Sunday 17/06/07 O2 Wireless 2007 Day Three @ Harewood House, Leeds

Well, it’s the third day of the O2 Wireless festival, and we get there just in time to see… **** it. Shall we just fast forward to Daft Punk?

Woah there, boy. Gigwise been looking forward to that moment for months now – a few more hours won’t hurt. In fact, dear reader, it should only be a few minutes in your case. There’s even a scroll bar on the right of the screen if you really can’t be arsed reading about Simian Mobile Disco and co. But that would be a mistake only marginally more forgivable than missing out on this, possibly the freshest and most exciting line-up of any of the major festivals in the UK this year.

As with any festival, it’s a slowish start to the day. The sun can’t quite decide whether or not it wants to stay out, while the steadily growing crowd seem keener on finding a nice spot or giving old HH itself the once-over than listening too intently to Metromony’s clanging rave thrills or Mutemath’s droning neo-krautrock.

The apathy begins to shift with the ever-welcome appearance of Datarock. There’s a fair bit of cheese involved with this gang, but a little personality seems to be exactly what’s needed to get things kicking off in front of the main stage. ‘Nightflight to Uranus’ may only be the match of Goldie Lookin’ Chain when it comes to humour, but its clash of rock and dance is made for the moment and pretty soon the crowd are beginning to get into it. The sun finally sees sense and joins the party, and so do the stars, with Klaxons, CSS and Mark Ronson all stood stage left watching the red-tracksuited funk machine hitting full flow. ‘Fa Fa Fa’ - the Talking Heads song that Talking Heads never wrote (though their lawyers may see it differently) - follows and, for a few minutes, everything in the world seems just about spot on.

Following Datarock on to the main stage are New Young Pony Club, a band who stand probably more on the verge of a Klaxons-style ‘breakthrough’ than any other band today. Singer Tahita Bulmer wastes no time getting the crowd on her side with a bit of local knowledge, before launching into the sublime ‘Get Dancey.’ Unfortunately, we only catch two more songs before heading to the other end of the field to catch Digitalism.

Other than Daft Punk and LCD Soundsystem, the German duo are the act that have got Gigwise’s juices flowing the most ahead of the festival and, stepping into the tent, it’s clear that we’re not alone in this. Jens Moelle and Ismael Tuefekci stand behind a modest set-up, with Jens looking like a cross between Nick Heyward and a young Lee Mavers as he yelps from beneath his blonde mop. Their unassuming appearance does not begin to hint at the monstrous sound they create, with only single ‘Pogo’ sounding subdued alongside the juggernauts that are ‘Jupiter Room’ and ‘Moonlight.’ They mix up ‘Blue Monday’ and ‘Pump up the Jam’ before bleeding an excerpt from tonight’s headliners’ ‘Da Funk’ into their own Bangalter-esque ‘The Pulse’. Today as on record, Digitalism are pretty much an indie-dance dream, like Tom Vek produced by Soulwax. Hugeness awaits.

We emerge from the dome of sweatiness to the blinding sunshine and can see from here Mark Ronson and his band rocking the main stage etc, etc, etc. We stroll a bit closer but not that much closer, for as their admittedly-pretty funky version of Radiohead’s ‘Just’ draws to a close, the singer from Phantom Planet begins a depressingly faithful version of his band’s OC theme ‘California’. We cringe, but are we being too harsh? Mark seems like a nice fella and he obviously seems to have the Midas touch for producing pop with a mildly urban flavour for gobby English girls. A lot of people lap up his “really cool” reworkings of indie hits too. Maybe it’s just Gigwise that thinks they’re about as cool as the dripping tent from which we’ve just crawled.