Islet You Decide

BREAKING NEWS: The Florence Park darts final has been postponed!!!

ISLET, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Ctr, 7/3/20

Along with Vic 20, Chip Taylor, Bellowhead, Jurassic 5 and Fixers (non-wankered version), Islet gave us one the truly classic Truck festival sets, a decade ago.  But, whilst that gig was a fractal disco performed by howling cultists, a psychedelic percussive clatter apparently intended to deter (or possibly invoke) demonic intervention, over the years they have slimmed in size, and become more refined.  The ritualistic impetus has survived though, as they enter the venue tonight from the back, prancing lightly and tolling sweetly sonorous bells, the effect of which is either fairy wonderland or Kesey mushroom fayre, depending on your outlook.  It’s certainly not the sort of thing one usually witnesses in an old-fashioned community centre, just next to the dartboard.  Euphonious though this is, we are glad when they take to the stage and prove they can be more than stoned and twee.  In fact, so sharp are they that they are able to salvage a potentially atmosphere-killing technical glitch with some smart improvised patter, and the rest of the performance is no less focussed. 

Islet clearly have a love for the brief pop song form, no matter how obliquely they approach it, but despite this they share a trait with many krautrock acts, being simultaneously warm and organic, and sleek and other-worldly.  They’re proud to tell us that they’re soon to be supporting Foals – announcement embargo be damned! - but they have more in common with an avuncular Glass Animals.  The clipped bass, which could have come from an unknown Northern soul album by The Free Design, and the loose grooves on the stand-up drumkit make some of the tunes sound like early Ninja Tunes tracks refashioned from moss and houmous, whereas ethereal moments have more in common with one of Aphex’s selected ambient works.  There’s even a strange piece with lovely, liturgical vocals and cheeky synth, as if the Catholic church had created a new ceremony based on The Pepper’s novelty hit “Pepperbox”. Indeed the entire show, whilst never being precious, has a wonderfully hieratic feel.  Perhaps everyone at the gig is married now.  Perhaps we’re all converts, and just don’t yet know what to.  Perhaps, at the very least, the next darts league fixture might feel that tiny bit more significant.

Truck 2011 Sunday

Tate's Vorticism show today - just snuck in on the last day of the exhibition. Wonderful to see some of the stuff, but the show was a little thin for £12.70 - not their fault lots of it has been lost, but there was a lot of archival material amongst the actual artwork. Perhaps a little bit of Epstein & Lewis post-Vorticism would have filled things out.

Blasts & Blesses still one of the greatest pieces of writing/page design in the English language, and beuatiful to see wall-sized.

The bonuses were Nike Nelson's amazing The Coral Reef and a pleasant surprise in walking past Selfridge's on the way to the Oxford tuvge and discovering a new show from the fantastic Museum Of Everything. No, I don't have links. You heard of Google?




We’d be lying if we told you that Mat Gibson was an amazing, ground-breaking artist, but laying on our back, listening to his plangent, pedal steel drenched songs, watching the white clouds form and disperse as if we were submersed in a giant, freshly poured Guinness is a pretty great way to start Sunday. Cashier No 9 play comfy rootsy pop on the Clash stage, like a Northern Irish La’s, and they’re followed by Lanterns On The Lake, who make grown up indie folk with Sigur Ros crescendos, which isn’t seismic, but is actually better than Mew’s set at last year’s festival. And that’s the gist of Sunday: lots of good stuff, very little bad, but very little great.

Take Maybeshewill, for example. They have a dense, muscular sound, and we enjoy their set a lot, but there are only so many times one can get truly excited about this Mogwai tumescent guitar trick. Alessi’s Ark are also listenable, but help us to work out what Americana actually means. It means “leftovers”. It’s not folk, blues, country, rock, bluegrass or anything else that’s actually good, it’s just the offcuts you get when you’re making any of those. Ho hum.

As the music isn’t sparking any synapses, we drop in on the Free Beers Show’s comedy stage, who are quick to announce they can’t give out free beer because of licensing restrictions. Lucky it’s a well behaved crowd at Truck, they could have been lynched in other festivals. As a sort of object lesson in the value of delivery, we see Alex Clissold Jones, a man who strikes us as being potentially very funny, die on his arse, before being followed by Chris Turner, a comedian with inferior material, who is connecting with the crowd. In actual fact, the bays should go to compere Matt Richardson, who manages to keep coming back with funny, mostly improvised stand-up between every set.

Much as we respect it as an addition to Cowley Road, we have to say that the Truck Store’s selection for the Last.FM stage is noticeably the weakest of the three days. Tribes, for example, play a sort of CITV grunge, big-boned, melodic punky tunes lobbed skywards, as if to see where they land. It’s all pretty good, but doesn’t quicken any pulses. Islet should be the ones to turn things upsidedown, but they can’t capture the magic of their Barn set last year. The show is still a beguiling mixture of howls, whoops and keyboard washes, all held together by occasional dub basslines and percussion that sounds like an autistic class day out in a cowbell factory, but it is fun rather than mystifying. Last year we felt as though we were caught in a harrowing Branch Davidian ritual, this year it’s more like being in a training camp for a Chuckle Brothers franchise.

The main stage has been a bit of a parade of worthy solo and duo sets all day, so Tunng liven the soundscape somewhat, with Casio African rhythms, and well placed layers of sound a la vintage Four Tet. If we’re honest, we found the songs to be a bit less interesting than the soundscpaes underneath them, but it’s still a very strong performance.

Phil Selway also puts in a strong performance, but it leaves us entirely ambivalent. His voice is decent, which is a nice surprise, and he plays some well-structured, but slightly twee semi-acoustic numbers, one of which reminds us strongly of “Little Drummer Boy”. As befits a member of Radiohead, there are some subtly evocative touches in the arrangements, such as the “O Superman” backing vocals on the second number, but overall the conclusion is that this is music that would work better on midnight headphones, not in a tent on a sunny afternoon.

Inside Truck

And here's Sunday from Truck. Nothing more to add, I feel wierd today & I'm going to lie down.

Truck, Hill Farm, Steventon, 2010 Sunday

The Holy Orders are almost beyond criticism, because they came all the way from Leeds and they’re playing at 10.30 in the morning in a Barn that has a forceful smell of bovine faeces that even the Bisto kids couldn’t convincingly pretend to like, when they’d probably like to be lolling on the grass like most of the Truckers. Luckily they aren’t half bad, melding Mudhoney’s rock slur with something altogether less acceptable that’s more like Wyld Stallyns. It’s all rough hewn and unrefined, but undoubtedly enjoyable, especially “Paper, Scissors, Stone”, which is a budget At The Drive-In blast.

Some people have complained that there aren’t enough slots for local musicians at Truck, which is odd, because it’s never claimed to be primarily a local festival. It’s like criticising Kind Hearts & Coronets for not having enough car chases. As it is we enjoy stumbling across the odd smattering of Oxfordshire acts, and Sunday continues with a hat trick of strong scenesters. Minor Coles impress with some spicy indie, and are followed by an excellent offering from Phantom Theory, who play a drum and guitar set that hasn’t got an ounce of fat on it, and who marry spotless arrangements with full tilt rocking to cut directly to even the most leaden Sunday morning brains, and who live in a world made entirely of RIFF. Like Truck alumni Winnebago Deal shaved and spruced for a job interview, Phantom Theory have clearly spent long hard hours honing their music, but waste no time in cracking it out onstage. Mosh and go.

But even they are eclipsed in the Beathive where The Keyboard Choir are making music hand built by robots. It’s a simple proposition: a bunch of synths, music that is pitched roughly between Klaus Schulze and Luke Slater, and a fifth column of dancers dressed in woefully poor android costumes. Not only is it musically one of the best things we see all weekend, but Seb Reynolds alternately doing a gangly newborn foal dance and trying to fix broken machinery is officially funnier than anything in the cabaret tent, ever.

After a quick trip to the Butt’s ale stall (great beer, no queues, Truck 7 prices – why go anywhere else?), we drop in on The Horizontal Instrument. There’s a fair amount of electronic music on today, and some people would say that it isn’t proper music. Well this is. And it’s properly awful. What we see is like Motley Crue with all the fun excised and surgically replaced by disco. Yes, that unpleasant. We only lasted two songs, so maybe it got better; maybe the end credits of Eldorado were a psychedelic funk explosion, but you can forgive us for never having found out. Sucked like an Electrolux.

We cock half an ear to Dead Jerichos as we pass, who seem to be today’s Shaodow, retaining local fans and winning over newcomers in equal measure, but the temperature in the Market Stage is about 4000 degrees, so we walk on by to the Beat Hive again. There’s also some “proper music paranoia” about Miaoux Miaoux. There he is plucking a guitar, playing Korg and programming in drum machine beats live. It’s decent electro, but it would be better if we didn’t have to watch each track being painstakingly put together. All very commendable, but it’s a bit like watching a glass blowing demonstration when all you want is a pint.

Sometimes we wonder at the logic of which acts play the main stage, as it’s so much bigger than any of the others, but with a band like Flowers Of Hell there must never have been any question. Their music is vast in scale, torrents of miserablist strings tumbling over humming guitars to form a whirlpool where Mogwai meets Morricone. They even do a Plastic People Of The Universe cover, which has got to be worth points. Every little helps.

At points all of Islet play drums, and yet theirs is not an aggressive sound – it’s more Stomp than Shit & Shine, and the music is built more on a cheeky bounce than a pummelling thud. With slinky basslines and plenty of barely controlled yelping the set comes off like Stump quirking out at Notting Hill Carnival, and is almost obscenely enjoyable. Highlights are a ritualistic dub number, in which the band chants and clatters over chubby Jah Wobble bass, and the almost poppy moments when they become a special needs Foals. Plenty of acts try to marry experimental showboating with a cohesive rock sound, but most fail; this is the real thing.

In the wake of Fuck Buttons there’s a new breed of leftfield musicians who aren’t afraid of offering tribute to simple, hedonistic musical pleasures. Take Masks, who may have the Vivian Girls t-shirt and Explosions In The Sky guitar hazes, but who also aren’t wary of throwing a huge 808 bass drum pulse behind one of their spidery numbers. In truth, the show is slightly hesitant, and the two guitar lineup can’t quite make enough noise to complement the backing tracks: they play a piece that’s supposed to sound like Godspeed, but it’s more like an old walk-on tape for Saxon. Near the end of the set things come together, and suddenly they make a sombre yet insistent post-goth groove that could soundtrack some hip torture dungeon. This isn’t just music, this is S & M music.

Dog Is Dead exist at the other end of the spectrum, completely unashamed about their away day pop with its sunny sax breaks and bleached funk guitars that put them equidistant between Pigbag and Vampire Weekend. We hate to admit it, but we rather like this uptight, grinning mess of Haircut 100 and Steely Dan, and find ourselves singing the line, “this is a zoo, could you not feed the animals?” all afternoon. Pop music: it’s not just there for the nasty things in life.