This duo from Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire has a very grown-up charm emanating from their music. Or that is, I should say, the one song that I’ve heard. Released way back in May to very little fanfare, Born Screaming by Mirror Furies is a thing of plaintive beauty and it deserves your attention. The first thing to hit you is Carina Bragg’s voice. It has that raw emotive coating that could quite easily be powering its way over a big rock song, but on Born Screaming there’s just a quilt of lullaby guitars to provide a backdrop to the tune. And that’s the second thing – the tune. It’s hardly a revved up machine, more doleful than dynamite, but it has some power. It’s a song of goodbyes, of letting go and of finding your own space in the world. “Do you think you’re ready for that big old open world, only 17 now, you’re still a little girl to me.” Bragg croons. “What can I do, I can’t help you any more, I still worry about you, am I a stranger to your thoughts?” We all have to let go of the ones we love sometimes. An enticing debut from Mirror Furies. If you’re going to Neighbourhood Festival in Manchester on October 8th get there early to catch them at the Deaf Institute at 13.30. Mirror Furies - Born Screaming
This was meant to a long read review of the 2016 edition of a festival that I’ve attended every year but one. I was going to write about how after a really impressive climb from small scale boutique festival in 2004 to a huge beast of an event that had attracted star names such as Stevie Wonder and Elton John, Bestival 2016 took a bit of a tumble in ticket sales and found itself having to downsize. It was going to be a fan perspective review, but with as much balance as I could muster, giving the goods and bads of the scale back. It was also going to be a review that focused on not only the new acts (as this is largely a new music blog), but one of The Cure, who were headlining the festival on the Saturday night and are one of my favourite bands of all time. However, it isn’t. Here’s why….. Bestival always brings surprises and wonder, it’s one of its characteristics that keeps pulling me back year after year for that short but expensive ferry trip across the Solent from my home in Southsea, Portsmouth. Yet this year there was a particularly horrible surprise in store for me; it was the year I became unwell at the festival. Now don’t worry, it wasn’t anything that threatened my life and 6 days later I am 100% fighting fit; but for a few hours it felt like the devil was inside me – just disguised as a digested chicken burger. The biggest irony to all of this is that I work in a public health and safety environment as part of my day job. I’m therefore acutely aware of how risky festivals are and how dangerous they can be when they go wrong. Most people probably don’t stand by the main stage and question what wind load it has been designed to and what the evacuation plan for a particular area is, but I do. It’s just inbuilt in me because of my profession. Also being a little bit older than your average Bestival goer these days I tend to pamper myself a little more. I don’t camp on site, but instead pitch my tent (below) 15 minutes down the road where I can get a nice shower, a swim and at the end of the day a good night’s sleep with nobody tripping over my tent guy lines. I drive to site every day, so I don’t drink alcohol and drugs are just never something I’ve been interested in.
As far as your average punter goes I’m probably quite low risk in terms of ending up in the festival medical centre. But that’s where I was last Saturday night. On four o’clock in the afternoon whilst watching sad Scottish rockers The Twilight Sad pile on the goth guitars and Ian Curtis style dancing to a small but appreciative crowd in Bestival’s Big Top I mentioned to my friend that I felt a tiny bit odd. “I’m probably a bit dehydrated so am going to get a bottle of water.” One bottle gulped down and the feeling didn’t go away. It got worse. Quickly.
Heading towards Wolf Alice on the Main Stage I had started to turn a grey colour and was beginning to feel shivery cold. I had an urge to lie on the wet, slightly muddy grass and sleep. However, I couldn’t do that because that was the time when the sick decided to come up and out. ‘Oh god, people are going to be thinking I’ve been overdoing it the night before,’ I thought. My friend did a grand job of looking after me, supplying liquids and buying me an extra jumper from Oxfam to try and keep me warm, but the nausea and the cold just got worse and worse. By the time Ride was playing I was in the medical centre having my temperature, blood sugar and some other tests done and sitting by a heater that I was told was blowing out hot air but I couldn’t feel a thing. It was working, my body was just playing stupid games. With 20 minutes to go before The Cure I was laying on a bed that looked a bit like a body bag, feeling like absolute shit. Call me a wimp, but I’m really not very good when I get ill. I’ve generally got high pain threshold, but being unwell seems to lower it very quickly. I’m also not very good at being sick. This was only the third time in my life throwing up. I decided I was going to make it out for The Cure. I’d get through it. I wasn’t going to miss them.
We shuffled through the mud in our wellies to secure a spot quite a way back. The Cure started. At this stage I realised I really wasn’t with it at all. Robert Smith looked like a weird giant through a fish eye lens. “How are they doing that?” I asked my friend and then suddenly realised that I was watching the screens to the side of the stage thinking it was the stage itself. As I said, I really wasn’t with it. I think I was verging on hallucinating. Then I threw up again. Robert Smith’s lyrics rattled through my head: “I’ve waited hours for this, I’ve made myself so sick,” seemed particularly appropriate. It was time to go. I’d managed just over one song of their set. As I walked out the exit of Bestival and up the infamous hill of death to the car park at the top I could hear the band rolling out the hits. I was very close to crying. I'd let everyone down. It was the end of my Bestival. It’s a festival that over the years has brought me virtually everything – this year it was the lurgy. Here’s what I learnt about being ill at a festival: 1. A music festival is one of the worst places to be ill. Everyone else’s happiness makes you feel even sadder. I just wanted to crawl away and hide from it all. It felt like the whole festival was crushing down on me. 2. If you get ill, go to the medical tent. The staff there are brilliant. They kept my spirits up, gave me good expert advice and nothing was too much trouble. Some people complained about certain security staff at Bestival this year. I can’t believe anyone could ever fault the medical staff. That tent felt like a sanctuary. 3. Friends and loved ones don’t let you down in bad times. My friend who I was with never complained that we missed The Cure, ran around and got me all the things I needed to keep me safe and really was the one who convinced me that trying to watch anymore of the festival wasn’t an option. The next day, when I was utterly exhausted and found even walking a short distance incredibly tiring, my girlfriend sailed over to the Isle of Wight, packed up all my stuff for me and got me home with as much love and warmth as anyone could ask for. 4. Even when you play it safe, things can go wrong. But on the other hand I’ve been to over 80 festivals and most of them have been perfectly uneventful except for good events. 5. Although (thankfully) I was with a friend, I sometimes go to festivals on my own. I wrote about this earlier this year (click on this link to read). I wonder what would have happened if I’d been on my own at Bestival? When the food poisoning started I just wanted to lay down and sleep. What would have happened if I had done that? It’s made me seriously question if I would do another festival on my own.
On a happier musical note, and considering this is a music blog, here’s some music. Since I first discovered Alice Jemima in 2011 I’ve watched her grow as a person and artist and seen her songs find a growing audience. I’ve also featured her an awful lot on this blog. Her new single Dodged A Bullet has already picked up some play on Radio 1 care of Huw Stephens (come on daytime shows…you know you want to). Bestival has been a special festival to Alice and I. In 2012 after writing about her Alice camped with me and my friends at the festival as a regular punter. A few years later she was signed to Sunday Best Records, the label part of Bestival and the Sunday Best world and this year she played the main stage at the festival. A bit of a moment for her. A bit of a moment for me. Here’s a new remix of the current single by How To Dress Well. Alice Jemima - Dodged A Bullet (How To Dress Well Remix)
All photos were taken before the food poisoning and when the sun beamed down on the site (which it did for the majority of the weekend).
Near the end of every year I like to post my Ones to Watch for the next 12 months before all the big gun lists such as the BBC Sound of get published. Sometimes I do quite well with my tips, but at other times all my Ones to Watch list shows is how faulty my crystal ball is. Sometimes the artists don’t even release anything in the following year! This nearly appeared to be the case with Mononoke (real name Katie Taylor) one of my tips for 2014. There was a handful of songs at the start of the year in question, following the incredibly beautiful and blue ballad Alice in 2013, but then nothing. In fact the songs in question such as Barefoot And Broken and Bones and Glory seemed to mysteriously vanish from the internet. It appeared that Mononoke hadn’t even got out of first gear before the brakes were applied and the engine stopped, ignition keys thrown away. But wait, the tale continued, because lo and behold Mononoke resurfaced this summer. Alice was rereleased and there was also another song called Silence For You, the title track from an EP. It seemed that 2014 was just a false start. Now there’s nothing stopping her. Here’s another one, called Graceland which is a slowly compelling piece of chill pop with everything in the right place. So why the delay? “I think I was too keen to get going before I had any material or imagery to back up what I had already put up online,’ she told her record labels website. Footnote: For regular readers, please note that I got all the way through this post without mentioning the bath pic once. I'm losing my touch. Footnote 2: This is the final post on Breaking More Waves for a week or so whilst I'm on holiday. Mononoke - Graceland
If there’s one festival that solely changed the way I feel about music, festivals themselves and to a certain extent life (yes honestly), it’s Bestival.
Back in 2004 I’d usually attend one or two music festivals a year, which would mainly be chosen from a small list of Glastonbury, Reading, V Festival or Guildford. Then I saw an advert for a new event on the Isle of Wight that claimed it would have guaranteed sunshine, Fatboy Slim, Morris Dancers, a Kate Bush tribute act, Basement Jaxx and it would all be set in an adventure park with a toboggan ride.
That event was Bestival and in early September myself and a friend hopped on the ferry in the pouring rain to journey Robin Hill Country Park. The rain stopped as we stepped off the boat onto the island and from there a habit began.
Since that year I’ve only missed one Bestival (in 2014 when I was in America) and during that time I have seen it change and grow. I’ve also had the opportunity to DJ at the festival in stages that have included a tiny treehouse, a hidden disco and a massive big top full of thousands of people just a couple of hours before M.I.A took to the stage. I even got away with bookending the DJ set with 2 Lionel Ritchie songs; Hello for the intro and All Night Long to finish. I have so many great memories of Bestival and as with any long lasting relationship, a couple of sour ones as well. But 99% has been great - even Bestival can't control the storms that lashed down on Thursday night in 2008.
Some of the highs, besides the DJ sets, have been the weird non-musical moments; being greeted at the entrance gates one year by a bunch of grannies on motorbikes as well as two girls in an open topped double decker bus who were flashing their topless selves at the queue, the warmest smiles in the world of the ladies of the Women’s Institute Tea Tent high on the hill, attending a wedding in an inflatable church between two festival regulars known as The Dude and Flora Mouse who met on the Bestival Website Forum, cocktails in a Bollywood Bar at 11am and sitting in a pitch black open air theatre, alone at about 10pm watching The Evil Dead.
Bestival was one of the first ‘boutique’ festivals; that 2004 event had only about 3-4,000 people in attendance (don’t believe Wikipedia which states 10,000). Sure it took elements of other festivals (in particular Glastonbury and now the defunct Big Chill) but added in its own special flavours to create something vastly different to any other festival I had experienced at the time (including Glastonbury).
In 2004 it was unique, but in 2016 it is less so. There are now many festivals that have taken aspects of Bestival and grown them in their own way and this year sees the festival facing greater competition than any other. Bestival has influenced my taste in festivals and my enthusiasm for them, with the likes of Flow (in Finland), End of the Road and Latitude being some of my favourites. The bands in a dirty, smoke-laden field and nothing else approach of Reading is far less appealing these days. But with all this competition the continued growth of Bestival probably just isn’t a reality – it probably explains why this year it appears the event has downsized somewhat - although there is now the family friendly Camp Bestival, Bestival Tornoto and Common People festivals all under the Bestival umbrella.
So why do I love Bestival so much? I think it’s because it combines so many great things.
Whereas some very good, very respected festivals (for example End of the Road or Green Man) do everything with immaculate taste and a strong sense of curation, they lack the sheer eclecticism, party spirit, sense of madness and free spirited fun that Bestival at its best has. I love the fact that this year at Bestival I can go from dancing to Diplo or Fatboy Slim in a huge spaceport complete with a 20m rocket in the centre and giant astronauts firing lasers across the sky, to watching a poetry collective in an open air amphitheatre, to catching music that ranges from hip-hop to indie to pop to disco to soul to house and then go for a bounce on the world’s biggest inflatable castle. Oh and I haven’t even mentioned the fancy dress that gives the place a carnival atmosphere (and yes there’s a real carnival as well).
So if you want to come and join the party, grab a ticket by clicking here and maybe I’ll see you there? It’s my final outdoor festival of the summer, as it has been for 12 of the last 13 years.
And don’t forget, for new music fans Bestival has plenty of it, especially in the invaders of the future stage. Here’s three of my tips from this year’s line up (although I could have included many more). The future is almost here....
Alice Jemima
Breaking More Waves regular Alice Jemima signed with Sunday Best records around this time last year, so it’s no surprise to find her on the bill at its sister festival. I understand that Alice will be playing early on Friday morning on the main stage. If you’ve spent any time on this blog you’ll know how much I adore her music. Worth getting up early for.
Petite Meller
If anyone on this year’s bill meets the Bestival ideals more than Petite Meller I can’t think of them. Her live show is a joyous dressing up dance-a-thon that makes you glad to feel alive – just like Bestival.
The Japanese House My original 3rd choice was originally Rationale, but he has now cancelled, so instead I'll recommend an act from Bestival's new music stage - The Invaders of the Future. The Japanese House aka Amber Bain featured quite heavily on Breaking More Waves when she first released material last year and since that time has gone on to support The 1975 on tour - no surprise there given they are on the same label. There hasn't been that much in the way of new material recently, but with some forthcoming live dates and this Bestival show it shouldn't be too long before there's more - so get to the Invaders of the Future and get an early glimpse of what may be to come.
