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O2 Wireless Festival London 2007: The White Stripes, Faithless, Daft Punk, Kaiser Chiefs, Queens Of The Stone Age, Badly Drawn Boy, CSS, Editors, The Cribs, The Rakes

Description: The O2 sponsored rock and pop shindig goes into 2007 with its usual mix of mainstream favourites, up-and-coming gems and a number of musical surprises. Thu: Boy/girl red/white indie-blues duo The White Stripes and stoner-rock favourites Queens Of The Stone Age, Air, Satellite Party, The Bees, Detroit Cobras, The Sounds, Dredg, Polytechnic, Ghosts, The Kissaway Trail and more. Fri: Danced up chart favourites Faithless, quirky singer-songwriter Badly Drawn Boy, Just Jack, Kelis, Mark Ronson, Gotan Project, Aim, CAt Empire, Robyn and more. Sat: French electro-rocking duo Daft Punk and dance-frenzied Brazilian boy/girl popsters CSS plus indie-ravers Klaxons, LCD Soundsystem, Mark Ronson, Plan B, Calvin Harris, New Young Pony Club, Datarock, Metronomy and more. Sun: Leeds indie-rock heroes Kaiser Chiefs with their hand-picked support Editors, Wakefield sibling popsters The Cribs, perky popsters The Rakes and cheeky NME favourites The Twang. Plus Pigeon Detectives, Mumm-Ra, Duke Spirit, Good Shoes, Polysics, Los Campesinos!, You Say Party We Say Die, The Films, Ripchord, Richard Swift and more.



Rating: 4 out of 5 Evening Standard rating
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Hyde Park W2 2UH

Phone: 0871230 5440

Transport: Tube: Hyde Park Corner/Marble Arch Transport for London

Unstoppable Kaisers rise to the occasion

The Kaiser Chiefs
Hail to the Chief: an energetic Ricky Wilson on the O2 stage last weekend

Jon Fletcher 18 Jun 2007


The four-day Hyde Park leg of the O2 Wireless Festival was an unmistakably London affair. For starters there were no flooded tents and clothing choices tended to veer more towards club-wear than camp-wear.

The rain even held off for the most part, avoiding the swamps that are such a regular feature of summer festivals in the UK.

With the whole site emptying each evening, each day felt more like a stand-alone concert than a conventional festival, but, if anything, this added to the atmosphere, with each day's headliner able to amass thousands of true fans rather than the usual mix of the committed and the curious.

The event was brought to a close last night by the Kaiser Chiefs, hot on the heels of their return to the charts with number one single Ruby. They had a lot to live up to - Daft Punk had turned out an almost faultless set of relentless electroeuphoria on Saturday night, accompanied by a spellbinding light show.

It didn't take long for Kaisers' singer Ricky Wilson to show himself equal to the task. Wilson proved his main stage credentials as far back as 2005, when he spent much of a blistering set at Glastonbury cavorting with an inflatable dinosaur. The same energy was on display last night, reigniting testosterone-fuelled high street hits that could so easily have lost their novelty value by now.

Na Na Na Na Naa saw Wilson joined on stage by the hyperactive frontman of Japanese rockers Polysics. Clad in an orange boiler suit, he helped notch up the audience participation to new levels, so that by the time the Kaisers signed off with an explosive rendition of Oh My God the entire crowd was a pulsating wave of bouncing bodies.

Wilson, meanwhile, was constantly on the move, scaling the rigging one moment, lunging toward the crowd the next.

Playing the final set of the four days could have been a daunting task even without Daft Punk's impressive precedent, but when the front man asked teasingly: "Is anyone here too tired to go on?" the roar he got by way of reply showed just how big this band has become.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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