Music

Open’er Festival 2018, Day One: Nick Cave’s sky cults and Alex Turner’s lunar dreamland

todayJuly 5, 2018

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Arctic Monkeys, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds kicked off Poland’s legendary weekender last night (July 4)

Of Arctic Monkeys’ twelve thousand festival dates in 2018, Open’er will make them feel most at home. It’s the closest the European festival circuit has to a Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino. Set on a glitzed-up landing strip in northern Poland, it’s a place where surreal high art meets stylish sonics. An art piece made of conjoined white-painted and graffiti smothered buses sits in the centre of the arena like an abandoned settler base at the Apollo basin. An on-site museum displays film and artefacts from distant Earth history. Clubs rage in protective bunkers and tunnels and a gigantic, jagged neon totem pole rises from the centre of the festival like a 23rd Century landing marker. There are even signs that the place is getting gentrifaaaayhaayed – a new onsite indoor restaurant allows you to book a dinner with a famous Polish chef. We’d give it four stars out of five. Unheard of.

 

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