Acts stretching the definition of musical sonics are YOL, who simply rubs items against the floor to make squeaky gate/hiccupping chicken sounds whilst ranting about a “national bucket hat shortage” for 12 minutes (which is about 20 times better than you imagine), and Mosquito Farm, much of whose set involves bouncing balls into close-miked vessels on a jumble of retort stands - or more accurately, mostly missing – over clanky loops. It looks like a carney rube failing to win at an alchemist’s sideshow, and sounds like Tom Waits’s relaxation tape. The Thicket stage mostly hosts rituals and magical lectures this year, and whilst Janis & The Sonic Travellers’ performance – a kimchi recipe disguised as a seance, enlivened by La Monte Young violin spirals – is diverting, the area feels under utilised. Having said that, nipping over in the early evening on the dubious advice of a punter who claims that Dr Jerry Thackray (FKA journalist Everett True) was going to cover Fall songs there, we discover a deserted glade and the enchanting ambience of Matthew Olden’s sonic installation ‘The Irrepressible Force’, a computer-controlled mélange of drones and creaks; at Supernormal even a prank turns out to be an epiphany.
Our time in Ipsden would not be complete without some free improv in the barn, the pick of which features Rachel Musson (sax), Mark Sanders (drums), and Matt Davis (trumpet), whose technique is less extended than elongated, playing through the spit valve and using a tambourine as a mute.
Techno is well represented this year. Nkisi closes Friday’s live roster with what sounds like an 80s Doctor Who tension cue stretched out for an hour. We get turn of the millennium glitchy loops from Dangsha, squishing Mille Plateaux style clicks into thick, compacted, fuzzy minimal techno: Underfelt Resistance, anyone? Two consecutive sets are more danceable, the classic late-90s crusty style of Portugal’s excellently gurning Zancudo Berraco reminding us of Meat Beat Manifesto and the more urbane of Megadog’s regulars, whilst Rrose’s hypnotic rhythms are more sleek and inhuman. Rrose presumably took their name from Marcel Duchamp’s female alter-ego, proving that drag and high art have been connected for a long time, and there’s a strong queer cabaret element to this year’s line-up; if the frankly filthy Midgitte Bardot has the best name, Ginny Lemon reduces us to childish giggles, drawing us into the tent with a riff on Verka Serduchka’s Eurovision classic ‘Dancing Lasha Tumbai’, and keeping us in there dicking about like a hungover avant-Chuckle Brother. Their improbably funny rewriting of ‘Toxic’ about RuPaul has a “few legal edits”, and therefore is entirely composed of wordless mumbles. Lydia Lunch is less guarded in conversation, baldly calling Nick Cave a cunt, whilst dropping such nuggets as, “A nice clean set of balls goes a long way”. She’s an amusing X-rated raconteur, but her schtick is ultimately the rehearsed platitudes and self-caricature of more mainstream after-dinner speakers.
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