Strange Party?

Warm, isn't it?

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.

The Bad Siege

That's not actrually how you spell "trebuchet"...

DEATHRAY TREBUCHAY/ STORNOWAY/ JALI FILLI CISSOKHO, Isis Tavern, 12/6/09

“Are you going to the festival?” asks a local to his mate as we cross Iffley Lock. “Are you going to [ironic emphasis] rock out?” Doubt it, chum, for this is a record launch from delicate folkpoppers Stornoway, in the The Isis Tavern’s bucolic grounds, for well-heeled neo-hippies and fragile indie children. So, in place of warm Fosters we got organic ale, in place of tight black jeans we got flouncy floral dresses, and in place of a harried, leather-clad engineer we got – well, some things are constant, perhaps. Kora player Jali Filli Cissokho provides a suitably warm introduction, the sounds from his West African harp growing from tiny wisps of melody to huge clouds of sound as his thumbs writhe around the strings. It’s easy enough to drift away to Cissokho’s gorgeous set, but he’s not pandering to the lentil burger World Music morass, his playing incorporates hard attacks and sudden spasms of notes as well as mellifluous fluidity. This is intricate, intelligent music for active listening, not pallid chillout sessions.

In a near Stalinist act of historical revisionism, Stornoway have announced that “Zorbing” shall be their debut single; any records you may already own by them are the result of fevered imaginations and possible bourgeous deviation, and mention of them will land you swiftly in a Headington Quarry labour camp. Their songs are so timeless, it feels as though Stornoway have been around forever, though it was only three short years ago that we first saw them, playing, in all honesty, an uneven set. They’ve come light years since, but never lost their oddity and awkward affability: after a brief vamping intro their first track tonight is “On The Rocks” a treble-saturated, reverb-drenched fuzz that is like nothing other Oxford bands would write, and is also illogically beautiful – the cymbals sound like jagged ice, the guitar harmonics flash like winter sunlight, and the glorious vocal arches above everything like Rainbow Bridge. The set builds to a restrained climax, and encapsulates everything wonderful about their twitchy bonhomie and nervous charm. They even have a real Zorb terrorising the audience to the front. If you want to break the Oxford pasty, apparently all you need is a giant inflatable Kiwi sphere.

As they look like Dogs D’Amour dressed by Timmy Mallett, and play rag week ska rock, Deathray Trebuchay satisfy those who missed “The Good Fish Guide” from Stornoway’s set. Definitely not us, in other words. But unexpectedly, just by dint of a great bassist, some fluent inventive horn lines, and the fact they’re (whisper it) having fun, this London act wins us over until we’re punching the air to their knockabout jazz punk with the rest of them. Rocking lock man would have approved…unless he was one of the many people phoning in noise complaints, anyway. Childish, of course, but this makes us love the evening even more.

Truck 2008 Pt 3

And onto Sunday...Oh, This Is Seb Clarke turned out to be anything but, but I never found out who they actually were, so I'm leaving that bit in.

Chefs will tell you that many different dishes can be created with the same base sauce. Mephisto Grande are like that. As a duo they’ve got the basic recipe down - free reed drones, brimstone Beefheart growls and bludgeoning rhythms – but today they’re augmented with skronking sax and members of The Oxford Gospel Choir for a dense slab of Pentecostal rock, featuring the best cover of “Frere Jacques” ever. If the vicar of Steventon had got on stage during this and announced we were all going to hell, the local church would have been filled with repentant sinners by tea time.

This Is Seb Clarke have some excellent burgundy Beatles suits, and create some decent straight up trio rock that’s a bit like half of The Hives, but the programme had promised us 12 piece horn driven heaven, so we slope off feeling hard done by.

If anyone wasn’t sure what a kora was, Jali Filli Cissokho explained it to us; he then explained how one plays it with four digits, just in case nobody was yet flawed by the man’s talents. The rippling cascades of notes he plucks from this African harplike instrument are as succulent as they are impressive, and can seem heartbeat simple or cortex complex depending on where one focuses. Perhaps his voice, though sweet, is a little limited, but then again as he comes from the story-telling griot tradition, maybe understanding the lyrics would have helped. It hardly matters when you can lose your Sunday afternoon exhaustion in this impeccable playing. If you saw anyone walking round Truck with their jaws dangling open, they probably hadn’t got over Cissokho’s set yet.

On Sunday the Pavilion was given over to Piney Gir. Not wanting to venture in between sets in case she makes us do cross stitch or dress up as a raccoon, we edge into a strange hinterland at the edge of the campsite, full of non-musical attractions, including craft demonstrations, a cycle powered entertainment system (sadly closed at the time) and a little hut where a frankly petrifying man attempted to draw us in for some lessons in “woooing” (sic) whilst scratchy easy listening played. We also get to see the large number of Truckers who like to hang out in the campsite all day, playing footie and strumming guitars: quite an expensive way to camp out with your mates, but each to their own. In search of another subset of Truckers, some children explain that the playbus is fun, but would be better if it drove around, and that Truck is a good festival because they “saw a tractor”.

We return in time for Bordervillle, who are excellently dressed as if they’ve come from a time travelling wedding, except Joe Swarbrick who looks like a boy band Edward Scissorhands. Dead Kids should be watching this outstanding set – this is how you do pastiche and genre melding. In some ways it’s a parody of 70s pomp bands like Queen, and Broadway musicals, but it’s also a celebration of what can be great about those things, presented with imagination and a well-rehearsed flow. The sort of arch and theatrical act that makes you want to describe them like a Victorian playbill: “A vaudevillian confection of sonorous majesty” it is, then.

Luke Smith’s set is delayed because of generator problems. Doesn’t matter, we’re happy just to stand and listen to him talk, seeing as he’s the most erudite and charming man at the festival. The music might well be somewhat derriere garde, stemming from music hall ditties and 70s MOR, but as an extension of Luke’s chummy personality it works perfectly. Nobody else here would pen a tune like “You’ll Never Stop People Being Gits”, ridicule their bassist, take the piss out of audience singalongs, and still come out looking like the nicest man in town.

We’ve always admired KTB, but never really been that excited by her. Good, therefore, to see her as part of the excellent folk quartet Little Sister, doling out melismatic harmonies, acoustic tapestries and hot Appalachian fiddle licks. They somehow manage to get some of the audience doing forward rolls round the field, which is no mean feat when we’re this tired.

Les Clochards are sadly not mentioned in the programme, and misadvertised outside the Pub Tent, so it’s not surprising they start playing to a mere scattering of listeners. Their tasty Gallic café indie sound soon draws in passers by, however, because nobody could resist that mix of syrupy vocal, French accordion and fluid bass. Also, that’s Peter Momtchiloff from Talulah Gosh and Heavenly on guitar, should you have your I Spy Book Of Jangle Pop on you.

“Come and see The Nuns tomorrow”, says a flier tout on Saturday. Your smug reviewer answers, “OK, as long as they’re an all female tribute to The Monks”. “Yes,” she replies, “yes they are.” Put us in our place, didn’t it? If you don’t know who The Monks are, you’re stupid. They are one of the finest alternative rock bands, and quite possibly the first. They started in Germany in the early 60s in an attempt to create an anti-matter Beatles, and they’ve influenced approximately everyone who’s any good, ever. They’re the only band better than The Fall, according to Mark E Smith, which is unprecedented praise. The Nuns’ set is good, but doesn’t quite capture the full distorted grandeur of the originals. A celebration of, rather than an alternative to, The Monks.

Neil Halstead, from Slowdive, feels somewhat guilty about playing acoustic guitar on the shoegazing bill. “I don’t even have a pedal,” he admits. No matter as he performs lovely smoky wisps of song that keeps the small crowd happy. Nothing onstage to explain why he’s held in reverence, perhaps, but something rather lovely all the same.

Scotland’s Camera Obscura are so twee and melodic, we imagine that Swiss Concrete are backstage with their diary open ready to catch them. At times they’re like The Sundays, but more twee, or like The Cowboy Junkies, but more twee. They’re good, but they’re really twee. There’s no synonym for “twee” so we’d better stop now.

Ulrich Schnauss fills the barn with delicious vox humana keyboard washes and synth squiggles, which are underpinned by drum parts, until he sounds like a cross between Klaus Schulze and 808 State. The trouble is that the beats sound kind of tired, especially in the Barn’s reverb, and it may have been better to let the drones do the talking.

Bloomsday

Since starting this blog I've pretty much managed to upload 3 reviews a week, but I'm away for Easter, so regular readers (splutter) will have to wait a bit for the next installment. Well, I've only been reviewing for about 6.5 years, there are a finite number of reviews in the pile, so it's best that we don't glut on them all at once, like chubby cosseted scum children. This is an old OHM review of the sort of odd free day out Oxford council used to run a lot, before they ran out of money.

I also interviewed fellow OHMer Russell Barker about his Oxford music compilation in this issue, but it's a bit dull, so I shan't type it all out!

FLOWER & FOLK FESTIVAL, Florence Park, 11/9/04

This City Council organised folk festival and floral competition is woefully advertised, and I only find it by chance. A pity, as the sparseness of the audience doesn't reflect the quality of the music. Senegalese visitor Jali Fili Cissokho begins proceedings, singing some quite lovely pieces and accompanying himself on the kora: if you don't like the beautiful grids and skeins of lively plucked notes, you can at least be fascinated by the instrument itself, which looks like the dried remains of a deep space crustacean.

Ed, Bob & Pete are onstage next. I dare say they actually have a band name, but in the absence of a programme we have to grasp what facts we can! Using dulcimer, bouzouki and fiddle, aongst others, they rattle through some traditional melodies, which is all perfectly elegant but somewhat polite and decorative for my tastes. Their vocal pieces are overly earnest too.

Youthfull dub troupe, Raggasaurus, wake us up with hot servings of mammoth antediluvain skank. Their instrumental pieces boast bouncy drumming and plenty of topnotch digi-delay knob-twiddling, and have a ramshackle charm. Thier obvious lack of rehearsal means that tunes grow organically, which is delightful; it also means they die a slow, agonising death, which is less so. Although Raggasaurus run out of ideas before the set ends, their witty bubbling reggae shows plenty of promise, if they're prepared to put the work in. Plus their excellent cover of the Dr Who theme is a highlight of the day - perhaps the TARDIS got stuck in police box mode because it was too stoned to bother changing?

Well, this is probably a timefiller: Pete, who played earlier today, is performing with a member of the headline band. Still, whether it's a desperate remedy or a longstanding collaboration, this turns out to be the best gig of the day. The duo really gets to the pulsing heart of traditional melodies, throwing them into the drizzly afternoon with vim. Unlike the earlier trio, they make the songs sound like vibrant and important music, rather than the soundtrack to some Tourist Board propaganda.

Scratch And Sniff don't really work, sadly. The two fiddle and squeezebox format throws up some decent arrangements, and whilst rhythmically it's not as neat as we'd wish the playing has soul. However, the two young ladies on vocals put in a lacklustre performance, and they look excruciatingly uncomfortable being there at all. To be fair this says far more about their youth and inexperience than their innate talent, and there are a couple of gorgeous moments, but unless they start seeing performance as something other than a chore they won't get too far. Oh, and please drop the Corrs cover, for all our sakes.