Supernormal 2017 Pt 3

Sunday starts quietly, as Sundays should.  Hapsburg Braganza is a solo electric guitar act, elegant, misty and minimal - think Papa M meets Roger Eno – and Pon Pon proffer softly malleted drums, subtle electronics, guitar and breathy vocals, as if someone had detuned a shy ghost.  It’s pleasant, but perhaps too reticent, and may have fared better on one of the more intimate stages.  Sharron Kraus’ extended treatments of dark, dark hearted folk songs are also understated, but immediately captivating, proving once again that trad songwriting goes to eldritch places metal would never dare.  Some soft, loamy recorder playing offers tiny fragments of light. 

We called Bruxa Maria pummelling?  Well, some parts of Cattle’s performance are like sandpaper rubbed against the face by an angry Judoon, but unlike so many rock cudgellers, they know when the barrage must end, and space be found to give the songs shape.  So, there is room for some electronics-benighted death sax, a chilling a cappella section for the howling vocalist, who appears to have been possessed by a constipated demon, and surprisingly funky business from the dual drummers (ESG cowbell patterns are this year’s vocal delay unit, popping up in multiple acts).  Made perfect by a summer school session of Crowdsurfing For The Under Eights.

Mary Ocher is notable for two reasons.  One, she and her band are clad in what appear to be Earth, Wind & Fire stage outfits modelled from spaghetti, two her quirky, chirpily bouncy music is so varied, moving from a quiet synth opener to dessicated funk via unhingedly jolly library music not a million miles away from Syd Dale, and some raven-stalking that’s come straight from “Venus In Furs”.  All this with a delicately stentorian voice that makes us think of an anti-matter Nana Mouskouri.  Jesus, we’ve not thought of Nana Mouskouri in thirty years, Supernormal does strange things to the mind.

Olivia Norris presents a short dance/mime piece, in which she contorts herself awkwardly across the barn in an unnerving white mask, before erupting into an unexpected drag club mime to barely remembered Britsoul pipsqueak Roachford – it’s like 80s child nightmare fodder Noseybonk scripted by a horny Beckett.  Not all the extra-musical elements are worth the effort, though.  The Dream Machine turns out to be an old van that we’re invited to paint, which works out as ugly and pointless as you’d expect, whilst Happy Birthday Pig Face Christus is merely 4 people chanting the menu items from the catering vans in a pseudo-religious style and giggling smugly, and we should have woken them from their complacency with a chipotle enema.

A tribute band isn’t the usual Supernormal fare, but when it consists of songs from Pink Floyd’s The Wall lovingly eviscerated in a style that recalls V/Vm, The Residents and Ween, it begins to make more sense.  The Stallion have horrifically pitch-shifted vocals, and the ugliest projections it is possible to make with a cracked copy of Doom and a Roger Waters mask.  The slogan “you’re fucking with The Stallion” regularly flashes in queasy fluorescent text; we rather feel the opposite...

*Zoviet:France* beam in fizzing, hissing tones, like messages from a distant nebula, where it’s always 1997.  Sonically dated this may be, but it is utterly beguiling, and the shifting tones float like clouds scudding behind waving trees as night falls whilst you lie on your back in a field (and we’d know).

MXLX starts his cheaply insistent industrial set as John Carpenter playing Godflesh, and ends it as Alec Empire weeping incoherently outside his ex’s wedding reception, before being carried from the tent by a small throng of listeners.  That’s the Supernormal experience all over, moving from the absurd to the dramatic, before ending in budget valediction.  You should definitely get a ticket next year.  Don’t hang about though, there is a big community of people already planning their 2018 visit. Not least two Nightshift writers and a nice man from the midlands.

Supernormal 2014 - Saturday

We notice in Saturday’s Guardian Guide that Supernormal is singled out, with the description “vaguely leftfield”.  Considering our second day begins in a stone folly in which an old tape of accordion hits plays at random speeds, we wonder exactly what their music editor gets up to of an evening.  This piece is the work of Phantom Chips, who later fill the bar with dark fuzzy noises, and invite an audience member to don an udder cummerbund they’ve created: when the brightly hued cloth nipples are yanked different brands of digital skree erupt from the speakers.  The effect is like a cross between Incapacitants and Nursie from Blackadder, and frankly we’d like to see more of this madness in the bar, which seems to generally consist of a few people jigging about to classic soul tunes during the day.  Mind you, perhaps if there was much more of this the bar staff would revolt – we’ve already noticed that the First Aid tent is next to something called the Shed Sound area, a little gazebo from which the sound of amp hum and vinyl crackle can be heard a pretty much constantly, and we assume the St John’s Ambulance boys were self-medicating by Friday teatime.

Luminous Bodies features members of Supernormal bands Terminal Cheesecake and Part Chimp,. but what we hear is a default “Heart of The Sun” riff sounding like a suburban metal band warming up in the school gym, so we sneak over to see The Wharves instead, who have plenty of Throwing Muses about their warm, simple tunes.  Pity they wander through them so tentatively, like Shaggy and Scooby exploring a haunted mineshaft, but a strong melody will always win points.

On the Braziers House terrace, violinists Benedict Taylor and Hakarl have teamed up with an uncredited saxophonist for a relaxed improvisation, and these purely acoustic one-offs are the sort of thing we’d like to see more of at next year’s festival, there are so many nooks and crannies on the site that could be enlivened by a freeform blowout or a subtle bit of lowercase tinkling.  There are plenty of careering glissandi and percussive tonguing on display, but the music doesn’t sound gimmicky; in fact it reminds us oddly of Benjamin Britten at times...perhaps these are the gulls circling out of shot in Peter Grimes.

Back on the Nest stage, Sex Swing are covering doom trudge drums with bass sax honks and electronics, in a fashion that’s neither swinging nor erotic, but quite diverting all the same.  The whole set sounds like a didgeridoo reliving a harrowing post-gig night at the Holiday Inn with Rolf Harris.

Charismatic Megafauna apparently formed at last year’s festival.  We wonder whether they’ve actually met since.  Their show involves the three of them bashing out elementary rhythms and chanting clumsily, and is a good few rehearsals away from being convincing.  Reverse cheerleading, we suppose, but also sadly the reverse of any good.

We leave Henry Blacker and their incredibly entertaining rock chugs, something like a heavy Ten Benson, to see a rare performance inside Braziers House.  When punters at many festivals are content to sit playing hacky sack by their tents, or swilling in the beer tent until it gets late enough for someone famous, it’s truly heartening to see a wave of listeners stream through the door to see a solo piano piece by MXLX.  From our position in the doorway, we can’t see a single ivory, but the sound has a pleasing, if unrevolutionary, Philip Glass air, with a dash of Charlemagne Palestine’s intense key-pounding.

It’s only a short hop from there to the Barn, where Seth Ayyaz is vibrating a bunch of contact miked percussion.  After a few minutes we’re about to walk out when we suddenly start hearing massed church organs singing in the drones and loops, and before we know it our ears are filled with birdsong, Satanic mills, laughing policemen – either he’s an adept at sonic craftsmanship, or we have a very fertile imagination.  Later, the FX pedals come into play, adding a K K Null air to proceedings, although some breathy shakuhachi lines keep the music earthy.

According to the programme (and we know how reliable that can be) one of Fish Police is autistic.  Well, seeing as they’re about the only band on the Nest Stage that knows how to do an efficient soundcheck and start on time, perhaps they should have booked a few more.   Once we’re over the disappointment that they aren’t a themed tribute band (“Good evening, my name’s Sting Ray...”), we enjoy a thoroughly funky slice of urban pop, that moves between Starsky & Hutch synth and loping Arrested Development  good vibes by way of Prince’s smooth sleaze – rather refreshingly shiny and slick at a festival that can be somewhat doom-happy.

This being Supernormal, we expected Horseloom to be a vast device made out of surgical trusses that recreated the sound of pack animals dying in the Somme.  It’s actually man named Steve Malley, a single acoustic guitar and some lovely, mellifluous Martin Simpson style folk tunes.  He’s not afraid of a little Bert Jansch percussiveness to keep the songs dramatic, and even a tiny splash John Fahey dissonance to keep the senses keen, but for the most part the pieces are played with a limpid simplicity that makes this quite possibly the set of the weekend.  Perhaps his voice, though warm an unhurried, is a little pedestrian, but the playing is a sheer joy.

Breathless are a let-down after that.  We suppose their messy take on clean FM pop sounds can be likened to Maps, or the hypnogogic pop crew, but what they really sound like is some shut0in from 1985 recording Robbie Robertson covers on a C60 in his bed sit, because he thinks Paul Young has possessed his Goblin Teasmaid.