Supernormal 2019 Pt 2

Rashad Becker’s woozy techno sounds like a drum machine on a choppy ferry crossing, and Zad Kokar has a vocalist like a tantrum toddler Jack Goldstein, and both are good, but the night ends with two powerful sets.  Lia Mice in the Vortex, a sort of driftwood chapel perfect for immersive performances, proffers supple electro, abetted by a Space: 1999 extra whacking what looks like a neon road sign and sounds like electric church bells falling down a synth well.  New Jersey’s Dälek closes the main stage.  Underneath an industrial crust, their take on hip hop is surprisingly old-school (well, alright, early new-school if you’re going to be pedantic), tightly wound but simple raps over kicking rectilinear beats.  And that is more than enough.

SATURDAY

As we enter the site on Saturday, a druidic figure invites us to “come into the centre of the spider”.  Nah, you’re alright.  Nothing good is likely to come from that invitation, surely.  Said spider is actually a vast wooden Louise Bourgeois affair, which is ritually paraded around the field on Sunday.  Thankfully the first act is inviting in a more winning manner.  Jacken Elswyth’s set of banjo tunes and pedal-controlled shruti drones is simply lovely.  Although they share some stylistic space with Gwennifer Raymond, there is none of her mercurial grace, just simple, limpid melodies played without a fraction of ego.  There’s no grandstanding, no tricks, and no criticism we can make of this charming, hypnotic set.

Charming not being an accusation to level against Isn’t’ses, who collar us on the way up from the Barn, dressed like Lia Mice’s robocrew after a hard night on the Castrol GTX spritzers, howling “we will invade your personal space” over cheap electronics.  Well, that prediction’s rather late, Nostradamus, but top marks for being a memorable act, when you’re not even on the bill.  Then, off they go to find another listener/victim.

Most things at Supernormal are alternative in some fashion, but occasionally they’re just alternative to “any good”.  We get very little from Stanfeld, a generic punk act only singled out by how badly they play (“They sounded better in soundcheck,” confides a volunteer, “mind you, they played one at a time then”), but they are followed on the Red Kite stage by No Home, a solo punk whose songs sound at first like fragments of grunge demos, but whose steely, bellicose intensity is spell-binding (though where the similarities to Kate Bush, Oneohtrix Point Never and Nina Simone come in we can’t fathom; perhaps the programme writer spent the day on the super-strength Brainbiter cider, a few of which would doubtless melt our commemorative reusable pint skiff).

Back in the Barn, where things tend to be more sedate, Copper Coims, a duo of duos, is making a chthonic clatter, all echoing rhythms and distant, reverbed tones, like far-off rolling stock.  If hell is a tube train that never arrives, then Lucifer is the son of Mornington Crescent.

People say Steve Davis is boring.  Oh, and that’s a bad myth.  Whilst his snooker peers make us think of pub carveries and The Sunday Express, Steve thought (pot the red and) screw that, became a respected prog DJ, and played synth in The Utopia Strong, a trio featuring Monsoon Bassoon and Cardiacs guitarist Kavus Torabi.  Even if you don’t admire Davis’s influence on the modern safety game, you can admire this set, which makes nods to early Tangerine Dream and Labradford’s stately drifting.

On the main stage, Mesange impress with their portentous Current 93 pronouncements and violin drone euphoria, making a far bigger impact than when they supported All The Pigs at the Bully recently.  Hen Ogledd, who follow them, are a less streamlined proposition, a harp-led maximal pop band who, at their best sound like Prince played by Bis, or a striplit chipmunk chart act, but who are sometimes annoyingly scrappy.  By contrast, the Netherlands’ Lifeless Past are honed and varnished, a tight syn-drum and guitar duo in thrall to The Cure and Joy Division, who succeed in being the right band at the right time, and energise our flagging old limbs.

Comedian John Finnemore has a sketch about football commentators applying national stereotypes to all the players, observing how often we hear of a “clinical German defence” or an “exuberant Brazilian striker”.  With this caveat in mind, we still feel that Japanese psychedelic bands who make it to the UK tend to be masters of the slow, steady build, and Qujaku’s monumental set is no exception.  They start subtly, with sax like 808 State’s “Pacific” over scowling rock, before tumescing slowly over 40 minutes until someone is twatting what might be a satellite dish to pounding, cloud-seeking rhythms, and the sound becomes nebula-huge, and swallows us all.

Back at BEEF we can’t see The Funnel at all, but we hear excellent sounds: swannee whistles in purgatory, shawm of the dead, dessicated B12 electronica, austere Russian vocals.  We’re told they’re wearing broken iPad tabards.  Sounds legit.

Having been amazed by Giant Swan at a previous festival, we have to check out Mun Sing, one of their number playing hobbled techno. His jerky moves in veiled headgear make him look like an apiarist mummy, but the music is glorious.  Like much of Autechre, no matter how abstract it threatens to get, there’s an electro groove kicking things forward.

Speaking of kicking things forward, Petbrick’s double-pedalled bass drum must have a concrete block in front to stop it sliding.  There are electric hums and spin cycle rhythms in there, but the drumming is improbably brilliant – we’re standing far too near the kit to hear a balanced sound, but can’t bear to move. Sepultura alumnus Iggor Cavalera is beast on the skins, yet no matter how punishing the beats become, there’s a secret swing to the rhythms.  Maybe that’s his Brazilian heritage (leave it, Finnemore).  Tracks could develop further, but that’s like complaining a boulder doesn’t have enough corners.  Just admire the boulder.  Even if it just fell on you.