Fuji Rock Festival 2005: Giants and Pixies

Fatboy Slim is standing at the top of a dark tower. In front, a teeming mass of mud-caked orcs gawk and strain to hear what he is trying to say through a small megaphone. Nothing gets through. The Lord of the Turntables holds up a white record cover. "Praise me for what I'm about to play", this Saruman seems to be indicating through the sheets of rain that are curtaining us. Plonker. We can't read that, you drip. Doesn't really matter, we know what you're going to play. The same tired old set you've been lugging around these past five years.

The shift of focus away from the digital, the club beats, back to the melodic pop-rock, has gone hand in hand with the rise of the Chiefs next door neighbours and modern royalty, Coldplay. Here they are. Spotlit Chris Martin prowling around the stage, reaching into the night like a deranged Hamlet (if the Prince of Denmark had taken to hopping on one leg around the stage). His piano has MTF spelled out on its side in tape. "Plywood?" I think. Highly unlikely.

One problem with being at the forefront, inventing styles, developing new ideas etc, is that there's always someone waiting in the wings to do it better (examples being tennis, football, modern democracy). Coldplay's achilles heel is a band called Athlete, who outrun their sempai at every distance. Demolishing the stereotype of the British male being repressed, cynical and backward in all the arts of lovemaking, these Asashoryu of the sweeping pop knock the crowd for six with an intimacy that cuts right across the valley, amid arrangements which rise up either side like the Naeba mountains around us. We're all left reeling, hurting and in love. Not a dry eye on the field. Not a dry anything else for that matter.

Centre stage at this year's Fuji Fest is the weather. Met off the shuttle bus by a gentle shower as I arrive high up at the ski-resort-turned-music-venue, the effect is pleasing, a refreshing escape from the Japanese summer below. Three days on, ankle deep in mud, still wrapped in cheap plastic, feet sore from not being able to sit anywhere, my beer watered down from holding it too long outdoors, I'm wondering if it's all still worth it.

Happily, it is. There's no stopping the party when The Go! Team hit the stage. Grins spread all around as if the sun's finally come out. Bones thaw as bodies refuse to not kick in to jive mode. Front girl MC Ninja shakes it like a seismic 6 and it's the best time she's had in her life. We're warm, we're happy, we're laughing.

We Go! check out their fellow Brightonites Evil Nine, and these these two beat-meisters keep us on top of things, our moods sky high, and briefly they drive the clouds away. Looking like a carbon copy of our very own Windcheater / GHB outfit, they keep the crowds bobbing till daybreak and beyond. Another two brains / 4 hands outfit is DJ Kentaro preceding them. Jaws drop, necks strain to catch how one man mountain can maintain that level of mixing for an entire set.

Evil Nine

Royksopp arrives with the largest aural scope and bone-tingling decibel output of the lot this year. Looking like Benny and Bjorn circa 1979 and dressed in linens Ingmar Bergman would even scoff at, they stretch our nervous systems on the rack of synths and samplers separating the them from the us. The 'us', the crowds, are are this as every year, a sample of the great and the good-looking from all over Japan, with a sprinkling of expat and a dash of tourist. Pleasant, patient, polite, they always strike me as the antithesis of rock'n'roll.

Here to teach us the correct attitude is The Coral. Faces like they've been blackmailed into being here, they manage to winge their way through their set ("Sorry, it's not our equipment. They lost ours.") Luckily, no one can understand a word they grunt, as they haven't cottoned on to the fact that nobody outside of Liverpool can comprehend Scouse. Go back to your day-jobs, boys, you'll be much happier.

Angry but with a reason, Asian Dub Foundation bring a heavy dose of politics to the Green Stage. Only weeks after the London bombings they walk on wearing bandanas across the faces. They play, "It's a roundup". Thank every God there are still people who have some things to say. ADF show what also can be expressed in music. Openly, upfront. Not taped to the side of a piano, as if by accident.

Equally heavy but in a different way, are the nicest boys in rock, The Foo Fighters. Celebrating their tenth year with a fresh batch of dentures, their back-catelogues of killer tunes hang like stacks of speakers above you either side of the stage, and crash down on us like huge dark wings. Days roll into evenings and back out into morning. Tents are sagging. Eyes bloodshot.

Some of us need a wash and a cup of tea. The High-Lows, the Maximo Parks. Another curry, another beer. A girl dreams Beck is singing and dancing just for her. Backs ache from standing. New Order, old order. Here are good people. Enjoying a place like no other in Japan.

It's nighttime and drops of projected light cascade down the side of a dark cliff. On top of an impossibly long and bendy pole, a lunatic is going through an acrobatic routine. Inside the Palace of Wonder, Big Willie's Burlesque announce their strip act. Glitterballs in the woods shoot shafts of light through the trees. Someone orders a shawarma, another delves into a perogi. The queue for the special ramen is finally easing off. This is the time of night the little magic people come out to play. Sigur Ros start playing behind a white curtain. Backlit and moving, their shadows grow from pixie to giant and back again, as their music does the same with your insides. We transcend our little space, feel like our soul is being allowed more room to breathe. Small troubles are put in perspective. Themes are on a grand scale. Old themes. Deep themes. We're all giants tonight. When the set finishes, we all stand their swaying in the breeze. Then, slowly, we all filter away, an army of trees on the move.

Fatboy Slim seems a long time ago.

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