This year’s Reading & Leeds saw the first opening of the Chevron Stage – a brand new addition to the music extravaganza. See it in action below.
The Chevron features the world’s first outdoor floating LED video sky roof and was purpose-built for dance music, pop and hip hop acts. This year the stage will feature headliners The Prodigy, Sonny Fodera and Skrillex, and other acts on stage include Nia Archives, Denzel Curry, Barry Can’t Swim and Kenny Beats. The stage will also see the return of the biggest Silent Disco to R&L.
The 40,000-capacity open-air venue’s video roof is made up of hundreds of thousands of programmable LED lights that “transform the sky into a dazzling, reactive display” and is touted as “an engineering feat as it appears as if the LEDs are floating in the air.”
Voodoo. @das_Wunderkind @OfficialRandL pic.twitter.com/WSBNSSbQ3N
— Andrew Trendell (@AndrewTrendell) 23 August 2024
Videos of The Prodigy’s performance at the Chevron last night (August 23) showed eclectic video projections and images displayed on the LED canopy during the electronic dance band’s set.
In a four-star review of The Prodigy’s performance NME wrote about the stage, sharing: “Reading & Leeds’ new Chevron dance stage, packed with a canopy that flickers, flickers and pulses with flashing lights and even the band’s insidious insect logo, is the perfect platform for their return to a festival that, according to Howlett, NMEalways felt like home. The set, on the other hand, resembles the basement of a steampunk serial killer from David Fincher’s nightmares: aesthetically grey and rusty, with analogue numbers counting down and menacing, oversized figures lurking in the background.”
In conversation with NMEMelvin Benn, Festival Director of Reading & Leeds, described the new stage as “testament to Reading & Leeds’ continued commitment to innovation and industry leadership”.
“I also really wanted to have a stage that dance acts, hip hop acts (and) pop acts would feel at home on. The chevron builds on the Reading & Leeds logo and that just happened. We were inspired by the LS23 stage for late nights in Leeds and wanted to build on that.”
In other news, the 2024 Reading & Leeds Festivals kicked off yesterday (23 August) at their usual venues in Richfield Avenue (Reading) and Bramham Park (Leeds). Here’s how to watch the festivals at home on BBC iPlayer and elsewhere if you weren’t able to get a ticket.
This year the festival boasts Fred Again…, Lana Del Rey, Liam Gallagher, Catfish And The Bottlemen, Blink-182 and Gerry Cinnamon as its six headliners.
Also expected are Raye, Spiritbox, Fontaines DC, Reneé Rapp, Pendulum, Denzel Curry, Kenny Beats, Nia Archives, Two Door Cinema Club, Neck Deep, Rachel Chinouriri, Hak Baker, The Last Dinner Party and more.
Check out NME again here for the latest news, reviews, interviews, photos and more from Reading and Leeds 2024.
