Supernormal 2014 - Saturday Pt 2

Fruit Canoe start well, messing with a vocal sample that might have been taken from a dodgy pyramid selling pitch but it doesn’t look as though anything surprising is going to happen to their averagely decent electronica, so we return to the barn to see vocal improviser Maggie Nicols.  In a world where many musicians make their living on a tedious whirligig of indentikit festival bookings, we can’t help but admire the fact that her bassist/sampler controller is not in the programme because he wasn’t sure he’d find anyone to look after his shitake mushrooms until the last minute.  As it is, his additions are fine, if a bit muddy in the mix, but it is Nicol’s vocal range that captures everyone’s attention.  She doesn’t so much explore a series of tonalities, as a set of characters, breaking into her own songs in a variety of languages, a Glaswegian skipping rhyme, or a stuttering Donald Duck glossolalia along the lines of David Moss.  Her technique is wonderful, and if a cheesy “I love life” reggae tune is too hippy for cynics like us, the set is still fascinating and good-humoured.

Nightshift spent Saturday morning eating bacon sandwiches and relaxing on the sofa - what, you think we’d camp with the proles? - listening to Palehorse’s LP, an excellent take on Slint’s taut rock with bonus heaviosity.   Live they lose this poise somewhat, and the music is far scrappier, but is also possessed of an inspiring energy – when they scream you feel as though you’ve been properly screamed at.  Contrast this with Mob Rules on the same stage earlier, who shot for a kind of Fucked Up hardcore, but had all the vigour and disgust of a Countdown contestant who’s been given three zeds. It’s a pleasing end to the day on the Nest stage, that sadly wouldn’t survive Sunday’s second dose of hideous weather.

Esben & The Witch’s neatly gothic pop theatre proves too calculated at Supernormal, where the truly harrowing will always trump overblown indie incantations, and where you might meet an actual witch, so we try our luck in the bar for the improbably name Unconscious Archives: Spatial.   Admittedly this turns out to be some shapes projected on a sheet whilst someone demonstrates the sound possibilities of the Dragon 64 home computer, but still, they had chairs.

We don’t get to see Sly & The Family Drone, as they set up in the middle of the field, and are surrounded by a ring of spectators, some of whom may have been joining in.  We have no idea where the band ended and the audience began.   We have no idea where soundcheck ended and the set began.  We have no idea where egalitarian abstract noise theatre ended and taking the piss began.  But we did quite enjoy it all from a position a few yards away, even if all we could really hear was one roaring guitar amp and a synthesised bass drum (rhythms optional).

Sadly, we weren’t able to attend Sunday, which is probably for the best as our turn at the Fall karaoke would have beaten all-comers (although as they didn’t name it Mark E. Oke, they don’t deserve our genius).  As a whole the festival supplied a heady mixture of high quality and fascinatingly idiosyncratic failures.  If there were no main stage highlights to come close to Evil Blizzard and Hookworms last year, the barn felt better utilised this time, and it was pleasing that the interesting performances were spread across the site more evenly than in other years.  Our only concern, when settling down to another doom rhythm, another guitar drone and another vocal delay unit is that the line-up is in danger of becoming predictable.  The one simple thing that makes Supernormal better than any other festival in Oxfordshire is that it has not yet become a brand, and doesn’t seek to sell us close-minded lifestyle choices instead of adventures: let’s make sure it stays like that.   Don’t give us what we want, give us what we’ll never forget