2005-07-12 - 11:24 a.m.

My day out in Malmo, by Pablo aged noneofyourbusiness and ninety-nine one hundredths.

So as I was going to say before I was rudely interrupted by international terrorism, me and Bruce headed to Malmo in Sweden for Accelerator � the music festival that the bombs cant spoil because obviously they hadn�t happened yet.

We got a cab at 4.30 in the morning to get to our stupidly cheap RyanAir flights, an airline which is the aviation equivalent of getting a cab at 4.30 in the morning no matter what time you fly. It just feels wrong to be on there, but my plight was not helped by coming off NO hours sleep, which is my least favourite amount of sleep a night ever if it doesn�t involve anything more exciting than staring at the ceiling.

You know you�re in Sweden almost immediately because even Malmo airport looks like it�s been produced from an IKEA flatpack as early as that morning, and when the immigration officials seem kind and well-adjusted, well, you know something�s going on.

After a disco nap and ordering fast food from people way more fluent in English than us, we hit the festival site, which was the hastily-commandeered People�s Park, a kind of mini amusement park with rickety rides handily fenced off though no matter how drunk you got, there was no way you would think going on any of them was a good idea.

We eased in watching French ethereal noise-merchant Colleen, then headed for a cheeky lunchtime beverage, just to whet our festival whistles. Sweden has insanely strict drinking laws, in that all drinking had to be done in some weird booze-pen in the middle of the site � no wandering round spilling lager whilst dancing to bad indie music for them. Which is no bad thing, but it meant a drinking plan had to be formulated that would still see us not miss anything. Luckily, plans like that are what we�re good at.

Next up were Magnolia Electric Company, thoroughly good eggs who only verged on all-out country a couple of times, but staved off any wayward turns via the power of rock.

We dived into the small indoors building early to get a good spot for Cocorosie, who helpfully incorporated their soundcheck into the first 20 minutes of their slot. The set itself was quite impressive, though. If you�ve never heard them, they sound a bit like operatic child demons making music with a Speak and Spell in the attic of the Bates Motel, but in a good way. Seeing a potentially shambolic performance come good was a highlight, though.

We must have done something else before Smog, perhaps a few beers because I remember coming outside for them, but also being already drunk enough to harp on about how much they sound like Lambchop for quite some time, much to the general annoyance of all who heard me (Bruce).

We ducked out early again to get front row for Joanna Newsome in the medium sized tent. Again, for the uninitiated, which included me at that point, she is a singer-songwriter with a harp, and sounds like Kate Bush on helium, wrestling with Bjork whilst she reads out random paragraphs from James Joyce, again, in a much better way than you might imagine.

Outside again into the beer-camp to listen to the Fannies. I like most of TFC�s music well enough, but when they play �Everything Flows� as a closer, well, it�s little bit of guitary heaven, for me, at least.

We eschewed whoever else was on to drink more beer and watch the soundcheck for Sonic Youth, an enterprise which has to be one of the biggest wastes of time in music. When they finally come on, you wonder why they even bother tuning up.

Actually, they played really well, but it seemed to be some of the more obscure tracks from their 569-album back catalogue, so we paid our respects and headed to the aftershow Indie Disco, where beautiful models dished out disgusting shots (now there�s a real dilemma) and no good music was played and lots of random conversation was had.

The most surreal for me was the forty minutes I stood listening to some Swede stuck in the Shoegazing Era, rambling on about how good the Drop Nineteens used to be, and Ride. Not that they weren�t � it just seems a weirdly specific era to be stuck in. Like loving the third week in June, 1993 or something.

The next day we mostly had hangovers, hotdogs and concerns about how serene and happy just about everyone in Sweden seemed. Even the Goths looked smilingly content. Which is all very well, but you kind of grow attached to the grime, run down services and universal misery of London, you know? And as we rolled into Liverpool Street Station several minutes late around midnight on the Wednesday, though it had been a great festival, it was good to be back - for at least nine hours, anyway.