July 6 at Roskilde Festival, Orange
Just two years after their last appearance here, Chase & Status visited Roskilde Festival again last night. But this time they had more room for their drum and bass/dubstep music as they had the honour of playing at Orange Stage.
In 2011, they had played to Cosmopol, which fits approximately 6,000 people but managed on that evening to host twice that amount. The tent was so packed that the concert was stopped for ten minutes to create order out of the crowd, so it was probably a good call to move the British duo a larger stage.
Even at 2am, the area in front of Orange was packed with sweaty, drunk, excited and enthusiastic festival guests. The sky was lit by lasers and glowsticks and the ground was shaking from the jumping crowd.
Saul Milton (Chase), Will Kennard (Status) and Ronnie Lee, better known as MC Rage, cut to the chase and started with the huge hit ‘No Problem’ from their 2011 album No More Idols. Continuing in the party mode they played ‘Eastern Jam’ of their debut album More Than Alot from 2008, ‘Hypest Hype’ and ‘Give It Away’.
While Chase and Status were DJing on their Macs in the background, MC Rage was raving with the fans in tight jeans and with an infectious energy that made the front pit area almost as sweaty and insane as their 2011 concert at the much smaller stage.
It seemed that the group was happy to be back at the festival as MC Rage barely had time to sing in between yelling “ROSKILDE!!!!” every five minutes.
It was a bit unfortunate that they started with all their great party songs and then went for the more quite ‘To Heavens Door’. A party is better off starting slowly and building up to a climax, but Chase & Status rushed into it and did not have much to offer after the first half of the concert.
The show was not much different from that of 2011, but as they have not released any new albums since then either, so it was probably never going to be a show with many surprises. They are currently working on their third album, so when that is out – expected this year – the raving DJ duo will hopefully arise with renewed energy and freshness. But for now there is not much to choose from, so the dedicated Chase & Status fans will have to bear with them and keep attending the same old party, maybe even back at Roskilde. It would not come as a surprise as they have a strong contingent of fans amongst the festival-goers, who were not too tired in 2011 or last night to stay up until 3:30am, jumping, singing, screaming and partying with the Brits.
