Supernormal 2019 Pt 3

After that Cocaine Piss are a mild let-down, a sneery NY punk clatter with Melt Banana yelps which would fine in The Library, but seems a bit thin for a headline set (not to mention short).  We preferred Viridian’s improvised set, with warm woodwind and projected slides of dried insects, perhaps in homage to the spider looking over the field.

SUNDAY

The final day starts quietly, with David Bramwell’s The Cult Of Water, a magical realist lecture, in which a time-travelling pedestrian touches on psychogeography, etymology and riparian religions.  Bramwell is the creator of The Odditorium, see locally at Wilderness and Irregular Folks...though, after a day at Braziers, he may need to recalibrate the first syllable.

In the Barn Sarah Angliss’s Air Loom is possibly the highlight of Sunday, redolent of vintage horror soundtracks with tiny bells, theremin, electronics and some sort of keyboard dulcimer or micro-spinet (the full description is available backstage, allegedly, though that feels like a trap), and Sarah Gabriel’s glorious soprano.  There’s a folk element to the vocals, but an arch concert hall distance to them too – ideal for anyone who wish The Wicker Man soundtrack had more Shcoenberg.  And then there’s a drum solo over a recording of a building being demolished, which criticises our new PM, and a wistful song about the moon.  Perfect.   

Not many could follow that, but John Butcher is amongst the few.  This solo set finds him visiting every space in, and outside, the Barn, faultlessly imitating, in turn, the birds that live there, a bubbling alembic, and tapes rewinding, before exploring feedback without going anywhere near the mouthpiece.  Extended technique on its own is only diverting, but with a true musical sense it can be joyous.

Sadly, Jamie Bolland’s Satie performances on the house piano are too approximate for our tastes, but the walk back to the main field brings a magical moment, where a lad tries to entice younger children onto the adventure playground netting with the line “Come on, kids, living is over-rated”.  Or is it a performance called “Existential Jungle Gym”?

Oxford’s Basic Dicks welcome us back to the main stage, their hardcore downpour swift but invigorating.  “I Am Man, Hear Me Bore” is a standout, though with that in mind we should perhaps not elaborate.

We learnt a lot in Nightshift boot camp – fifty ways to enrage bar blues soloists, how to spell Xymox, what that pyramid is on the front of The Pleasure Principle – but not how to make notes in a packed dark Vortex filled with dry ice whilst manhandling a glowing umbilical cord and dancing like a loon. Bodyvice, Natalie “Lone Taxidermist” Sharp’s features glowing vertebrae, anatomically accurate viscera unitards, slowly ramping avant-techno, and a faceless giant playing clarinet.  This ecstatic carnival has an undertow of eldritch horror, drawing morbid fears from a medical imaging consent form.  MRI James, be born, be born.

One final trip to BEEF is required to cool off, where Bell Lungs gift us with Broadcast dream pop, concluding with a wonderful number that’s like an incursion on an Irish wake by someone fixing bad transistor radio wiring.  They are followed by an unexpected encounter between a tap dancer and a sewing machine, not a collaboration between Comte de Lautréamont and Lionel Blair, but Tap Sew (someone please book them for Tap Social, just for the euphony).  The close-miked Singer in the band chugs as expected, but sounds are also sourced from apertures being opened and threads being plucked, whilst the tap shoes are used, not so much for dancing as pawing and scraping the floor, like a lackadaisical toro.  Together they make fascinating chitinous rhythms unlikely to be found in any other festival field this summer. 

 

Newcomers to Supernormal are often gleefully astonished by what they find, and the old regulars are always welcoming.  There’s no better example than our last act, Italian prog-skronk rockers Zu.  Halfway through their set the drummer stands up and shouts exultantly, “This festival is fucking freaking weird!”.  The crowd returns a vast cheer, and the math-honk headbanging begins afresh.  We’re already looking forward to Supernormal 2020: set the controls for the heart of the spider