Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic There is much talk these days on social media about “canon events”: the key life moments that combine to create your personal superhero identity. You might not have been bitten by a radioactive spider, but your highlight reel will still contain a succession of unforgettable firsts: kiss, alcoholic drink, exam, prom, music festival.Reading Festival doesn’t have the same life-long must-go status as Glastonbury, but it is still the canon music event for many British 16-year-olds, taking place as it does in the same week that GCSE exam results are announced. Sporting football shirts and bikini tops, they flock in herds towards rap and pop stars, drum and bass DJs and anyone with a song that’s big on TikTok.If you’re still attending well beyond your teens, refusing to graduate to a festival with a literary tent and paddleboard yoga, you may feel like a cobwebby Captain Tom here. But there’s a warm glow from witnessing the first times of so many others, and returning to the scene of your festival virginity can pack a powerful punch.On Saturday, 31-year-old dance music producer Fred Again, who said that Reading was his first festival aged 16, topped the bill. He began his set by pecking furiously at a sample pad perched on a raised platform in the crowd, facing the main-stage screens as though watching himself achieving his teenage dreams.His excitement was infectious. Filmed by static cameras in sweaty close-up, he disproved the assumption that there isn’t much that’s genuinely “live” about electronic music performance by prodding buttons constantly, playing piano and singing. Sampled vocals from others, such as Obongjayar’s beautiful contribution to “Adore U”, were joined by grainy video loops showing them singing, rapping or speaking — a lo-fi approach that made big, energetic songs feel personal. His sound maintains house music’s hedonism, but the words have an unusual vulnerability that helped make him the breakthrough electronic artist of the pandemic era. “I’ve been lost for a while, but I’m really trying,” he repeated through “Angie (I’ve Been Lost)” as thousands of phone lights sparkled.The connection he cultivated was in stark contrast to Lana Del Rey, who performed before him but, in a display of ego-stroking semantics, was billed as “first headliner”. The poised torch singer’s slow-poured balladry is simply a bad fit for any outdoor festival, with their half-interested chatterers and distracting rival stages. She and her surroundings looked spectacular — Hollywood glamour beneath romantic architectural ruins — but her sonic subtleties were all but obliterated by the thunking dance music of Sonny Fodera at the opposite end of the field.She didn’t help herself either. Reading’s organisers have taken responsibility for Del Rey sitting on stage in confused silence, watching the fireworks meant for her last song. “We accidentally cut Lana Del Rey’s incredible set short by five minutes,” they confessed on Instagram. But if she hadn’t come on 20 minutes late, perhaps an ending repeating her tardy shambles at last year’s Glastonbury could have been avoided. Her set lists from other festivals suggest she left out at least two songs.Earlier in the day, this year’s most hyped band, The Last Dinner Party, were just as theatrical and a lot more fun, with singer Abigail Morris dancing, skipping and rolling around with abandon. Overwrought originals such as “Sinner” and “Nothing Matters” charmed, and the band embraced their obvious influences by diving with both feet into a cover of Sparks’ “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us”.Noise pollution was an issue, however. The new Chevron Stage on the far side of the site could have distracted occupants of the International Space Station. With a focus on electronic performers, and plenty of drum and bass, which is enjoying a huge revival, it featured a “floating video canopy” — a vast fishing net of LED lights that made it look as if people were dancing beneath sheet lightning. Yorkshire jungle revivalist Nia Archives used the set-up to vibrant effect, singing sweetly over her racing, tumbling beats while the visuals dazzled.The Prodigy’s use of these innovative surroundings was less giant Christmas tree, more terrifying apocalypse. With a fearsome electronic sound, honed over decades, this in effect made them the loudest rock band of the weekend. They paid tribute to their firestarting figurehead Keith Flint, who died in 2019, by beaming out his devil-horned silhouette in mean green lasers.Surprisingly given this festival’s grizzled history, there wasn’t much competition for this title of loudest rockers. A lot of the guitar-based music among the newer bands, particularly impressive in the dynamic indie rock of Wunderhorse and the arena-ready anthems of Good Neighbours, already sounded highly polished. Ireland’s Fontaines DC were more daring sonically, but their glowering intensity and silence between songs was an awkward fit for a sunny afternoon.Today’s attendees have different priorities. Six-time Brit Award winner Raye is the kind of pure pop act who, in a different era, would have performed at V — the defunct, mainstream-friendly music festival — and been bottled off if she had dared to show up at Reading. Instead she drew Saturday’s biggest daylight crowd, as well as its biggest crowd on stage, an army of gospel singers, string and horn players that confirmed her status as an extremely big deal. Like Adele before her, she combined a diva’s gown with an earthy personality. Her powerful performance of “Ice Cream Man”, a song about sexual abuse, surely won over any remaining doubters.That left Liam Gallagher to close proceedings with an anticlimax, but only because rumourmongers had coaxed each other into expecting a truly historic moment. Playing the songs of Oasis’s debut album, Definitely Maybe, to mark its 30th anniversary, would he bring out estranged brother Noel and finally announce a long-anticipated reunion? Not quite, but the screens displaying the date August 27, inside the Oasis logo, suggested that an announcement was imminent. If the Gallaghers manage to keep the peace, next summer’s delivery of these classic songs will be met with significantly more excitement.readingfestival.com
