Field Day & Cross the Tracks: 5 acts to check out from London's music festivals
From techno to jazz and back again
Brockwell Live’s series of festivals kicked off this weekend, with Field Day on Saturday 23rd May and Cross the Tracks the day after.
While the £7.85 pints of Madri and food stalls stay the same, this festival series proves just how much the event itself — not the venue — determines what sort of a time you’ll have. And the vibe is set to shift once more this weekend, when the two-day Mighty Hoopla takes over Brockwell Park.
Field Day brought us non-stop dance and electronic music across seven stages. The zero minute gap between most acts both kept up the energy and reinforced that a lot of these acts don’t really have a whole lot to do once the mix starts.
Cross the Tracks is a totally different affair. It was significantly busier than Field Day and — particularly in the smaller tent stages — you might be left waiting ahead of a set as the engineers fiddle about with the sound levels.
But where else do you get to hear War play their 1975 hit Why Can’t We Be Friends?, and then witness a show-stealing set from Little Simz just a few hours later?
While Little Simz put on the most attention-commanding set of the entire weekend, we have a few suggestions for you to check out from elsewhere in the Field Day and Cross the Tracks line-ups.
Moses Yoofee Trio
Cross the Tracks is called a soul, funk and jazz festival. But it can seem like you have to hunt down the latter, but we stumbled upon some jazz with the Moses Yoofee Trio, who draw on a fistful of genres and filter it through the skills of three exceptional players. Moses Yoofee is the group’s keyboard player/pianist. But in a live context it’s next to impossible not to have your eyes and ears drawn by drummer Noah Fürbringer, whose chops and musicality are out of this world.
Floating Points
Were Floating Points (aka Samuel Shepherd) the right fit for a Field Day headliner? Topping off a day of partying with this more contemplative and cerebral music may have left a good chunk of the crowd seeking out Andy C’s jungle set elsewhere. But this was easily one of the most interesting acts at Field Day and that rarest of things — a live electronic dance music set. Hypnotic and mesmerising stuff, even as it did highlight the limitations of playing this style of music live.
Obongjayar
On his albums, Obongjayar sings in subtle and sensitive style, and it doesn’t quite prepare you for the kind of force of nature this British-Nigerian singer is live. He leaps around the stage with endless swagger and glistening six pack — granted, it was a record-breaking heat wave weekend — bringing a party energy that is not immediately evident on his studio recordings.
Patrick Mason
An antidote to mid-afternoon festival flagging. Patrick Mason is a DJ from Berlin who plays techno and house, maintaining high energy throughout the set. And that’s matched with his own high-energy performance. You can have just as good a time watching his dance moves behind the faders as you can letting loose in the crowd.
Arno Sacco
One of the neatest parts of Cross the Tracks is the series of The Blues Project: Senses Block Party slots. These give room for up and coming singers and rappers to play to a larger audience than they’re accustomed to, with the backing of a top-tier “house” band. One stand-out of these sessions at Cross the Tracks 2026 was Arno Sacco. He has pipes for days, reminding you of the thrill of seeing real vocal talent playing live, free of miming and autotune.
