Walked around the grounds this morning before the music started. The festival has definitely downsized since I was last here in 2019. The World Food Court is essentially gone. Field of Heaven only had six vendors, whereas five years ago there were more than a dozen. I was told that a Singapore company had bought up most of the property attached to the ski resort from Seibu, including the Prince Hotel. I can attest that the prices are pretty ridiculous at the hotel for the same old shitty rooms, but I wonder if they’re charging vendors more, too. That might explain the relative lack of retail options, but, then again, the festival has been slowly losing dedicated fans, so maybe the vendors aren’t convinced they can make as much money as they used to. 

Friday is always the least attended day of the fest, for obvious reasons. I’m not sure how the SZA cancellation at the end of May affected things, but I’ve seen a lot of Killer t-shirts today, so maybe they were able to get a few more people when they came on board. Still, when the fest opened on the Green Stage at 11 there was hardly anybody in front of it. The silver lining was that the usual insufferable rap that the two comics lay on the audience about what not to do at the festival (“Don’t feed the wild animals” was a new one, though) was briefer than normal. The weather forecast in the morning said it would start raining at 11 and continue through the afternoon, but by 3:30 there was not a drop; in fact, it’s been pretty hot, especially when the sun breaks through the clouds. The one nice thing about being in building 6 of the Prince is that it’s the closest to the festival grounds, so I’m able to duck back in for a quick shower, which makes all the difference, believe me. 

So far I haven’t heard anything that’s knocked my socks off, which is par for Fridays. Three of the Japanese acts I saw, indigo la End, Shintokyo, and Ruka (or Rushika? Not sure how she reads that kanji) trade in what an old college pal of mine derisively calls “limp dick jazz,” and though he used it to describe what by the 90s was called “yacht rock,” in this case it’s lite jazz with a bit of funk or, in the case of Ru(shi)ka, a kind of quiet, exotic Joni Mitchell vibe. Yellow Days, a British bloke with a serious hard-on for reverb, didn’t make much of an impression on the early afternoon crowd at the Red Marquee, probably because, try as he might, he could never get a groove going. I was curious about the Chicago duo Friko because I wanted to see how two people could make as much of a racket as they do on their debut album, and, of course, they aren’t a duo but a quartet. Their super dramatic distorto-guitar rock really connected with the people in the closed off section in front of the Green Stage, but most everyone else in the vicinity were sitting on their camp chairs checking their phones. I probably would have thought they were good if I had gotten up the energy to move closer to the stage. (Side note, the minute the set ended, Smash sent out a press release announcing the group’s tour of Japan in November.) The highlight of the first half for me was Erika De Casier, the Danish R&B artist whose soft-spoken approach is like catnip to a Japanese audience who probably didn’t know anything about her beforehand. Like Sade, she’s cool but intense with a melody, and her hip-hop bona fides are convincing. Moreover, her visuals are a crack-up. In one of her songs she’s putting it to her lover in no uncertain terms and behind her there was this collection of brothers refuting her testimony. Shit, girl, y’all are cold!