The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

At the end of day three of this five-nights and four-day festival, it seems impossible that anyone is going to upstage Roky Erickson & The Explosives. The former Thirteenth Floor Elevator, with his wide grin and crumpled mind (“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” he says like a child between songs), has just created something not seen often at Øya: a genuine old-fashioned mosh pit. He gets four encores. A fifth was screamed for but, as his guitarist says later in a bar, “We didn’t pay our electricity bill.”

Then, the next day, heads sickened by the idea of more beer but bodies demanding a poisonous hoist, Atlanta crunk sisters Yo Majesty hit the smallest of the three stages and… flop their tits out!!! Actually, only one of the two did, but the sheer size of her hooters was blinding. Jaws dropped to the ground as she bounced those marrows around in the early evening sun. Legendary scenes indeed.

Øya is special: a festival that is sincerely organised from the punter’s requirements and those of the environment’s upwards. To go is to be properly respected by the promoters (“How can you underestimate your audience?” it says on the official blurb) and the Norwegian government certifies it 100 per cent green, year after year. All day kids are nipping at your ankles picking up plastic glasses, which they exchange for change; two thirds of rubbish is recycled; and the food is, as far as the organisers can manage, sourced locally. It creates an atmosphere you seldom experience at UK festivals of a similar size (12,000 people a day) - one of intense friendliness and freedom. There is no crime or bullshit to worry about, even though, pint-for-pint, the Norwegians destroy the Brits. Those blue-eyed loons can drink.

And then there’s the line-up - Norwegian heavy, but interspersed with winning selections from abroad. The two big British pulls this year (Winehouse and Lily) both spectacularly flaked, leaving Lady Sov, the Go! Team’s Ninja and the ponies in the Pony Club to rep for the UK girls, and the Primals and Mary Chain to hold it down for the lads. All their performances were solid, but suffered put up against the better Norwegian artists and Yanks. Personal favourites: Hanne Hukkelberg, Battles and The Melvins (pictured) who, with LA duo Big Business incorporated into the band (two drummers!), kicked the shit out of the main stage at 4pm on the final day.

Øya is held in a medieval park on the lip of Oslo by day and in the downtown clubs at night. Nobody camps - they stay at home or in hotels. Imagine then a festival that, each day, is only half done when the headliners (Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Thomas Dybdahl and BigBang) pack up. It gets hairy later and the carnage begins on night one, before the festival proper has even started, when some 120 bands play across the city. It gives you eardrum-exploding sense of how alive the local music scene is. Datarock, Turbonegro, Royksopp, Annie and other Norwegian acts that have made it in the UK were not playing the clubs this year, but others you’ll soon know about (Sissy Wish, The Lionheart Brothers, Ungdomskulen) most certainly were.

You wonder why Øya, in its ninth year, remains something of a secret outside of Norway. Swedes buy tickets, but you rarely meet punters from further afield and never Brits. The insane cost of alcohol (£5 a pint standard) is the only turn-off and that can be partly rectified by going crazy in the duty free shop on the way over (oil-rich Norway remains outside the EU). Øya ought to pull in international ravers like Benicàssim, Roskilde and Exit do. More than anything, it’s an advert for Oslo, and Oslo fucking rules.

More content of interest...

• Leaders (Posted in 013 October 2007 | Comment & Analysis)
• Pulling Focus: Yo Majesty (Posted in 018 October 2008 | Features)