Glastonbury, the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world, is returning to this weekend from June 22-26 with headliners like U2, Morrissey, Paul Simon and Coldplay, blah blah blah. To preview, the people at RCRD LBL have together a list of some of the lesser-known yet stellar artists on the bill. Listen below or download away for the official RCRD LBL Glastonbury 2011 playlist, featuring free tracks from: Caribou, Fleet Foxes, Wu-Tang Clan, Battles, Foster The People, Cold War Kids, Nicolas Jaar, Yuck, Fool’s Gold and many more.
In other Glasto news. The Wellcome Trust is bringing its Dirt season of events to Glastonbury this year with a Decontamination Unit inside Shangri-La, the festival’s after-hours pleasure city. The Trust has commissioned Shangri La and Guerilla Science to create the Unit, which will be cleansing revellers physically and psychologically during the festival. The Unit will be open each evening and in afternoons over the weekend.
Shangri-La this year will be stricken by an outbreak of a virus that can be spread via touch, contaminating all who come into contact with it. Alleys will be covered in invisible UV paint, creating a visual means to “infect” thousands of people, and creating two groups: the contaminated and the clean. The only way to achieve purity, cleanliness and salvation is through the Decontamination Unit.
At the entrance, guests will be surrounded by footage of viral outbreaks before they encounter a microbial zoo: a menagerie of the flora and fauna of the human body. Two Guerilla Scientists will be on hand, clad in biohazard respirator protective suits, and a team of microbiologists will assess the contaminated revellers and determine if they require physical or moral decontamination:
The first route leads to counselling with a team of psychiatrists, led by Dr Mark Salter of Homerton Hospital in Hackney. Through led introspection and psychological priming, guests will be prepared to enter the Shame Drain, where they will be able to purge themselves of dirty secrets to a voice recorder positioned inside a black box.
Those not selected for psychiatric cleansing will be dressed in a biohazard suit and sent for physical purification, After making their way through the cleansing chambers, the purified will exit through The Skywalk onto the pristine second level of Shangri-La, having escaped the world of filth, and embarking into a brave, clean new world.
“This year I wanted to bring some scientific content to Shangri La – give the narrative a bit more meat,” says Debs Armstrong, creative director of Shangri-La. “There are so many interactive artistic installations that are very creative, but to bring actual science into the fold is altogether different, and rarely done.”
The Decontamination Unit is sponsored by the Wellcome Trust as part of the Dirt Season of events, a celebration and exploration of all things filthy from Glasgow to the West Country.
