THAT’S how you do a festival. Electric Picnic ’08 was one of the most unique festivals we’ve ever been to. So much more photos and reviews to come but while we scrape our brains off the Stradbally ground please enjoy some wonderful photos by James Goulden and Eddie Ryan.

One day there’s State…, kicking along in the whole of our health and next thing, there’s the sniff of a wake, a crowd start assembling – all friends of the corpse – wondering about our welfare. Well, we are please to say that rumours of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. Sorry if your

Take eight random B-movies, pick one character from each, put them on stage with brass, and mixers and what not, call them Hercules & Love Affair and let them play some fresh disco/pop/house to a sweaty little Copenhagen room and sweet Jesus you have a party. The collective Danes here are jigglng about at just the sight of them walk on stage which is a good start for a band who have long expressed a desire to simply get people dancing.

Mercury Rev / Sigur Rós
Beatday 08 Festival, Copenhagen.
9/10 August -08
You know that Mercury Rev’s front man, Jonathan Donahue, has lost none of his graceful magnetism after their three-year sojourn when Ms. State turns to us after two minutes and declares: ‘well I’d ride him’. After 2005′s very dissappointing The Secret Migration… one

YEASAYER ARE awesome. Put them in a small tent after midnight and you have proper party full of people whooping and hollering that but playing at teatime on the second grey-ish day at Oxegen doesn’t show them in the best light.

State coverage of Oxegen ’08 continues with a look at Main stage performances from Editors, Interpol and Kings of Leon. See sidebar for more reviews.

Ahead of Friday night’s much anticipated set at Oxegen, State managed to get a ticket for the first date of the tour in Ã…rhus, Denmark along with roughly 800 others. Here’s how it went down.

It is with considerable difficulty at this stage that we have to drag ourselves out of bed and get on-site on the fourth warm and sunny day of this festival. Surviving solely on gourmet burgers and beer for the last three days has us craving a nice salad, a cup of tea and a lie down, but once more into the breach for you, dear State.ie reader.

Well we’re still alive, despite a little liver damage, and the good ol’ sun keeps shining down on us. Just getting to site in time for Jose Gonzalez’ rather early slot, we encounter – well, everyone. Hordes are off to see the Swede play in Odeon, one of the smaller tents.

How good is life when on a Friday afternoon with a cold beer in hand you can walk through a sunkissed field and enter a packed tent to hear the leader of a Band Of Horses, announce “This is the greatest day of my life. Thanks for being here to share it” ?

Mother Nature is firm, but she is also fair. After last year spent pissing all over Roskilde’s festival – relentlessly – she makes amends by bathing us in a cloudless sky and temperatures in the high 20s. Wellies have been replaced by roman sandal-type footwear and rain jackets have been replaced by, well, golden Scandinavian skin everywhere you look. Spirits are high and with good cause.

Kylie is a legend. Of course she is ‘A’ legend but she gives an impression of such damn soundness that you want to bring her over for tea, introduce her to your girlfriend and all your buddies and then play Singstar doing shots. She’d have to sing to her own songs and it’d be the most fun night you ever had it. Ahem, but back to the Forum in Copenhagen.

Not an easily thrown out phrase but a fact, it IS the hottest day of the year so far in Copenhagen and the high 20’s are full of girls glistening on bikes and topless boys out jogging. The city is all parklife, lakes and white wine outside cafés.

Everything becomes subjective at a certain point. From whether ‘real’ is real right through the gamut to “is there too little dry ice on the stage?” and State ran through a lot of these thoughts last night perched up in the pit.