Field Day festival review: Overcrowding issues taint festival's move to London's Brockwell Park

In Brockwell Park for the first time, Field Day showed the teething problems that come with moving location

Erykah Badu performs on the Fader Stage during Field Day festival 2018 in London (Reuters)

★★☆☆☆

Organisational issues dogged the dying embers of Field Day after a belting afternoon that set this corner of south London ablaze.

British festivals know they will live and die by the weather, and in Brockwell Park on Saturday it was nothing short of glorious; the sun lighting up every corner of the south London park that was this festival’s new home.

Transplanted from Victoria Park in east London, there were undoubtedly some teething problems, but they did not become apparent until the sun that had bathed revellers for most of the day had ducked behind the trees.

Field Day attendees had no such plans to disappear and after a day of wild joy – uniting in an upbeat sea of noise to showstoppers Kurupt FM or the post-modern sounds of Fever Ray – they clustered around a dwindling number of stage options as the lineup thinned out.

For those who stayed, there awaited a somewhat clunky end to an otherwise excellent Saturday. English electronic artist Four Tet – one of the more eagerly-awaited acts – delayed his performance and was then forced into playing a diluted mini-set due to overcrowding in the inadequate The Barn tent.

Health and safety can be something of a dirty word in these situations, but the organisers did the right thing by limiting the flow of people into an already overcrowded situation... just as they did by ending Erykah Badu’s set early on Friday night as to not annoy the local residents.

But like a job, a festival is something you prefer to leave on a good note. For the thousands who marauded aimlessly around Brockwell Park at the end of Saturday’s proceedings, searching without success simply for another act to watch, there is much work to do to get Field Day back on a par with its London rivals. What started out as a sunny bonanza fizzled into disappointment.