Well we’re coming into that crucial week before Electric Picnic 2009 where everyone looks to the sky and prays… go away nasty rain!! Early Reports aren’t looking the maye west, recently we’ve gotten used to the mild nights and indifferent weather for the month, but that seems to be changing for the worst if possible? The mild nights are gone and accuweather, met.ie and bbc.co.uk all seem to have one thing in common… expect rain with highs 0f 15-17 Celcius, wtf! its gonna be a wet one!

Even though we wish the EP organisers could have added a bit more techno to this years stellar line up we’re still overall feeling spoilt for choice in other areas. This year seems to be clash city more than any other year which just shows the choice of options you have. Its pick and choose, with some tough decisions to make! We’re still not sure what to do for the mother of all decisions on the Friday night… Orbital or Luciano’s “Aether”??? Don’t forget Phil Kieran will be playing in the woods straight after Orbital too!! Can’t wait for the forest rave!

Other than organising tent’s, etc, make sure to download the maps for the fest here and also print out the stage times here too. Also check www.2ne1.com for a cool little page that links the Myspace playlists of all the artists at this years festival. We’ve split the EP09 preview into a day by day breakdown so check out Friday’s preview below:

FRIDAY, August 30th 2009

Friday night at EP and the toughest decision before close of madness on the first day with the choice of either Orbital or Aether before the Forest Rave kicks into full swing. The Friday night offering is of top notch quality and caters for the needs of all electronic music lover’s tastes from Acid House to Minimal.

Orbital - Main Stage @ 10.30pm

After their break up in 2004, Orbital’s infamous liveset is back with a vengeance to EP. Phil and Paul Hartnoll were amongst the biggest names in acid house in the 90’s and the duo are widely known to be one of the top live dance acts in the last decade. In fact, one of their last gigs before the 2004 break up was a cracking set at Witness. After trawling through videos of their 2009 livesets on Youtube, we’re getting incredibly excited about seeing Halcyon, Lush, Chime, Satan and Little Fluffy Clouds belted out on the main stage til close on Friday night. These miner light donning lads are not to be missed folks! Check a recent video of them in Poland mixing Halcyon into their own version of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven is a Place on Earth and Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name.

To put you in the frame of mind, download Orbital’s last gig in 2004 at Maida Vale Studios here and a recent 2009 mix and interview on Radio 6 from 3 weeks ago here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Luciano Presents Aether – Crawdaddy Stage @ 11.00pm

What a shame that AEther’s 12 man synchronisation of sound and colour are playing at roughly the same time as Orbital on Friday night. We recently blogged about Aether’s incredible live setup here and are looking forward to catching some this minimal set in between Orbital.

Boy 8 Bit – Little Big Tent @ 6.00pm

Boy8-Bit is a Cornish electronic Act  featured in another one of our recent posts. He’ll be warming up the Dance Tent on Friday with some of his latest tracks 8 bit tracks inspired from producing on 8 bit computers from a young age. Baltic Pine is one to listen out for after Pete Tong recently raved about it on his BBC Radio 1 show.

Boy 8-Bit – Baltic Pine (Radio Edit) Buy on Beatport

Major Lazer - Little Big Tent @ 7.15pm

What a crazy year for Major Lazer. A new album ‘Gun’s Dont Kill People Lazers Do’, an iPhone app, and a crazy tour schedule including headlining the Notting Hill Carnival have all proved to be a crazy success for Diplo and Switch’s Gorillaz styled Reggae Warrior Major Lazer. The Diplo/Switch/One-Armed Comic Raggae Warrior liveset combo is surely going to be one of the energetic highlights Electric Picnic this year and will feature a number of guest MC’s and a tonne of Big-Bootied dancers all under a flouroed comic ghetto-blaster backdrop. If you wanna give your own booty a workout, head to the Little Big Tent at 7.15. We did another blog on Major Lazer here too with videos and tracks from their tour so check it out.

Also download this Major Lazer liveset from BBC’s Essential Mix to get you in the mood.

Major Lazer – Pon De Floor

Fake Blood - Little Big Tent @ 8.15pm

Fake Blood is an alias used by DJ Touche who is also a member of British Electro-Pop group Black Ghosts. Widely known for his Mars and on stage after Major Lazer, expect Fake Blood to bang out an energetic electro set with tracks like ‘Mind Dimension’ in the video below.

Fake Blood – Mars

Diplo - Little Big Tent @ 10.30pm

Diplo is playing twice on Friday as expect and there’s also rumours of Switch playing in the Bacardi Bar so keep your eyes out for that. The Philidelphia based DJ will probably belt out another high-paced electro set similar to his lowlands performance in the liveset below and the video of him at Dour this year.

Diplo Live @ Lowlands Festival 2008

Japanese Popstars DJ Set – Little Big Tent @ 1.00am

Derry ensemble The Japanese Popstars AKA Declan McLaughlin, Gary Curran, and Gareth Donoghue are closing the EP dance stage on Friday night with more of a commercial house twist. The Popstars have had a successful year to date, winning a number of awards for their live performances and playing to a rammed Oxegen Dance tent this year. Their 2008 album ‘We Just Are’ features a tonne of energetic house tracks like ‘Face Melter’ and ‘Sample Whore’.

Hailfairy is glad the boys are playing a DJ set this time around as the guys are pretty talented DJs in their own right. However with so much choice at this time on Friday, its gonna be a tough choice to leave Aether or Orbital to go see the Popstars having already seen them this year. Check them out playing their own edit of Justice Phantom live in February this year.

Æther, the six piece Cadenza collective headed up by Luciano have just been confirmed by Resident Advisor to play Electric Picnic this year! They have them down to play Fri September 4th.  Excerpt from Resident Advisor:

“Billed as, “the synchronisation of sound and colour,” AEther is in fact a twelve person outfit when both audio and visuals are taken into consideration. The basic premise of the show is a live laptop jam session, conducted by Luciano, using a colour coded convention. Five musicians from the Cadenza stable—namely Reboot, Lee Van Dowski, Mirko Loko and Digitaline along with percussionist Omri Hason—play instruments via Ableton Live with selected colours of the light spectrum assigned to each instrument. Luciano will drive the performance through a touch screen interface used to trigger colours as he sees fit, with Todd Graft and Loki from Micro Chunk group pitching with the visual accompaniment. It’s no wonder the project has been four years in the making. “

Very nice, more techno for the Picnic, albeit ambient techno me thinks, Hailfairy is not complaining. It looks fantastic judging by some of these videos we’ve seen of them at Monegros Festival, last week in the deserts of Spain.