The world famous Lollapalooza began life as a modest farewell tour for Jane’s Addiction frontman, Perry Farrel. The band had split-up at the time, stating differences in lifestyle, but reformed multiple times in the future. What Farrel had begun, without realising, was a long-standing legacy that revived itself in the form of the two day festival repeatedly, up until 1999. In 2006, it was officially revived permanently in Chicago before branching out internationally.

Since 2004, the festival has held its two day European extravaganza in Berlin. Originally, in order to maintain Farrel’s urban vibe, it was held in the historical airport ground of Berlin-Tempelhof. However, 2016 saw it hosted in Treptower Park for the first time. With much controversy surrounding the movement of the festival, the weekend was heaped with expectation.

Farrell pitched Lollapalooza back in 1991 as an “alternative nation” festival that relied heavily on the popularity of grunge acts in the 90s. Today, unfortunately, the festival line up is far from the grunge or alternative orientation it once had. With 5 stages, genres range from mainstream dance to hard-core punk. With a range so massive, I was at least interested to see what kind of crowd I would be sharing the park with over the weekend.

I arrived early with the expectation that I would be queuing in the 31 degree heat for hours, but, to my surprise, there were few crowds surrounding the festival. After a quick bag check, I was thrust into a field with not one, but two main stages practically facing each other, in a space much smaller than the main stage arenas at popular English festivals such as Reading and Leeds. This was decidedly bizarre, which I assumed was a recipe for disaster caused by bad planning.

The weekend kicked off with Junge Junge on the alternative stage. The German-born duo create heavy-going electronic music, which made their 11am slot a little confusing and left me wondering whether they had assumed they would be playing an 11pm slot. Despite the questionable timing, the pair coupled an energetic live set intertwined with samples from popular tracks such as London Grammar’s 'Hey Now' with bright, animated visuals. I am sure if I had been watching them in the dark it would have only amplified the already vibrant experience.

Next up was Lindsey Stirling gracing the main stage early on Saturday, a must-see amongst the rest of the acts over the weekend, due to her reputation for a mesmerising live performance. The rumours were true, and she pranced across the stage, aggressively playing her violin while gracefully combining contemporary dance and ballet into her performance. Even if you are not a fan of classical or instrumental music, it is worth checking her out purely for the phenomenal skill that is apparent in her shows.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon on Saturday I switched between Catfish and the Bottlemen and Jess Glynne. It was at this point that the reason for the intriguing setup of the main stages became apparent. The festival had ingeniously set the stage times so that when one act finished on the first main stage, another started immediately on the second. This made catching the biggest acts of the festival extremely easy, requiring little movement, and removed the problem of setting up large acts that would clearly eat up time in the short two day festival.

Catfish and the Bottlemen were a band that I have been apprehensive about for quite a while, mainly because of their somewhat baseless lyrics and questionable popularity with mainstream music magazines. I had never felt as though their popularity as a band reflected their technical ability, however I was most impressed with their set. Their quick climb to fame has not affected the band's mind-set at all, and they teased the crowd with an incredible live performance that they noticeably enjoyed themselves.

The let-down of the Saturday, and in fact the entire weekend, was Kaiser Chiefs. First of all, they were booked onto a stage that was ridiculously too small with regards to their long standing popularity as an indie band, and the crowd spilled way out of the arena, making it difficult to even hear them play. However, I ended up feeling relieved that I couldn't see or hear them. The classic indie band have clearly lost touch with their passion for music and their fans, and performed a below average and dull set, filled with obnoxious crowd speak which served only as a platform for them to shamelessly self-promote their new album so (and I quote) they could “buy a new Porsche”. It is more than clear that frontman, Ricky Wilson’s rise into the mainstream media world and his time as host on bog-standard reality TV shows has lead him to completely lose touch with reality and/or any shred of human decency he possessed before. I wouldn’t consider myself a fan, but even I felt exploited and under-appreciated by his egotistical and empty chitchat and lack of respect for the large crowd that had come to see him perform.

Of course, Kings of Leon’s electric headline set made the day. Their hickory-smoked grandeur pulsated through the crowd as they wove sleazy riffs from their well-known classics with newer tracks. The set was all-round great, as expected from Kings of Leon, and it was easy to tell that the boys are well rehearsed with festival sets as they enter their 16th year as a group.

Sunday offered a different kind of line-up, and I kicked off the day with Norwegian born Aurora. Aurora couples her impressive vocal range with dreamy, dark folk-pop. Although I had not previously listened to her music, her ethereal hooks and mesmerising stage performance allowed her songs to tell their own stories, and made for an entertaining start to the day.

I spent the afternoon stage-hopping, before finally settling for James Blake’s relatively early set on the main stage. The crowd piled in to see the British phenomenon perform, and as he entered the stage thousands crooned at his opening chords to ‘Limit to your Love’. James Blake’s impressionistic melancholy is hard to resist, and this was reflected in the silence of the audience throughout his performance. His foggy, tonal vocals captivated Treptower Park for the entire hour, and as he cooed into his closing song, ‘The Wilhelm Scream’, Blake approached the sublime in a rush of catharsis.

It would be foolish to suggest that the highlight of the weekend was anything other than Radiohead. It felt as though almost the entire festival had travelled to Treptower Park to see them, but any expectation was almost non-existent. The pure privilege of getting to see the legendary band perform meant that Thom Yorke could have entered the stage, performed completely out of key for 30 minutes, and would still wow the crowd. The set was nothing surprising, but triumphant, classic, and mesmerising all the same. The band performed for almost three hours. It was a pleasure to hear them perform their singles from A Moon Shaped Pool, including hit ‘Burn the Witch’. The accessible song structures brought the band full circle and back to their earlier rockier creations, without completely removing the experimentation that has made them so pivotal to the development of alternative music in the last decade.

All in all, Lollapalooza was a great success. It was seamlessly organised, and despite my initial apprehension about the range of genres in the apparently “alternative” line-up, I was content with the experience. The festival catered to wide range of audiences, which made it an accessible for all ages and walks of life. This opened the experience to a crowd of all round music-lovers and culminated in a comfortable atmosphere and fantastic weekend.

Sian Blewitt