Supernormal Festival
Day 2 - Bands in order of appearance:
Bad Guys
Black Moth
Winnie The Poof
Lonesome Cowboys From Hell
Thought Forms
Maria And the Mirrors
The Fakirs
Quilla Constance
Brazier's Park, Oxfordshire
Saturday August 20 2011
Supernormal, day two. Early. Too early.
As I wander across the field in the morning dew, on a mission to see if the food stalls have got the coffee on yet, I see Proxy Music's lead singer, still in his glittery glam-rock stage jacket, emerge from his tent looking distinctly morning-after. That's a very Supernormal moment, right there. Where else could you get up for breakfast and find yourself face to face with a bleary Bryan Ferry?
Fortunately, the bands don't start until after lunch, so there's plenty of time to restore normal levels of equilibrium before the rock 'n' roll begins. First band today down at the garden shed is a collection of boisterous types called Bad Guys. They play a fuzzy scribble of hardcore, sludgecore, and possibly several other genres of rock that end in 'core'. They're loud and cheerfully obnoxious; the guitarists crank it to eleven while the singer looms impassively in the middle of the noise-blast, and manages to look surprisingly scary for a man in a cagoule and flip-flops.
The max heaviosity theme continues with our second band today. Black Moth have obviously been on the Black Sabbath diet. They're loud and low - keeing all the weight in the bottom end and aiming their gritty seventies caramel crunch straight for the gut. The crucial thing about Black Moth - and the reason why I like 'em - is that they manage to be heavy without being heavy metal. They're a low-slung, low-rider, help-my-trip-is-going-bad psychedelic wig-out of a band, sending their riffs scooting across the field at a level fit to mow the grass, chucking time changes around like confetti at a wedding.
What's incongruous about Black Moth is that you're probably envisaging a band of weirdy-beardy grizzled geezers in unrepentantly flared jeans - am I right? But Black Moth aren't like that at all. They look like - and I'm afraid I can't put this any other way - a bunch of indie kids. They're clean of cut and fresh of face, and yet they make such a down 'n' dirty noise you'd think they'd only just got out of rehab. The singer - with the fine Janis Joplin wail of a voice - is called Harriet, surely a quintessential indie name. I mean, the lead singer of The Sundays was called Harriet. I rest my case! Black Moth are brilliant in their incongruity. And their heaviosity.
Incidentally, I don't know if we're heading for some sort of seventies rock revival here, coming in from an unexpected indie direction, but is it a coincidence that Black Moth have emerged at the same time as Rosalie Cunningham's Jefferson Airplane-inflected Purson? Those two bands really should be gigging together, that's for sure.
Now let's go up the field a bit to check out the second stage - the one that looks like it should be hosting Punch and Judy. It's probably appropriate that the band on stage right now is called Winnie The Poof. That's not a typo, and don't complain to me - that's what the band called themselves. I can't be held responsible, OK?
The Winnies (or can we call them the P - no, let's not go there) do a slightly gone-wong take on Anthony Newley-style story songs - like David Bowie used to do, back when he sang about laughing gnomes. Winnie The Poof takes things in an even more whimsically bizzare direction. One minute the singer is all sensitive, declaring that he'd tie the ends of a rainbow together for us - and then he's stomping around the stage wearing a coffee table with a bread knife stuck in it. Yeah, like I said. Whimsically bizarre.
Winnie The Poof are paragons of level-headed common sense compared to the Lonesome Cowboys From Hell. This band probably sprang fully-formed out of Lux Interior's worst nightmares. Imagine Tom Waits, if he couldn't quite decide whether to go to a fancy dress party as a cowpoke or a scary clown, so he went as a bit of both. That's the Lonesome Cowboys' lead singer. The band rattle out a mutant country bang-and-twang, the singer hangs over the monitors like a wading bird searching for minnows, and it all ends up in the badlands between slapstick and scary.
Let's get back to the main stage while we still have a few shreds of sanity left. Thought Forms should help us get our heads straight - or, at least, rearrange them in an interesting way. Thought Forms are all about ambiences, generating mantra-like spirals of guitar that revolve and swell and poke you in the chakras.
Fortunately, there's enough blood and guts in the sound to keep the band's set from becoming mere hippy noodling. In fact, as the guitar rises to a crescendo and it all gets rather loud, it's hard to stop a headbanging sesh from coming on. But can you headbang from the lotus position?
Inside their heads, Maria And the Mirrors are probably drumming up tribal thunder on a desert island somewhere, possibly as a prelude to getting in their war canoes and paddling off to wallop the inhabitants of the next island along. Outside their heads, they're drumming up tribal thunder in the English countryside, with a view to walloping the sawdust out of the audience's heads. Well, mission accomplished there, at any rate.
The Maria And The Mirrors musical construction kit doesn't have many components - it's essentially drums, screams, and red noise - but it's devastatingly effective. When the band launch into one of their delirious hypno-grooves, where the drums just keep on coming and the noise-bursts from their technology table at the back sweep in like little apocalypses, it's like all your altered states of consciousness have come at once.
But in all the drum-madness, Maria And The Mirrors do have songs (for a given definition of 'songs'). Their final offering at the altar of hypnosis-by-noise is the mighty 'Travel Sex', a blast of stone age speedcore that somehow manages to be instantly recognisable amid the general pell-mell. The drums and electonix do a mad to and fro - and here comes that chanted almost-chorus that you could possibly shout along to, given the right quantities of peyote and caffeine. Those poor buggers on the next island along aren't going to know what's hit 'em.
The Fakirs give us an entire change of pace and headspace. This band is - as far as I can make out - a rebranded version of David Devant And His Spirit Wife, although what the differences are between the two bands, and why one band has been badge-engineered into another, must remain a deep and enduring mystery.
But here comes Fakirs frontman The Vessel, leafing casually through My Magic Life, the autobiography of stage magician David Devant, after whom The Fakirs are not named. The Vessel is very English, very droll, endlessly affable and ever so slightly camp. If you split him into three equal parts, you'd probably end up with David Bowie, Kenneth Williams, and, erm, Hugh Grant. The band set up an almost music hall bomp and swing, and the audience sways along as if it's Sunday Night At The London Palladium.
Although, of course, it's actually Saturday night in a field in Oxfordshire. Just as much fun, but not so many chandeliers. Up in the beer tent they've banished the DJs from the horse box and a performer is about to take the - well, I can't say stage, because there isn't one. Quilla Constance has a stretch of slightly wobbly floor at the far end of the tent upon which to do her thing. This probably isn't her usual milieu, but she doesn't put a towering red stiletto out of place as she struts into view wearing - literally - her best glam rags.
Quilla Constance deals in quirky electropop songs, all herky-jerky beats topped by a vocal that sounds like an indignant Marilyn Monroe. It's fun stuff, but it's not quite working tonight. The crowd are more interested in beer than the floor show, and when a technical breakdown interrupts the backing track, the momentum vanishes and doesn't come back.
Perhaps if there was an actual stage - or at the very least a spotlight - it would be possible to claw the performance back into contention, but the blunt truth is that the audience's attention goes elsewhere and Quilla can't recapture it. On an actual stage, with an actual band, I'm sure she'd ace it. She'd be ideal as the support act when Devo next tour. But not in this tent, and not tonight.
There's a disco kicking off now, if you'd care to dance. Supernormal day three will be here before you know it...
On to Supernormal Festival Day 3 here.
Back to Supernormal Festival Day 1 here.
Quilla Constance: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Fakirs: MySpace
Maria & The Mirrors: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Thought Forms: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Lonesome Cowboys From Hell: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Winnie The Poof: Website | Facebook
Black Moth: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Supernormal Festival: Website | Facebook
For more photos from the Supernormal Festival, find the bands by name here.
