great.
Jonna: That's gonna be mad! Our biggest gig I think, we might have played a wee bit bigger at festivals but not like a one-off venue.

You've just changed record company to BMG, do you feel that's a better direction for you creatively?

Rab: To be honest, I don't really think it was a creative thing, I think we were going to release the album on our own.
Jonna: It feels like we've got a bit more to say about things in general. We don't feel the pressure of "oh, we think you should release this and this..."
Rab: The thing is with Sony, we had complete control, we decided everything that happened but it's just that they would put pressure on us to try and do other things.
Jonna: They would suggest something...
Rab: BMG are basically funding us and we're putting our own team together and they're letting us run with it. They loved the album and that's why we signed with them. We'd been offered other record deals but with them, they loved the album as much as we did.
Jonna: It feels so good to actually have the album and then sign with them.
Rab: We haven't had any issues, everything has been great so far, we've met the people from BMG in Spain and they're lovely and paid for our drinks!

Have you eaten much Tapas while you've been here?

Rab: We actually all went out for Tapas in Glasgow about a month ago to Cafe Andalucia in the West End, there's one in Byres Road and it's really nice too. I love Tapas! We've been to a few restaurants but my girlfriend on really eats pizza and pasta, she doesn't eat meat so it's been limited. She had a pizza everyday for like three or four days [Laughs] so we've had to broaden our horizons a bit.
Jonna: It's been good, we've been getting the swordfish and all that.
Rab: Pretty exotic for Glaswegians.

Your album comes out in September, will you be doing a promo tour for it?

Rab: We've started doing a bit, I keep forgetting it's only not long now. We usually do quite a lot of press, I think there are some gigs planned as well but I'm not really sure, in Europe not the UK.
Jonna: We never know what's going to happen in advance, someone just tells us. We're lucky if it's as much as three days before, usually it's like "tomorrow, you're doing this".
Rab: We get told day to day.

Where's your next big tour?

Rab: September/October we do a big UK tour and then November/December we do a big European tour, we're playing Madrid and Barcelona.

I loved watching Glasvegas perform on the main stage at Low Cost Festival, Jonna is the craziest and most incredible drummer I have ever seen. The new album Later... When The TV Turns To Static is released 2nd September 2013.

Web: glasvegas.net
Facebook: /glasvegas
Twitter: @glasvegas
Instagram: @glasvegasofficial

Two Door Cinema Club Bring the Cool to Benidorm

21:30h in Benidorm on Friday 26th July and I'm standing with Alex Trimble, Sam Halliday and Kevin Baird aka Two Door Cinema Club in the middle of a football pitch. We were, of course, backstage at Low Cost Festival. Alex heads back to his dressing room with the Spanish translator we didn't need and birthday boy Sam goes off to catering, leaving Kevin who says, "Shall we just do the interview here?"

We sit down on the sub-benches and the interview commences. I ask when they arrived here in Spain, "We got here this afternoon, we were shooting a video in London. We actually flew out from Gatwick on an Easyjet flight. We haven´t been to Benidorm before but haven´t seen any of it yet. Wer'e heading down to Alicante for the rest of the weekend for Sam's stag do!"

What was it like playing the main stage at T in the Park? "It was great having played before to have a point of reference. When you've played the smaller stages you know how important it is to be playing the headline stage. In 2010 we played the Small Tent at T and last year the 2nd Stage, so it's good to have that."
Their music has been used in adverts for the likes of Vodafone, Meteor, clothing retailers Debenhams and Next and by Microsoft. I wonder how much say the boys have in it, "We have full control over what we do, for instance, we've been asked to do loads - I won't tell you what - that we decided not to do. We're not fortunate enough to be in Adeles' postition where we can turn down the offers all the time. In the beginning it really helped to get us known and in fact a track for Debenhams became a single when we weren't releasing it, purely on the basis of the advert. We've also had tracks for Playstation and Xbox, Fifa games and NBA which has got us known in America so it's all been good really... It's also quite lucrative. I wouldn't want to not be able to decide what we do as I'm a control freak."

I ask Kevin what the first gig was he ever attended as a fan, "I think it was probably a Radio 1
Roadshow, I can remember it came to our hometown in Ireland which was quite major as nobody ever came. Zoe Ball was the presenter and I remember seeing The Corrs."

On Wikipedia Two Door Cinema Clubs' Genre is described as Indie rock dance-punk synthpop new wave post-punk revival, I ask if he could sum up their genre in no more than 3 words. "Alternelectronica, when we first started out someone came up with that and we thought it was really good. I guess we're more Indie now, we used to be to be three guys and beats, but now we have a drummer..."

The band have 1.5 Million Likes on Facebook and growing, I ask how important Kevin thinks social media is for musicians? "It's definitely the way things are going now, but just because you have 1.5 million Likes doesn't mean they all see your posts. Facebook uses algorithms to decide how important each post is and how they show up in feeds. For example, if you add a photo or not it can make a big difference and you can actually pay to promote an individual post and decide how many hits you want it to get." Wow, so you've really thought about this? [Laughs] "Well as I said, I'm a control freak."

As his manager makes exaggerated winding notions with his hands as he's on the phone, I ask Kevin one last question, what's the most expensive item of clothing he's ever bought? "I bought a Cristian Dior jacket... the other guys still make fun of me for it, I bought it in Browns in London." Eeek! How much was it? "I'm not saying... but it was a lot."

Two Door Cinema Club played the main stage at midnight, despite being 90% Spanish the crowd sang along to every song. It was one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen, their energy was phenomenal with some amazing pyrotechnics.