Are You Listening? Festival 2015 - Review

The FA Cup probably wasn’t something that the organisers of Reading’s Are You Listening? Festival had taken much notice of when they confirmed the date for their third ever event. Little would they have known at that stage that the town’s football team would have battled its way through to the semi-finals of the competition for a show down with Arsenal at Wembley Stadium on the same day as the festival. Thankfully it seemed that not everyone loves football, as the venues on this wristband access festival were relatively busy, with music fans catching emerging local talent together with a number of higher profile national touring artists such as Pulled Apart By Horses, The Computers, Smoke Fairies and Dan Le Sac, whilst raising money for local charity Reading Mencap.

Although the football team may have lost on Saturday, Are You Listening? Festival was undoubtedly a winner. Venue hopping in the sunshine was an ease and unlike some other multi-venue urban festivals we saw no evidence of lines of disgruntled punters snaking around buildings unable to get in to see the acts they wanted. Stages seemed to run largely on time and as an added bonus all the staff working the festival seemed to have a smile on their faces. The bargain ticket price of £10 for an early bird ticket also made this quite possibly the best value UK festival of 2015.

So with Reading well and truly rocked over the course of 12 hours, here are our five favourite performances of the festival:

Tiny Giant at The Bowery District 

The Bowery District is a probably the only nightclub we know of with an incongruous bookcase stuffed with the likes of Alan Tichmarsh paperbacks, a photobooth and pulled pork buns ready to be ordered from the bar (named Pulled Apart by Porkies in celebration of the evening’s headliner). There was nothing odd about Tiny Giant though, a new band fronted by ex Pure Reason Revolution woman Chloe Alper, who followed the classic format of four people, some guitars and a lot of atmospheric riffs. In the home of festivals that are noisy and guitar based, Tiny Giant made a lot of sense.

Robyn Sherwell at Milk

Another unusual venue is Milk. A first floor cocktail bar with fair faced brickwork,exposed  trussed rafters and plenty of spirits of all kinds, Breaking More Waves favourite and blog regular Robyn Sherwell delivered sumptuous tender songs with a soulful tone set against a backdrop of keys, looped vocals and acoustic guitar. It’s not all sweetness and beauty though, there’s an underlying sturdiness to Sherwell: “I wrote this about an ex of mine. What a twat,” Robyn joked as she introduced the rather lovely sounding Portrait. 

Sophie Jamieson at South Street Arts Centre

With dense whispers, nearly claustrophobic in their intimacy, Sophie Jamieson and her band sent tiny shivers from the stage with her ghostly soul music. That’s not soul music in the traditional sense, Jamieson’s sound owed more to the likes of Daughter and Laura Marling than Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin, but it was certainly from the soul – Jamieson’s face visibly feeling every word she was singing. Powerful stuff that shows that to sing play with passion you don’t have to shout, holler and possess a Florence / Adele etc pair of lungs, sometimes it can be much more understated, but the soul comes from within.

Hart at South Street Arts Centre

From the moment Hart aka Daniel Pattison opened his voice, it was clear that something very special was happening. It takes a lot to silence a room of festival goers, many of whom have been hard at it all day, but Pattison managed it immediately. His first gig under this name had some minor technical problems, but in a set that progressed from near ambient-folk tranquility to thudding techno-lite, Hart’s cherubic pitch-perfect falsetto voice carried an utterly sublime elegance to it, like Bon Iver, or  Andrew Montgomery from Geneva (anyone remember them?). Whether the songs were actually any good we couldn’t tell you, so blown away were we every second that Hart opened his mouth. The discovery of the festival.

Smoke Fairies at South Street Arts Centre

Finishing off a night of bewitching music at South Street Arts Centre, before a dash across town to take in the raucous indie rock racket that was Demob Happy, The Smoke Fairies sombre mix of twilight Americana, mystic rock and blues certainly wouldn’t win any awards for punch the air euphoria or sing-a-long moments of jubilation, but their sound was deeply immersive. Hats off to them for wickedly sparkling silver dresses, challenging the norm that ‘serious’ musicians can’t have a bit of fun dressing up when they get on stage.

We look forward to the return of Are You Listening? Festival In 2016 – an event that punched well above its weight in terms of quality and organisation for 2015.

Smoke Fairies - She Sells Sanctuary

Originally released as part of a limited edition 5 track covers EP exclusive to Rough Trade store to accompany their recent Blood Speaks album, the Jack White approved Smoke Fairies have now uploaded to the internet their version of goth / rock 80’s dancefloor stormer She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult. Instead of copying the ballsy whip-your-hair-around energy of the original ( which featured one of the most fist-pumping guitar intros ever) The Some Fairies take the song to a place full of languid and sweeping mysticism,  a dark foggy marsh where a lone wraith-like hooded figure stands rowing a boat towards you perhaps. Dare we mention Clannad? Well there’s certainly something in Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire’s vocals that hint of the Irish band a little, but whatever it reminds you of the song is undeniably enchanting.

The Some Fairies - She Sells Sanctuary

Camden Crawl 2010 - Preview

Today, a new feature. Besides bringing reviews of all the music festivals we attend this year, we will also be previewing them and selecting five acts for your perusal. First up - Camden Crawl 2010.

Camden Crawl is now one of the many one-wristband-multi-venue-multi-gig events that have sprung up on the UK music calendar. The first was way back in 1995. Back then Camden was an obscene but strangely alluring indie mecca where markets sold cheap jackets, vintage clothes and fashionable junk. Not much has changed in that respect, except the word indie has now become obsolete - we now live in a world where Scouting For Girls are referred to as ‘commercial indie’ and wearing a check shirt and skinny jeans from Top Man appears to define you as ‘indie’.

Breaking More Waves attended its first Camden Crawl in 1996. Back then it was a one day, small scale event with just a handful of bands, limited number of venues, lack of corporate sponsorship and no queues. In 1997 the event expanded to become the Intercity Crawl, and a fifteen pound ticket gave access to six venues, a CD featuring all the bands playing and the pleasure of seeing groups such as The Warm Jets, Vitro and a fresh faced non-stadium indie rocking Snow Patrol. There were also corresponding events in Manchester and Glasgow. Our endearing memory of that year was of passing a gaggle of Kenickie members staggering down Parkway full of glitter and alcohol as well as watching a huge colossus of a man called Tiny from a band called Ultrasound play to a half empty Town & Country Club and being rather glorious.

After 1997 the Crawl laid dormant until resurrection in 2005. Now an annual two day event the bands that help move tickets are no longer alternative acts such as The Wedding Present, Bis, and Scarfo but the hugely commercial Sugababes, Calvin Harris and the Lost Prophets, the whole fracas being sponsored by Gaymers. It’s fair to say that whilst essentially Camden the place hasn’t changed significantly, the Camden Crawl very much has.

Last years crawl was heavily criticised by some reporters, particularly the NME’s Jamie Hodgson who wrote this scathing blog. Other reports we have received suggest that nobody really knew what was going on or where, The Guardian calling it “A riot of miscommunication.” It doesn’t help that one of the main photos on the Camden Crawl website shows punters queuing rather than actually watching and enjoying music. Not a good omen. Like some other multi-gig events in the UK it appears that the art with the Camden Crawl is first to be organised - be prepared to get to the venue for the band you want to see early, and second not to take the name too literally (and by that we don’t mean wear knee pads) instead limiting the amount of crawling you do by minimising your venue swapping. This then lowers the risk of potential queues and missing bands.

We’ll be returning to Camden for our first crawl in thirteen years and reporting back at the start of May. But for now here are five acts appearing at the event that get the Breaking More Waves seal of approval.

Samuel Chase

Samuel Chase first appeared on this blog (here) back in October, although then he was known as Samuel and the Dragon. The dragon has now flown, leaving one of our favourite singles of last year, the beautifully isolated Diamonds on a Boat as a haunting memento. Samuel now continues, with some incredibly soulful, sombre and atmospheric demos on his Myspace. Think of the slo-core melancholy of Japan and Portishead and you’ll be getting somewhere close. An album is due to follow later this year.

Clock Opera

Fresh from supporting Marina and The Diamonds earlier this year, and with one of the more low-key nominations in our Ones to Watch 2010 list, Clock Opera have still played less than twenty live shows. Yet their glorious mash up of home made samples and beats, chopped and repackaged to form crescendos of beauty has us very excited about the band. A new single A Piece Of String is due for release in June, the follow up to their debut White Noise. Lyrically the song explores the relationship between a ventriloquist and his dummy. Last July we said "We love Clock Opera more than our own children." That is because Clock Opera are creating music of the highest order.

Smoke Fairies

Hailing from Chichester, Smoke Fairies are the towns only musical exports of worth since Hope Of The States. They create smoke-laden, sultry, medieval folk-blues songs that sound as if they are from another time and place. Having recorded with Jack White the duo are set to support Laura Marling across the USA immediately after the Camden Crawl 2010.

Stornoway

How could we not mention Stornoway ? The finest band from Oxford since Radiohead, Brian Briggs and his merry men are another one of Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch 2010 and will be releasing their album Beachcombers Windowsill in May. Full of simple acoustic based songs and sung with a clear honesty, Beachombers Windowsill is the sound of stepping outside into a glorious spring day. They may be a little too ‘nice’ for some, but for others they will make hearts flutter.

Silver Columns

Silver Columns are Adem Ilhan and Johnny Lynch. Adem plays bass in post rock / electronic band Fridge whilst Johnny is also known as the Pictish Trail - a folky sounding singer songwriter type. Together as Silver Columns they produce pounding cool disco anthems such as the Breaking More Waves approved Brow Beaten and forthcoming single Cavalier. It’s one of those side projects that actually seems to be better than the mains. Serving it up - groovy.