SATURDAY

Before we move on, you will doubtless wish to know how the bar at Supernormal holds up before you start queueing to blind-buy 2020 tickets. Well, it may not have the myriad of cask ales offered by more high falutin’ boutique festivals (and the one I sampled was disconcertingly warm), but the fest’s own ‘Super NormAle’ is a richly hopped, super-refreshing keg IPA; a really nice brew if I’m any judge. £4.50 for a refill of your sturdy, reusable pint pot, served near ice cold, and it never seemed to run out. So that’ll do me nicely, thanks very much. (I’ve been passed a note saying that some people like to drink other things at festivals, but I don’t know anything about that.)


Several hours before that becomes an active concern however, Saturday kicks off with a breakfast of camping stove coffee and supermarket croissant, a game of 3 sided football (spectating, not playing), and a disconcertingly early set from Notts bruisers Bloody Head, playing what I imagine must be their first (and quite possibly last) pre-lunch gig.

Featuring two members of nihilistic doom titans Moloch, Bloody Head play an unremittingly filthy brand of downtuned, metalloid thug-punk, somewhat akin to ’82 demos era ‘Flag with a severely bad tummy. On both occasions when I’ve seen them previously, their vocalist has been… a bit ‘off message’, shall we say…? This time however, he’s locked in and engaged, spitting out tales of nocturnal, urban misery in that Sleaford Mods type manner which for better or worse seems de rigour for all midlands-based bands at present.

It’s probably the best set I’ve seen from the band to date but reaction from the crowd is a bit muted, presumably due to the difficulty of having to deal with this sort of thing at such an early hour, as the sun beams down and birds twitter in the trees an’ shit like that.

After a rousing set from the aforementioned Stanfield, who will not be reviewed here as a result of Conflict of Interest regulations, things get considerably more rousing in the shape of Liverpool’s Horse Bastard. Yes, Horse Bastard. I think that calls for a paragraph break, don’t you?


Not only do Horse Bastard play absolutely shit-hot, old school grindcore, absolutely acing that early Napalm Death vibe I love so much (just a bit more relentlessly frenzied n’ trebley perhaps, and shedding some of the remaining rudiments of common-or-garden metal?), they do so with a great sense of humour and bonhomie to boot. Bloody marvellous!

The dreadlocked drummer – who looks as if he was cryogenically frozen at an Extreme Noise Terror gig in 1988 – beats seventy eight shades of super-human buggery out of a single kick drum kit, whilst both guitarist and bassist make inspired use of those ‘total cut off’ pedals that I will never again question the existence of now that I’ve seen what they can do for grind’s ‘short sharp shock’ aesthetic. An extremely endearing fella, Horse Bastard’s vocalist still seems delighted with his band’s choice of moniker (and why wouldn’t he be?), telling us how much his dad was impressed by it. As indeed are the Supernormal crowd - by the half-way point of the set, an impromptu call and response chant of “Horse? BASTARD!” has taken hold. Not bad for 4pm, but by god they’ve earned it. What a top band.

Sadly, we don’t make it into the packed Vortex in time to see The Utopia Strong, depriving us of the no doubt inspiring sight of snooker legend Steve Davis hovering beatifically above his brace of analogue synths, but the sounds he and his cohorts make are clearly audible from outside, and comprise some extremely fine Ash Ra / early Tangerine Dream style kosmische business.

At around this point, my decision to gawk at a table covered in effects units waiting to be wheeled into the Vortex leads me into conversation with a member of Psychological Strategy Board, who are on next therein.


Of course, going in to see them is a no brainer, and it’s nice to discover that – as their name implies – these chaps seem keen to pull the somewhat over-stretched “hauntology” aesthetic back to its more primal roots, using contact miced pieces of metallic detritus (including, I’m told, a little bit of soil from the garden to add a particularly vital crunch), mechanical doo-hickeys and tooth brushes to create a squeeking, grinding, whirring field of sound, expanded into fathomless realms of uncanny wind tunnel atmos via their aforementioned miniature city of LED-flashing delay units.

I’m reminded of some of the earlier, more abrasive, GhostBox releases (Mount Vernon Arts Lab’s revered ‘Séance at Hobbs Lane’ in particular), and I also greatly enjoyed Psychological Research Board’s back projection, which utilised the techniques of a classic oil n’ water ‘60s light show, but drained the images of colour, leaving a muted palette of greys, creams and browns which sometimes resembled a set of tea stains on an old paperback taking on a psychotropic life of their own; and it doesn’t get much more ‘hauntological’ than that, I’m sure you’d agree.

Back outdoors and over to the ‘Red Kite’ tent stage, it proves impossible for those enjoying a late lunch / early supper to avoid Acid Cannibals’ cacophonous sound check.

This Glaswegian duo’s steadfast dedication to the gospel of high energy rock n’ roll may in theory be admirable – and their use of Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’ as intro music is inspired – but I confess I find their set pretty trying once it gets underway. Taking a kind of objection-flattening “hey hey it’s party time” approach to their craft, these guys’ determination to be 100% ON, ALL THE TIME, leaves their music feeling airless, compressing their material into a kind of meaningless mulch of Big Rock Gesture.


It’s theoretically the kind of stuff I should like of course, but a few songs in I find myself desperately wishing that they’d ease up on the gas a bit, drop that snare-hit-on-every-beat crap and lean back on the groove, just to check whether it’s still there or not, cos I can’t really tell anymore. But then, I’m not much of a Party Dude, so what the hell do I know?

(Incidentally, did you know that Winnebago Deal are still going? A friend told me the other day. I had no idea!)

A somewhat more nuanced take on the good ol’ heavy rock white-out can be found back over at the Shed stage, where Japanese quartet Qujaku (that’s “peacock” to us English speakers) have been perfectly scheduled for what I would like to think is the highly-coveted ‘sunset slot’.

Fitting neatly into a lineage of Japanese heavy psyche bands who have reached for the high branches of the elegant / ethereal (think White Heaven or Overhang Party just for starters), Qujaku could easily have found themselves at the forefront of a “third wave” of PSF-type rock bands had they emerged a few years earlier, joining groups such as Shizuka and Up-Tight in their tendency to marry the gnarled intensity of their predecessors with a slightly more accessible, Western-orientated dream-pop/shoegaze agenda.

Would we be getting into iffy territory if I were to suggest that there is something distinctively, nay classically, Japanese about Qujaku’s music that sets it apart from their contemporaries in other corners the globe? Well if so, too late, I’ve done it now. The long song which opens the band’s Supernormal set, with bassist Hiromi Oishi setting aside her thunder-broom aside to play a mournful, repetitive riff on saxophone, feels uniquely evocative of rain and neon splattered Tokyo nights, whilst the ominous, stentorian rolls and marches favoured by drummer Ryo Habuto seem to draw to some extent on traditional Japanese percussion, summoning visions of a blood-thirsty samurai army marching forth in a Kurosawa flick, even as guitarist Shuya Onuki’s rather strained, feminine vocals stretch out syllables, howling and cracking like the cry of some icy-skinned kaidan ghoul.

Naturally, a swathe of reverb covers all, but despite their studied professionalism, when Qujaku rock out, they really go for it, fuzz n’ feedback spiralling into pure noise in the last gasps of sunlight as the feathers fly and the jams run free. It’s fucking brilliant, marking the band out as a worthy addition to the storied tradition I was picking through a few paragraphs ago, and it feels like a privilege to have caught them on such rare form. None of this I daresay is lost on the Supernormal crowd, as they reception they receive is little short of rapturous.


As the applause continues, I’m hoofing my way back up the hill to catch up with Supernormal’s annual drag karaoke showdown – billed as ‘Madonna vs The Stooges’ - and to see whether my wife got her name down on the list in time for a Madonna number. She didn’t, but I did arrive in time to hear Amy from Grey Hairs belting out ‘1969’, having naturally chosen the right side of this particular argument. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like Madonna well enough, but there’s only one way for the pure at heart to go here, y’know?

As you might well imagine, the world according to drag karaoke begs to differ however, and a degree of cultural friction is soon in evidence as the third Madonna song in a row is met with a belligerent shout of “MORE STOOGES” from the contingent of sturdy, band t-shirt men standing impassively at stage right. I stand with you my balding brothers, but this isn’t really our scene, let’s face it. Trip to the bar?


It has now been about fifteen years since I once saw Blood Stereo (or was it one of Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance’s other groups – I forget) supporting Sonic Youth at Brixton Academy, and drew a comic strip review of the gig in which I cruelly wrote off their performance as a boring and desultory waste of time, resembling, as I recall, “the sound of a busy crisp factory”). There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then however; my ears have opened and my tastes widened, and these folks are after all stalwarts of the particular strain of early ‘00s UK underground psyche that I dearly love, so…. it’s high time I gave them another shot, right?

Sad to report therefore that the few minutes I manage to witness of their performance back at the Vortex stage proves just as obtuse and unengaging today as it did back then. Morose, rats-in-the-walls scuffling and squeaking door hinges seem to be the main dishes on offer here, insofar as I can tell from poking my head through the black curtain (I’m reminded of Chris Morris’s “DJ Boiled Mouse” with his “creepy wisp of a noise”). Whatever, man. Sitting by the fire watching gangs of feral kids burn marshmallows proves considerably more rewarding.

A considerably less esoteric prospect, Petbrick comprise the duo of Wayne Adams (Melting Hand, Big Lad, the Hominid Sounds label) on synths, vocals and samples, and Iggor Cavalera (Sepultura) - no less - on drums.

With thick-framed glasses, carefully trimmed goatee and a tasteful short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, Mr Cavalera certainly looks pretty far removed from one’s mental image of “the drummer from Sepultura” this days, but his ‘brick shithouse’ physique nonetheless attests to the kind of muscular prowess necessitated by such a role, and indeed, the intermittent outbursts of cyborg-level hyper-blast he delivers during Petbrick’s set are jaw-dropping.

Taken as a whole, their set is an anxious and rather punishing affair, predicated on “tension and release” principle which sees Cavalera’s onslaughts, together with Adams’ industrial noise white-outs and post-apocalyptic battle-cries (which reminded me more than anything of Alec Empire’s Teutonic theatrics in Atari Teenage Riot way back when), interspersed with murky, brooding passages of hissing abstraction, whirring rotorblades and incomprehensible sample chatter.

The tightly packed crowd react to this… weirdly. There is a wild, unhinged feeling running through the tent, as the unpredictable malevolence of the music leaves would-be moshers uncertain whether they’re coming or going, whilst a number of people meanwhile seem to be peaking on something which I would imagine is probably best avoided, on the basis of the effect it seemed to be having on these poor test subjects.

Through much of the set, a wild-eyed woman dances at the front of the stage, Stacia-style, initially earning looks of alarm from the band, although she seems to be maintaining a greater degree of physical co-ordination than is traditionally maintained be those who are tripping balls. As arms and legs writhe in the front rows, assorted worse-for-wear freaks join her at various points, and the whole thing basically seems a hairs-breadth away from collapsing into chaos. Which suits the music just fine, to be perfectly honest. Slight ‘Mad Max rave’ vibes creeping in around the edges…

After this hair-raising spectacle, a more-or-less headlining set from Belgium pop-punks Cocaine Piss is not exactly what I am looking for, pretty much confirming my knee-jerk suspicion of a band who would willingly name themselves after the two substances which I least wish music to remind me of.

They certainly bring a ton of energy, I’ll give ‘em that, and if they’d popped up six or seven years ago, when I was still working through the queasy hangover from whole 2010 garage- pop wave, I’d probably have loved the little fuckers, blanket barre chord distortion, hectoring air raid siren vox and all. These days though, their music feels like drinking a bottle of tomato ketchup for dinner – a content-free toxic burn of refined sugar and salt that I can well do without.

Thereafter, our evening comes to a traumatic end as we follow an ominous sign-post pointing toward the unlit depths of the woods. Here, we end up selling our souls to Satan, ruining my favourite t-shirt in the process as we are baptised anew in vile, demonic emanations. Which is frankly the last thing you need when you’re camping.




SUNDAY

Keenly aware that I’ve not yet managed to sample the wide variety of activities and events offered at Supernormal beyond the realm of rock bands (and Satanism), I make a relatively early start on Sunday in order to catch some of the festival’s spoken word programme.

Perhaps known to some as a member of ertwhile Pickled Egg records stalwarts Oddfellows Casino, David Bramwell has apparently now won himself a rep as a “master storyteller” (quoth the festival programme), with a number of books to his name, and his audio-visual enhanced lecture ‘The Cult of Water’ indeed supports this contention, presenting a approachable, engaging and rather touching take on the kind of thing that back in my day we used to call “psychogeography”.

Leaning more toward the kind of mythic/romantic magical realism pioneered by Alan Moore (who is indeed consulted and quoted during the presentation) than the gnomic abstraction of Iain Sinclair, Bramwell smooths things out here to the extent that one can almost picture him fronting one of those presenter-focused, “my journey to the heart of…” type documentaries on BBC 4. And indeed, consulting his website reveals he has indeed produced programmes for Radios 3 and 4.

Too mainstream for Supernormal? Well, the content he dredges up for ‘The Cult of Water’ is uniquely interesting, honestly presented and generally legit, losing nothing for the comparative accessibility of its presentation, so no such accusations from me.

Essentially, Bramwell tells the story here of his life-long interest in England’s lost rivers, ranging back to the experiences of his own childhood and re-framing the story of the Industrial Revolution as an extended conflict between the matriarchal power of the pagan river goddess Danu and the masculine forges of Vulcan. Intriguing historical/cultural side-bars and head-spinning gobbets mystic imagery are pulled willy-nilly from the landscape of the North of England along the way, but Bramwell somehow never lets the linear flow of his fanciful yet tangible central narrative slip, making for a rich, rewarding and thought-provoking trip – highly recommended, should he be popping up to perform it near you at any point in the future.

Next up is The Quietus editor John Doran, who has certainly come a long way since the days when he was merely a struggling music journo hosting DJ nights at the Mucky Pup in Islington. According to the Supernormal festival programme, he has attained the status of a “modern seer”, no less. Good on you John.

Its existence justified by the sublime pun in its title alone, Doran’s presentation ‘Selected Ambient Walks’ takes the form of a good-natured ramble through the strange, subterranean mythology of Cornwall, and the myriad ways in which it has informed the work of Aphex Twin over the years.

Whilst the tangible links to Aphex output sometimes become strained, Doran nonetheless makes an excellent case for the age-old traditions and provincial isolation of Richard D. James’ native county have helped define the knotty menace and impish surrealism of musician’s unique aesthetic and public persona. In the process, he delivers a vivid picture of the dark and psychotropic undercurrents of Cornish culture, ensuring that we will never look at St Michael’s Mount, pasties or the ruins of some old tin mine in quite the same way ever again.

Feeling rather like the contents of an old “Haunted Cornwall” paperback ripped apart and soiled with noxious party drugs, sea-side deprivation and ear-rupturing bass, ‘Selected Ambient Walks’ is loads of fun, and again, comes highly recommended should Mr Doran ever pitch up in yr area for a spoken word slot.


Later on Sunday afternoon, I continue to eschew loud music, instead turning up to attend a guided tour of the Brazier’s Park house – essentially a 17th century farmhouse transformed into a nigh-on fantastical monstrosity of Strawberry Hill gothic by a Vice Lord of the Admirality in the 1790s - conducted by a member of the “intentional community” which has abided in the property since it was purchased by social reformers and progressive psychologists Norman & Dorothy Glaister in 1950.

For the sake of brevity, I will direct you both to the house’s Wikipedia page and the community’s website to learn more about this strange and remarkable place, but needless to say, tramping around the building’s cramped and dusty corridors – their vibe pitched somewhere between a stately home, a private psychiatric institution and a destitute rural art school – with a large group of booted, unkempt festival-goers proved an extremely strange experience.

Unfortunately, circumstances (such as work on Monday) dictated that my ride back to The Smoke departed Supernormal only a short while after the house tour concluded. I dearly wish I could have stuck it out to have stuck it out till the end, but hey, such is the fate of us last minute hangers-on.

As we hefted our bags and trudged back to the parking area, Glaswegian duo Verba Mansa were warming up over in the red tent, their wah-wah drenched improvised psych rock reverberated across the rolling hills and fields bordering the festival site. Damn, it sounded good. [UPDATE 12/9/19: It appears this band is actually Yerba Mansa, and their music can be found here. Thanks Jona! - see comments.]

Attending Supernormal last month was an extremely uplifting experience; a rare glimpse of a possible future that temporarily defies the black plummet into dystopian oblivion that our society otherwise seems dead set upon. For all the greatness I’ve duly reported above however, I can’t help but weep for all that I missed. A reportedly great set from experimental guitarist Jon Collins in the beatific back yard ‘Barn’ area; a performance of Eric Satie piano pieces in the Brazier’s Park house; an incendiary late night DJ set from London’s Proteus, and, on Sunday night, electronic Ugandan wedding music from Otim Alpha followed by a closing set from one-off Iron Maiden tribute band Electric Matthew. Just imagine.

Next year, I’ll be endeavouring to make it on-site ASAP and stay put to the bitter end, but so will many others, so… let’s see how it goes, eh? (I hope someone drops me a reminder soon as tickets are on sale.)

Labels: Acid Cannibals, Blood Stereo, Bloody Head, Cocaine Piss, David Bramwell, festivals, Horse Bastard, John Doran, live reviews, Petbrick, Psychological Strategy Board, Qujaku, Supernormal, Verba Mansa