The 1234 Shoreditch Festival 2012
1st September 2012 Shoreditch Park, London

I love this festival for the atmosphere and selection of avant-garde bands, but the organisers try to make it as difficult as possible for them to sound good. The sounds were pretty bad when I last went to the 1234 festival two years ago, but this year the organisers must have employed a bunch of technophobic station platform announcers or Tesco Tannoy system operators to run the sound systems on the main stages. In 30 years of going to festivals and gigs I've never come across such a shambles.
Some acts managed to shine through the noise fug though, and for me stars of the show this year were Von Haze, Gabriel Bruce, Pre New, Deap Vally and (heads and shoulders above the rest, despite the sound system sabotage job) the wonderful Savages.
Pete Shelley & co were obviously enjoying themselves on stage, but despite being a big fan of theirs back in the day, I couldn't bear to hear those great songs mangled by the Tannoy terrorists and left early.