festival info

'curiosa' touring festival, put together by the cure

stage 1 - the cure / interpol / the rapture / mogwai
stage 2 - muse / thursday / auf der maur / the cooper temple clause

randall's island sports foundation (capacity 26,283)

reviews/comments

from invisiblegun:

mogwai were tremendous, and the crowd seemed really into them. however, i barely made it in time to see them and i was 15 minutes early. they really go on right away. i think that the bands on the main stage (and maybe even the second stage) should change orders each night to give them each different exposure. of course the cure can still go last, but the other bands should change it up. each band would have more and more of a crowd, but not due to more interest but rather because more people were there at that point. they let people in exceedingly slow! at least in the NY they did. oh well, thats my thoughts. i think if they switched it up mogwai could blow away even a larger audience who would not be prepared for them.

from janiac:

with thanks to iain & stuart without whom i would not have got to see an awesome show!

i'm writing this while still struggling against jetlag and i hope you feel sorry for me (but you don't have to!) ok, well iain and i took the subway to randall's island park, where the curiosa festival was, discovering all the way that this kind of event is well organised in ny. a special bus service had been put on for festival goers and there were marshalls at the subway station who made certain that everyone got to the right place. we were early, cos mogwai were opening on the main stage (of two) and we wanted to be near the front. anyway, this was the first time i'd seen mogwai play and i had no real preconceptions, other than hearing a couple of tracks earlier than day via iain's walkman. pretty powerful stuff!

wow! powerful stuff indeed four tracks only in their half hour set but definitely the most amazing opening set i've ever heard. unfortunately, perhaps, since this was the opening set, most of the audience hadn't yet arrived (and thus missed a treat). they could easily have played much later in the show and still blown everyone except muse and the cure out of the water (maybe even them too with a longer set).

the sound quality was easily the best of the evening on either stage and i like their no-frills, get-down-to-the-business of playing-music-cos-that's-what-we're-all-here-for-approach. i'll definitely go and see them play their own show and i'll look forward to that with much excitement too. they seemed to be the talking point of many other curiosa-goers too. i heard people on the home-going bus and subway asking each other enthusiastically 'did you see mogwai play?'

from mtv.com:

glaswegian rockers mogwai opened the main stage with walls of thick, droning noise and feedback, which made for a disorienting introduction to what amounted to a laid-back day that offered something for everyone.

from nytimes.com:

mogwai, from scotland, played radiant introspective rock instrumentals that gradually and inexorably moved between shimmer and stomp, presaging the crescendos of the cure's own set.

from cmj.com:

mogwai’s slow-building epics borrowing some thunder from the disintegration days

photos

click on the image for larger version.

photos by iain eglinton.

click on the the link for 20 second video clip of

mogwai fear satan at randall's island

photos by nick.