ODDBALL, Isis Farmhouse, 8/6/19
This week the leader of the free world told us that the
moon is a part of Mars. We laughed at
the time, but, spending a day in the colourful whirlwind that is the Oddball festival,
suddenly such maverick cosmologies start to seem feasible – after all, we’re
gearing up for Iffley lock to become a distant banlieue of Saturn with the Sun
Ra Arkestra’s first ever trip to Oxford, and by six pm, a glance into their
eyes reveals that a fair percentage of the crowd seem to have taken a psychic
trip to Proxima Centauri, even if their physical husks still walk among.
And whilst we’re considering something as topsy-turvy as
Commander Trump piloting Spaceship Earth through the inky galaxy, how about
having the comedown before the trip?
We’re used to Moogieman
making quirky, scientifically accurate new wave, like Robin Ince fronting Devo,
but today he and drum machine prodder Stefano Maio turn in a set so bleak and
unpsychedelic it’s actually otherworldly.
Imagine a John Carpenter soundtrack playing on a slowly decelerating
Victrola whilst razor-honed guitar chords accompany the deadpan pronouncement
“Don’t get lost”, and you have a set highlight.
New song “Journey To The East” is pretty much just a squelchy synth
ostinato with some sententious metaphysical pronouncements intoned over the
top, and is basically the opening to Sapphire
& Steel rewritten by a paranoid Gurdjieff. It’s brilliant, but (ironically)
disorienting, and we’re glad we had the beautifully cascading kora notes of Jali Fily Cissokho to ease us into the festival.
There’s an outstanding representation of Oxford acts,
from The Elephant Trip’s
smoking-is-cool, shades-indoors-at-night Black Angels grooves, to Tiger Mendoza’s suet-fried melding of
lysergic hip-hop beats with leather-clad rock guitar riffs, courtesy of Chris
Monger from Shotgun Six (surely a shoe-in for Oddball 2020), to grief-pop
heroes Flights Of Helios, who
tonight get the balance between the band’s Pink Floyd vistas and Chris Beard’s
stricken angel vocal spot on. In fact,
the festival’s only poor decision – apart from a few people’s final pint – is
the installation of an onsite barber, whom we saw doing no business all
day. Who wants their aerials cut, man?
Whilst the day offers plenty to perplex sonically,
perhaps the oddest experience is finding that the pub itself has been
inexplicably rechristened the Android Garden, and that behind the bar instead
of pint-pourers we find Chief Mixalot
DJing some late 90s drum and bass classics - anyone witnessing the rare sight
of Nightshift dancing is advised to repair
immediately to the Psy-Care healing tent for a lie down.
We come across some new names during the day, Ia(i)n Ross clearly being such a new
name that the event’s programme can’t decide how to spell it. His amniotic synth washes are pleasing, but
not as exciting as the old-fashioned hardware techno of ex-Vienna Ditto scamp
Nigel Firth debuting as Oxford Audio
Archive. Plenty of acts on today’s
bill, especially the spoken word artists, are gnomic, but Nigel’s the only one
who’s gnomelike, sitting cross-legged
behind a coffee table of teetering gadgets, and giggling quietly like he’s just
got the jokes in Alice In Wonderland.
His messy, but euphoric electronica has the glowing warmth of Pete Namlook, the
ludic lo-fi chutzpah of Aqua Regia, and the sleek insistence of Hardfloor. It’s enjoyably unpretentious, but when a
Bollywood spectre starts to haunt a scrapbook jungle collage, it’s actually rather
lovely too.
Perhaps the cream of the local crop, though, are
expansive indie psych rockers and tambourine fetishists Knobblehead, who turn in an outstanding set of huge chugging tunes,
mixing wild vibing with good honest melodic catchiness, part Brian Jonestown
Massacre, part Jefferson Airplane. At
some points the blaring trumpet and tuneful chants even recall James circa Seven.
This is comfortably the best set we’ve seen them play, possibly because
it’s the first time they’ve all managed to fit onstage simultaneously.
After all this, The
Sun Ra Arkestra is an unusual headliner, but if this isn’t the sort of
festival where expectations can be ravaged, nobody here has even tried to power
a Moog by plugging into a leyline, and if bandleader Marshall Allen, at 95,
hasn’t earned the right to do what the fuck he wants, then we’re from
Betelgeuse (NB by this point, we aren’t entirely sure we’re not from
Betelgeuse). Tonight, they mostly eschew
the frenzied freedom and synthesised abstraction of much of the back Ra-talogue
for a smooth but slightly abstract lounge swing, including a surprisingly
straight take on croon classic “Stranger In Paradise”. Gavin Bryars once tried to capture the music
of the Titanic’s band as they sank underwater, but the Arkestra make the sound
of a Reno casino band melting into their daquiris, and if they seem to be
treading water occasionally – space is the placeholder – and it isn’t the
stellar voyage we expected, they sure can Pleaides tunes.
And then, it’s out onto the towpath for a moonlit stumble
back to the mundane world. Should the
planets align, and Oddball return next year, we’ll certainly be there at the
outset, ready for take-off. Start the
countdown, commander Trump...and smoke me a covfefe, I’ll be back for breakfast.
