To paraphrase an article I read on the coach back from Pilton, “Glastonbury is simply the most important gig you can expect to play in the world, if you’re not on the bill and you have a release out that year you really should be worried…”,
With that in mind I can’t help getting excited about where Breaking the Illusion will be in the next twelve months. They didn’t just play Glastonbury once, they played twice!
Their first performance pretty much kicked off the weekend in the Dance Lounge early Friday afternoon, with a warm up DJ set from Ghost. This was about the time that the rain decided to really get stuck in and start on churning up the earth so as to make sure everyone got the FULL Glastonbury experience. As B.T.I took to the stage a steady file of people began to fill the tent. The most striking aspect of the performance that hit me within the first few bars of ‘Big’ was the quality of both the sound system and the engineers. Having seen B.T.I a few times before, once at Leeds Carling Festival last year, I was privy to the fact that their live sound was meant to come across just as such and not try totally recreate what the studio counterpart. Seems that’s not been the intentions of the band but more due the inaptness of Leeds sound engineers.
Front man Tom Stewart is most defiantly a ‘story teller’ emcee. From tales of bank robberies gone wrong to twenty first century girls leaving their men for their electric little friends, like the music itself Tom’s lyrics switch and change to great effect. It’s difficult to pick standout tracks from these guys because what they present is a very solid, all killer, set of anthems that show a maturity and diversity that rivals anyone you care to mention. If you’ve not seen Breakin the Illusion yet, what are you playing at! Get on it, first opportunity you get and see why Michael Eavis and the BBC are all over them.
Checkout their Glastonbury BBC Introducing performance here http://www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury/2007/player/breakingtheillusion.shtml
Glastonbury might not have been known for hip hop in the past but with the addition of the new BBC Introducing Stage and acts such as Foreign Beggers ,Klashnekoff, Lethal Bizzle, Akala, Skitz & Rodney P to name a few it’s certainly taking steps in the right direction. And with bands like Breaking the Illusion bridging musical gaps who knows what we could find playing the Pyramid Stage next year.
[tags] BBC, Glastonbury, BTI, hip hop, Leeds [/tags]
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Nice review man, proper gutted I missed this years Glastonbury it looked quality…
Great review! BTI were unreal and a definate highlight of the festival. They are playing Moor festival on the saturday at 3ish so we should all get down for that one..