As high winds batter the beleaguered Leeds leg , a refreshing wind of change is blowing through Reading Festival 2024. Gone, by and large, is the post-pandemic two-main-stage concept that allowed bands just 30-minute sets for most of the day, and made running relentlessly between the two far more worthy an Olympic sport than breakdancing. Now, that second venue has been transformed into the Chevron Stage, fronted by a canopy of dot-matrix lights that becomes, at nightfall, possibly the world’s biggest rave cage.
Excised, too, are most of the TikTok superstars who’ve repeatedly proved themselves incapable of holding a festival crowd’s attention beyond their six seconds of “trending” fame. Large scale performance are far trickier, it turns out, than mumbling a gimmicky lyric online. What’s left behind has far less of a roadshow feel, as R&L – a pop festival in all but name for the past decade – rediscovers some of its gritty alternative edge.
And it doesn’t come grittier than Belfast’s Kneecap. Declaring themselves “back to annoy them c***s who hate us”, this Irish hip-hop trio storm the main stage on Friday with a decks-master, DJ Provai, clad in a tricolour balaclava and a whirlwind of hype and controversy at their backs. Named after the notorious IRA torture technique and occasionally rapping about republican themes in the Irish language, Kneecap have shot to infamy thanks to a celebrated fictional biopic featuring Michael Fassbender , currently in th.