Electric Callboy bring the bants to the Main Stage and get a whole field dancing like nobody's watching...
Electric Callboy are sort of the Spinal Tap of the modern age, but with a little more whimsy about their character. Not jaded rockstars but proudly nonsensical and vulgar, they’re so daft, it’s a gift to us all. Their concoction of tomfoolery and heaviness is the exact type that Download laps up in all its weird and wonderful glory. Taking to the Apex, Callboy are rightfully platformed on the biggest stage, offering the perfect space for their bizarre interludes and costume changes, and a short selection of universally loved cover songs.
Within the first half an hour of their set, the uber-silly, sugar-coated lot give Download a variety of fit changes, and a whole lot of funky dance moves. Nico Sallach and Kevin Ratajczak bounce off each other’s charisma, but all together the five of them are the spectacle. They routinely line up like a '90s boyband, most impressively in their 1980s shell suits that look as if they’d completely light up near a naked flame, which they literally are as pyro fires up in front of them, and they don’t show a single quiver.
With the dramatic strip of their trousers revealing even more plastic looking short shorts, they bop along to Hurrikan, encouraging Donington Park couples to cosy up in a big ole cheesefest. Taking a break from their own material, they take on blink-182’s All The Small Things and give it the Callboy treatment, changing it up and adding an electronic glimmer. Drowning Pool’s Bodies also undergoes a similar transformation. Their choices of tracks? Seemingly for no reason other than pure shits and giggles to keep the vibes high.
There’s a quick pause due to an emergency in the crowd, dealt with coolly and calmly by the gang who apologise for not spotting it sooner. They scrap what they’d started to go into Let The Good Times Roll with a shoutout to The Offspring. Elevator Operator from their forthcoming record TANZNEID is exceptionally silly and lively, with fist pumps decorating both stage and field. It’s fitting, then, that with MC Thunder II (Dancing Like A Ninja) they theorise that love can in fact sometimes feel like a big punch in the face.
Wrapping with optimistic duo, Callboy’s answer to Sam Ryder, Spaceman, brings bouncing electronic rhythm and rave to the Apex, with fan fave We Got The Moves setting the tone for the rest of the weekend. The field is moving like a hivemind and singing back to them, ‘We’re alive, we believe / that summertime memories will never fade away’ over its thick, pulsing synth. By this time, they’ve additionally performed in disco ball helmets and avant garde white leather suits. It’s Download cranked all the way to 11.
