Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival 2008

It wasn't Glastonbury (and certainly wasn't supposing to be) but the heavens opening for the first two days of Pentaport was certainly reminiscent of true summer festival weather. Ian and I got ourselves a couple of day tickets for the final day of the weekend where we were graced with blue skies and sunshine ready to enjoy some live music.

I was very impressed with how they'd dealt with post-downpour mud issues, rather rendering all the wellie sellers redundant. The ground actually seemed to be chiefly sand which is always going to be a lot easier to walk on than wet grass, but crates were laid out to step across the particularly muddy areas making the walk from one stage to the other a lot less arduous.

Despite being a small festival, there was a decent amount of advertising going on with various stalls and activities set up. We especially enjoyed the Guitar Hero at the Microsoft stand before we were told to move on due to the queue forming behind us. They had a bit of ingenious cash system set up where you charge the chip on your wrist band, but since you'd still need to carry cash on your person it was a little irritating to have to trudge across the field for a top up when you needed more beer.

It seemed as though all the foreign acts had been called in from the UK with the likes of Travis, Kasabian and The Go! Team playing. I heard that The Vines were pretty patronising towards the Korean stage crew, but otherwise it was good to see the British rock scene being represented across the globe. I was pretty impressed to see the Korean crowds rocking out to the likes of Staines massive Hard Fi, but I guessed here would be one of the few places you'd find people moshing to Feeder.

There were also several Korean bands of varying genres. Oh! Brothers with their rock 'n' roll spin impressed us enough to buy their CD from the cheap Hot Tracks stall, but our favourites were definitely this Korean reggae band. They weren't playing on either of the main stages so weren't well advertised, but I have later found out these Asian Rastas to be called 우주히피 (Space Hippies?). Video to follow.

There wasn't anyone who I was particularly dying to see - apparently they had Muse in last year which would have excited me more - but the sunshine and chilled atmosphere made it a great venue for a few drinks and a few live bands.