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Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
The Nuns
Singing Adams
Y Niwl
Colours
Dignan Porch
+more tbc

The Windmill
Brixton
Price tbc

On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

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Gig Review

Sellindge Music Festival: Supergrass / Rosie Taylor Project / Answering Machine / Thomas Tantrum / Haunted Stereo
Sellindge, Kent

Article written by Ged M - Jun 19, 2009

Thomas Tantrum

Sellindge is deep in the Kent countryside, out towards Folkstone and the coast and an odd choice of venue for a boutique weekend music festival. For a start it’s down narrow country lanes and the only reason I was there was that I was staying with friends in a neighbouring village and we were able to cross two miles of turd-strewn fields to get there. It was a bit hard to detect a theme to the festival; there were three music stages, one troublesome dance tent, a funfair (including a coconut stall where, amazingly, the coconuts weren’t glued on and a hoopla stall where the prizes were cartons of ciggies), lots of hippy merch stalls, a face painter who was on heavy acid judging by her “starchild” designs, and heavy security (who thought my duck call - a five-pint purchase on the Saturday - was a crack pipe). So it didn’t really have a unifying mission and the attendance probably suffered for that. But the place had plenty of teens taking fashion tips from T4; if you’d set up a Bloc Party barbershop, you’d have made a killing!

Supergrass

The main festival stage had headliners in Supergrass and Young Knives and a range of support from heard-of to complete nonentities. Supergrass showed everyone up by putting on a very professional show, complete with impressive lightshow, and will be a good festival act this summer. That I wouldn’t go near any of their slightly dull records is by-the-by when you see them live. I’d left on the Sunday before Young Knives played but of the support acts on the main stage, the Answering Machine’s Mancunian dance-infected indiepop sounded brilliant, Thomas Tantrum’s wrong-pop was oh-so-right, down to singer Megan Thomas’s mesmerising vocal style and onstage charisma, and Video Nasties’ more inspired Sonic Youth/ Strokes-style indie stood out from the mass of landfill indie that clogged the stage. Worst moments were frequent but special mention for Silvery (classical-influenced clown music), Ten Bears (five twats) and The Holloways. Was it really only 2007 when their mockney Libertines-lite record came out to an explosion of indifference? Chas and Dave are Bacharach and David next to these clowns. ‘Generator’ and ‘Two Left Feet’ were flickers of interest in a set packed with lowlights. I would have been anywhere other than in front of the stage when they played but the queue for the Dignitas tent was just too long.

BBC Radio Kent had an ‘Introducing’ tent featuring new local bands. It was all very worthy but most of the bands were in serious debt to their influences. However, a few stood out: Seven Story Down are Radiohead-influenced and dare to be a bit experimental, unlike most of the bands that shared this stage. Kids Love Lies are a frantic indiepop outfit with a golden-gobbed singer full of attitude, a strong rhythmic base and a couple of quality guitarists who have long passed the show-off stage. And then there’s the red-faced thrash-metal of Circle of Rage for comedy value alone. How do you get to be so angry in such pleasant surroundings?

Rosie Taylor Project

I spend more of my time in the acoustic tent, which isn’t strictly acoustic but is a tent. Rob Cowan & The Dissidents sound like Strummer meets Springsteen with their heartfelt protest songs. Alex Cornish is a brilliant singer-songwriter who puts the ‘folk’ in Folkstone (though he now lives in Edinburgh), adds a soulful croon to ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ and plays his last song from the middle of the audience, sounding like he’s addressing each and every one of them. Haunted Stereo are one of my favourite discoveries this weekend, a multi-instrumental six-piece from Southampton who are part-indie, part-alt.folk, and remind me of the early Ladybug Transistor. The other highlight are the Rosie Taylor Project, whose diffident air conceals a gentle of brass-freshened tunes, both old songs (the wonderful ‘A Good Café On George Street’) and new (the awesomely meandering, melodic ‘A Walk By Moonlight’). If there was ample compensation for being bothered by amorous sheep and snagging one’s family jewels on a barbed wire fence (damn the countryside!), it was provided by the RTP – band of the weekend.

Links:
http://www.sellindgemusicfestival.co.uk/