The costumes have been returned to their dressing up boxes; the mud has dried out and been brushed from the boots; newly-learned dance workshop moves have become vague; reality has crept back into view… The Shambala Festival has packed itself away for another year – and, my oh my, what an incredible time it was.

Shambala is a 3-day voyage of discovery. Yes, there’s a programme – and an impressive one at that – featuring acts and activities as diverse as chant-arousing Dizraeli & The Small Gods on the main Shambala stage, the jaw-dropping Cirque de Freq in the Kamikaze tent, min-beast safaris in the Permaculture garden and the Cock Drawing Club in the Random Workshop Tent. But the most magical Shambala experience is a haphazard one, in which the clocks stop and the concept of time is snubbed as punters follow their ears, noses and tapping toes into the most thrilling and unexpected of entertainments.

Noémie Ducimetière creeps out The Compass House of Lunacy

Poet Rosie Carrick in the Wandering Word yurt

Bewitching bewilderment was the lifeblood of the Compass House of Lunacy, in which the ghosts of French songstresses (Noémie Ducimetière) and high-kicking, be-corseted madams ruled the stage. Just around the corner, the Wandering Word yurt beckoned dazed punters into its cosy folds to have their ears tickled by pirate poets and their imaginations led through eerie worlds summoned by storytelling eccentrics.

After Friday’s inaugural explorations and familiarisations, on Saturday Shambala donned its gladrags and revelled in magnificent peculiarities and with newfound friends. For Saturday was the festival’s official fancy dress day (not that that prevented costumes from coming out to play all weekend…), and was topped by the spectacular Shambala parade.

Shambala blows: Getting down with the didgeridoo

Peeping over the debauched brow of Saturday night, Shambala’s Sunday air was thick with drowsiness as the festival rubbed the night before from its eyes, picking up lost wellies, rogue headdress feathers and the first few threads of the real world. It was on Sunday that the Healing Area really came into its own, offering to knead the weariness from revellers’ muscles, revive their vocal chords in the Music & Voice workshops and fix them a jolly good old cup of chai to nestle between their crossed legs as they flanked the crackling camp fire.

So, there’s a whole year until Shambala returns. Will it be the same? Of course not, and that’s exactly why we’ll love it. Expect the unexpected – and in the meantime keep the Shambala spirit of discovery alive by forgetting your watch every once in a while…

After a hurried fish ‘n’ chip supper by the Quay near where I work on Friday evening, I enjoyed my hours’ journey to Shobrook Park, in mid Devon, with the promising late afternoon glow of a sunny Bank Holiday weekend.

Arriving through the old stone gates and through an avenue of trees, I saw the orange flags of Aeon, luscious greenery and silver lakes. Bit like Camelot.

On greeting my already established friends, I was shown their fruits of labour: wooden spoons which they carved from small logs in the Campcraft workshop. After thee hours of chipping away under the trees they had rather crude Goldilocks spoons, decorated in little smatters of their own blood and proudly sporting large blisters on their thumbs. The main subject then turned on to our beloved Lost Horizon tent, and where was it? My friends had looked out for it all day but sadly it wasn’t to make an appearance. This was a brilliant cushion scattered tent-come lounge area, chai teas, blessed rose custard and madder-red onion bhajis, the sweetest you’ll ever find. It also held open-mic sessions and boasted a very DIY spa in the outside tepee area, with a paddling pool plunge bath, Native American style sauna, and shanty showers with lots of naked hippies with free tours offered. Hopefully Lost Horizon will return next year.

But on to what was there to entertain between the bands. There was a Recycle Centre chap with a stall called Release Your Inner Vandal. You could smash up some old 80s crockery with 3 balls for a £1. We rescued a charming yellow fish dish who escaped his mosaic project destiny because you could purchase the bric-a-brac for pennies. Book Cycle was also crammed full of treasures again this year. A volunteer-led charity where you can pay whatever you wish, the money goes towards tree-planting across the UK and to schools in countries such as Ghana.
Tents for psychic readings, mental health, massage, cupcakes, morning Tai Chi and a bit of second hand clothes/fancy dress (which unfortunately wasn’t as bountiful as the year before; we had hoped to pick up some animal-type garb for this year’s World Safari theme.)

Aeon Festival t-shirt, illustrated by me!

We sought out the No Guts No Glory stall which sold this years Aeon Fest tees, which yours truly illustrated and enjoyed some little tea cups of complimentary champers.  Workshops for the children included clay creations, face paints, hair decorations, circus skills and Punch and Judy.  We started off feeding on yummy falafel and feeling quite virtuous, and there were certainly loads of tasty, healthy, nourishing food for the veggies, even a Make Your Own Veggie Burger stall which my friend tried in the early morning. Unfortunately she didn’t quite like her mushed-up mushroom burger and basically described it as actual poo – oh dear.  All this healthy food soon sent us on a meat hunt, and then we found the pies, lots of lovely pies for only £1.75 from the fantastic Butchers stall which sold local produce and other Devonshire goodness. Breakfasting on bacon and egg butties and marmite on toast to a bit of gentle Dub in the mornings at a graffiti decorated open air cafe is bliss.

The biggest attraction at Aeon for me and my friends is the beautiful settings, the affordability and the cleanliness. Each camp had a mound built up to accommodate bonfires and logs for everyone to gather round, to discover strangers’ life stories in one conversation and warm up the cockles before heading back to our tents. Aeon has been voted as one of the Top Ten festivals with clean loos by the UK Festival Awards. As their budget-fantastic £1.50 program states, ‘If you spot a poo loo please report it to a steward who can get a message to one of us to clean it up.’ And so they did – the portaloos were positively peachy.

The Vintage Movie Bus

We observed the Sports Day races on Saturday afternoon, this was a humorous event to behold including lots of tumbled bodies and broken organic eggs. Prizes were fabulous medals of animals sprayed gold on ribbons.  After a local Dunstable Farm chocolate ice cream, we visited the recently restored, one-of-a-kind Vintage Movie Bus which had been salvaged, cleaned up and put back into service, and now works with local projects and museums as a real cinema and to bring old documentaries to the public in it’s unusual setting. We were treated to the local archive film Hippies and Hooligans. For Devon this meant cute little children scamming a few extra pennies for Guy Fawkes day, and a few youths sat on curbs or hanging around public lavatories. It mainly documented the ‘youths’ at their deportment lessons, and young lads acting out restaurant etiquette. Not exactly This is England, but very amusing and queer.

World music being played in Cabaret Voltaire ended up being the highlights for us this weekend, in particular RSVP Bhangra hailing from Bristol got everyone learning energetic moves such as ‘Windscreen Washers’, ‘Screwing in Light Bulbs’ and ‘Picking Up a Tenner and Still Looking Cool.’ Everywhere you looked the crowd was full of bumpkins in sync. K’Chevere, an afro-Cuban salsa group that sounded like Holly Golightly’s party mix tape, also got our feet moving nineteen to the dozen.

Doll and The Kicks

We all marvelled at Philip Henry and his tremendous talents on the steel guitar and harmonica, a mix of American and Indian sounds with a bit of harmonica beat boxing thrown in. He was also joined by a lady fiddle player who really was quite beautiful to watch. I imagined some kind of romantic drama between them. They are also part of the band Roots Union who played later in the evening, unfortunately I find the singer sounds too much like James Blunt to enjoy their lovely music, it was all about the harmonica for me. Inflatable Buddha and their comedic singer entertained with fun gypsy music. On the Prophecy stage we took in a bit of polished rock and roll from Karen O-esque Doll and The Kicks. I missed some of the headlining acts such as The Boxettes and Acoustic Ladyland but some of the best moments for me and my friends at Aeon are the ska and gypsy bands, such as Backbeat Soundsystem and Melosa suiting everyone’s drunken enthusiasm to dance with great energy and celebration at the foot of the stage.

Sunday’s grey sky and showers came along. We lounged in anoraks on the grassy ampi-theatre next to a man with a giant Lego head and a man with a potato/sausage/apple/fried egg and fork piece of millinery and watched Glorious Chorus fill the stage in red evening finery, as they began to sing ‘Oh Happy Day’ the sun burst through and everyone cheered, and I got teary eyed, as usual during happy moments such as these when feeling tired and generally chuffed with everything. Another Aeon, another perfectly agro-free weekend, not just a music festival, but a spot in the country which is a community event, where feathered children run free with dogs, families dance, teenagers dress up like hippies, rock stars and ravers, and where the rest of us can get involved, get a bit older and party gracefully. Happy fifth birthday Aeon, see you next year!

Cowboys galloping down the hall on ‘neeeiigh’ing broomstick steeds; Thundercats high-kicking in shrunken primary colour pyjama sets and felt-tip pen facepaints; Ewok hunters on a mission through Endor, branch spears brandished and costume jewellery jangling… Every time my brother and I emerged from our childhood dressing up box, we did so as reborn beings – sometimes scaled, othertimes boasting barnets naively shorn by blunt Crayola scissors, and always adding to our mother’s list of rushed patch-up jobs. Remove teaspoon antennas from balaclava; scrub ink-stained cheeks; clip son’s whole head.

Gabby Young and Other Animals. Image: Joseph Lee

For hours we rampaged in our otherworldly guises, worries of school tests superseded by raw terror of the giant ape hot on our heels (our dad’s friend Ted also enjoyed dressing up. His repertoire included a gorilla suit) or the snapping alligator circling expectantly beneath the plank some called the kitchen table.

Shambala 2010

And one day the lid of the dressing up box was lowered, unceremoniously, for what turned out to be the final time. Ewoks, indians, aliens, mermaids and imaginative hybrids of all of the above played out their death-defying scenes in the dark innards of boxes – not just ours, but Halkirk’s and Halifax’s, Ramsgate’s and Rhyl’s – as cracks crept through their parched facepaint palettes and the first fine layers of dust settled on their lids.

Shambala 2010

But whispers of a weekend are heard on the wind; a weekend for which hands rub dust from the tops of forgotten chests that yawn wide to reveal feathers and sparkles and wooden swords of old; a weekend that brings badass bass and acoustic amazements together with knife-throwing, tea dances and wondering wordsmiths. It’s peopled by the curious, the creative and the downright cuckoo; its tents bear the names of The Lost Picture Show, The Compass of Lunacy and Twist & Spout; it’s powered by wind, water and waste cooking oil – and it’s called Shambala.

Alejandro Toledo and the Magic Tombolinos

Shambala 2010

In a secret location somewhere in Northamptonshire, the Shambala festival bubble will emerge on Thursday 26th August – filled with spectacular and outlandish music, games, adventures and theatre – and will pop for another year on Monday 30th. Location details are known to ticketholders alone – and to be one, you’ll need to sign your August Bank Holiday weekend (and perhaps a little drop of sanity) away via the Shambala website. And, of course, hope that you can still wriggle into that old matching pyjama set…

Field Day is basically everything that I want from a music festival; the line-up was so well crafted that its definitely – in my book – the top festival for music of the moment.

The first band we caught was Memory Tapes, who played a perfectly lovely set and sounded great, but not good enough to keep me there for the entirety of it. With Memory Tapes it feels like you’ve seen it all after a few tracks, and at Field Day there were so many incredible bands on that often you can’t catch whole sets. It’s an exhausting one day event, with people running around Victoria Park like eight-year-olds on sugar highs, trying to see as much as possible.

We were lured away from Memory Tapes by the promise of a Mount Kimbie set. They played the Bloggers Delight tent; to a crowd so big it spilled out and was about five people deep. That turned out to be a recurring theme when it came to the Bloggers Delight tent. We couldn’t hear much because we were stuck in the middle of the sound clash between two tents, so we moved on.

Steve Mason played the main stage and I was really impressed with the set. Not being a fan of his solo stuff or The Beta Band, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the middle-aged guy dressed in sportswear. The outcome was a gripping set – in fact the only one of two sets I saw in its completion, and won me over as a genuine fan.

Last time I saw Lightspeed Champion, it felt like something was missing from the set, but that wasn’t a problem this time. Wearing some questionably short shorts, Dev and his band rattled through a set consisting of mainly new tracks without disappointment. Field Day, or so I learnt, is the only festival where some nut job is likely to run Dev and his friend into you. Some people are such big fans that they can’t help but run at him, swing him around and then bolt off as the shame of the display slowly sets in.

After much pleading from a friend, we went to check out Joker and Mc Nomad. I was promised it’d be good and it was my surprise set of the festival. The format of a DJ with a couple of guys MCing over dubstep worked perfectly and, unlike the other kinds of music at the fest, was still a relatively unexposed sound. Of everyone I saw, I recommend checking out Joker above all others.

Then it was time for Hudson Mohawke, who I was desperately excited to watch. Hudson Mohawke played the Bloggers Delight tent and, of course, there was no space. It was a massive disappointment not to be able to see, but being short I’m mostly used to it. Not being able to hear properly was even more disappointing and we gave up after a couple of songs.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble were the band that the majority of my friends wanted to see, so we had a little chill laying in the sunshine and having a listen. It was interesting for a couple of songs, but I didn’t like it. I got bored after a few songs, but everyone else around me seemed to love it. It was a welcome rest after a hectic afternoon of running around, but they didn’t win me over.

Also playing the main stage were Caribou – the second full set I caught and my absolute highlight. They were beautiful live. I find sometimes when instrumental songs are played live, if the band hasn’t got my attention, my mind starts to wander. Not with Caribou. They had the crowd gripped from the moment the band walked onto the stage, kept their attention throughout the set and performed flawlessly.

Chapel Club closed the Adventures in the Beetroot Field stage and were an interesting choice, considering that they were the darkest band of the day. I loved their set, but sadly I was one of barely 200 people watching. Everyone else, it seems, had flocked to the main stage to see Phoenix. It was a shame, because they were so refreshingly different to everyone else who played that day, but I guess it’s pretty impossible to compete against one of 2010’s biggest bands.

The only thing about Field Day that I wasn’t in love with, was the bar prices. Pretty costly for a one day event, the bar added 10p on to every can sold. I assume it was to encourage recycling, but what it seemed to result in was a few people walking around with bin bags, scooping up as many cans as they could in order to get a cheaper beer. Very strange indeed.

With a flawless line up, a pretty chilled crowd and some fun games held throughout the day, it was perhaps the most fun I’ve squeezed into 12 hours all summer and without fail the first festival I’ll be buying tickets for next year.

All photographs by Anh Ho.

For anyone who doesn’t know, The Big Chill Festival is located at Eastnor Castle Deer Park in Herefordshire, surrounded by beautiful peaks and greenery. Being near the Welsh border means the weather can be a tad erratic. However, aside from the odd brief (but powerful) downpour the weather was pleasant and sunny by Sunday (which I’m sure came as a relief to the nude participants of Spencer Tunick’s art piece on Sunday morning.)

A first glance at the festival map gave the impression that The Big Chill would be anything but! I realised that unless I made a mental list of what I’d like to see, I’d end up in the Cinema tent all weekend (City of God, Ponyo, Moon, Eagle vs Shark, the list was huge and impressive!)

Out of fear I chose a location at random and began my Big Chill experience at 10.00am with the press event for Bompas and Parr’s Ziggurat of Flavour. My press pack told me that Bompas and Parr are ‘Food Architects’, and the Ziggurat turned out to be what was essentially a large pyramid with an inside maze and an exit via a rather steep slide. Entrants who went through the maze would inhale atomised Fairtrade fruit juice, freshly squeezed on site (I saw one man unsuccessfully trying to pay the juicers for a cup of orange juice). Inhalation, apparently, would give you at least one of your five a day. Now whether this is scientifically proven or not I don’t know, but a slide is a slide and it is always going to be a crowd pleaser. If, by some miracle, you manage to ingest an orange via your lungs then that’s an added bonus. The Ziggurat proved immensely popular for the entire weekend and it was good to see Fairtrade’s presence on site.

My first musical highlight was seeing Mike Patton of Faith No More fame singing Italian Pop Songs from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s with his new and unusual vehicle: Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane & The Heritage Orchestra. Going through all my bootleg copies of live Mr Bungle performances I notice there is one track that doesn’t feature on the studio albums but becomes increasingly popular as part of the live setlist. It is a very lively cover of Adriano Celentano’s ‘24,000 Baci’ sung in Italian by singer Mike Patton. This cover may be evidence that Patton had this project in mind from as early as the mid 90’s. Having missed Mike Patton with Faith No More last year I was eager to see this unusual performance. I’ve been a fan of a lot of Patton’s recent outfits, however, the more avant-garde his music has become, the less coherent his singing has become. This is a shame considering the vocal range at his disposal, so to hear him within the constraints of Italian classics, backed by a 40 piece orchestra, choir and electronic sounds, was a real high-point.

Chrome Hoof by Sophie Parker

But sometimes its the acts you don’t know that blow you away and on Saturday that’s just what happened. When Chrome Hoof arrived on The Deer Park Stage at 2:45pm, I was immediately swept away by the singers consistently electrifying performance. Actually, scratch that, the entire bands consistently electrifying performance. They sounded like a bizarre breed of electro-funk and dressed with a retro sci-fi Parliament aesthetic. As the first act on The Deer Park Stage on Saturday I couldn’t understand why they weren’t higher up the billing. It certainly gave all the proceeding acts a lot to live up to (and made Lily Allen’s Sunday night performance all the more lackluster by contrast).

Abigail Brown birds by Sophie Parker

The workshops were something I had been really looking forward to, particularly Selvedge Magazine’s collaboration with Abigail Brown to produce the Make a Bird workshop. This was Selvedge’s first foray into festivals and I was interested to see if the magazine could extend its visual approach into the workshop format. Their endeavor certainly paid off and the tent was packed from open till close each day. The material for the birds was a colourful mish-mash of fabric and snippets supplied by well known fabric designers such as Cath Kidston and Sanderson. As an added bonus, the staff of Selvedge and the lovely Abigail Brown were lending a hand for the duration. The result was a beautiful flock of hand-made birds strung from ribbons on a nearby tree which flitted and spun in the breeze (how tempted I was to take one!). Selvedge proved they are a dab hand at creating events that are festival compatible and I look forward to seeing more of their engaging ideas soon.

Patrick Wolf by Sophie Parker

Another great visual performance came from Patrick Wolf. The first time I saw him was at Latitude ‘07 from the very back of The Word arena. I knew I wanted to hear more and several albums later I saw him again in Shepherds Bush giving a farewell concert (do musicians in their 20’s really need to say farewell?) before locking himself up in Hackney to compose new material. A couple of years later and he’s back and high up the billing. His performance was just how I remembered it and both new and old material sounded tight. Something I have always enjoyed about Wolf’s performance is his energy and theatrical body language on stage and he didn’t disappoint. First song in and he was already sitting on the edge of the stage driving the nearby crowd wild. All that seemed missing was a good light show to enhance the mood, however as is the way with the open air stages, the light shows are pretty much reserved to the headliners.

I had made a conscious decision to avoid the film tents because I knew that if I sat to watch one then I’d sit and watch them all. However, when a matador approached me and gave me a flyer for Bunny and the Bull at the Dereliction Drive-In (21:30, open-air, sitting either on the floor or on old car seats) I felt I might as well check it out. I had already recently seen it once and it hadn’t really grabbed me. Not that it was a bad film, the sets were inventive, the actors were spot on, but it just didn’t work for me. However, when I heard that the band who recorded the soundtrack would be performing the entire score live, I felt it would be at least worth watching the first 10 minutes. On arrival it turned out to be a lot more than a live soundtrack, the entire film was interspersed with fun games based on sections of the film, including a crab (stick) eating contest with one of the lead actors: Simon Farnaby (that conker-headed bloke from the Charlie episode of The Mighty Boosh). I ended up staying for the majority, it was an amazing reworking of the film that, combined with cider, made all the film’s jokes ten times as funny.

Sunday was an early start for me. The arena was closed to all but press and off I headed at 8.30am for the set up of Spencer Tunick’s new photograph comprised entirely of nude festival goers painted luminous shades of yellow, blue, black, and red. The press were kept at a respectful distance (not that it made any difference thanks to telephoto lenses) and Tunick was positioned on a cherry-picker above his nude minions giving orders via a megaphone. The general feeling was weirdly positive, aided by Tunick’s friendly directions that kept his models in good spirits (considering he hadn’t had to pay anyone a modelling fee he was probably ecstatic!) Once the shots had been taken and the models disbanded it was surprising just how many did not put their clothes back on immediately, even coming up close to us in the press pit for a quick snap. Funnier still was the amount of people who didn’t wash off their body paint for the remainder of the festival, leading to some groups looking like background characters from The Simpsons. The rest of Sunday was pretty relaxed with good performances from both Magic Numbers and Newton Faulkner, who filled the stage with his charming personality and humour.

There are countless other little distractions that made up my festival experience and that’s the great thing about The Big Chill- each area is its own little world with its own brand of unique magic. Needless to say I had an amazing time and, providing the maximum occupancy doesn’t swell to epic proportions, I’d be happy to go again and again.

This will be my third year at Aeon, and for me it’s been a wonderful, stress-free experience, no queues, suffocating crowds or over-priced disgusting burgers. It describes itself as a ‘Shoestring Boutique festival’ and is set in the beautiful surroundings in mid Devon. A grassy amphitheatre precedes the main stage which sits on the edge of a lake, you are able to camp under the trees and gather around wood burners with friends and strangers. There is no sponsorship or big branding so it’s one of the most naturally visually pleasing festivals around and there’s something about this festival which has a very simplistic charm which embodies what a music festival only really needs to be – friends, music and fresh air.

There are lots of sweet put-together events that take place throughout the day. Last year I was very tempted by the Speed Date plus free meal for a fiver, a hair fascination workshop and a wood cutting class so that you can whittle down your very own wooden spoon from a branch, but of course was too busy frequenting the bar and resting on the grass whilst soaking up the surrounds. I was however encouraged to take part in the bubble wrap race. Once I was wrapped head to toe in bubble wrap, I thought as we all lay there like grubs that I was in for some kind of relaxing spa treatment. Unfortunately we were asked to try and get to our feet, and race each other round a tree and back. I was just left slumped on the floor, immobile from laughter.

Bubble wrap racing at Aeon. Photography by Faye West.

I managed to catch the super busy founder of the fest, Niki Portus for a few words whilst the count down for Aeon is on.

Aeon is in it’s 5th year this August, and I know that festivals tend to change quite a bit every year as crowds get bigger and organisers think up new ways to run an efficient festival. Sometimes this is for the worst! What were your goals for organising this year’s Aeon, and was there much you wanted to change or improve on from last year?

I’m a great believer in if it ain’t broke don’t fix it! I think we have a pretty good formula that seems to work and people really like the laid back feel of it all. We had to put the ticket price up this year which was really hard to get my head round but we’ve expanded on production and line up to reflect that – I think it has been more important though to improve on areas where we know we had problems.

We had a big debrief meeting straight after last year and the main area I wanted to get right was the camping as it filled up very quickly last year and was pretty rowdy. So this year we have added an extra area for noisy camping right next to the main site and kept family camping in the old area away from the rowdy bunch. Some of the programming needed adapting a bit but mostly it’s about us wanting to put on a good show and keep it fun for everyone as well as the element of a few surprises. I guess it’s about being realistic about accommodating natural growth as the word spreads, such as having more loos, better fencing and more security but not so it’s in your face. Little background things that cost more money but can make a big difference to the experience for people.

The main thing about Aeon for me is that it has always been about independent artists and strictly no sponsorship or outside funding – the first year was me taking out a small bank loan and maxing the credit cards but I’ve paid the loan off now *lol* and one day I might actually pay off the credit cards! The festival has sustained itself though for the past 4 years on ticket income and by running our own bar on site so it seems to work. I think people like the fact that we’re home grown – it’s very much like a big family now.

What do you think it is about Aeon that makes it so special and magical? And are you still achieving what you set out to do?

I have no idea! But we have an amazing crew who come up with all sorts of great ideas and are very creative. I think whilst I never thought it would get this far when I first set out on this journey I do feel its stuck to it’s original goal – that’s something I feel very strongly inside but it’s hard to explain! For me personally it’s definitely a love affair – I’ve don’t draw a salary or wage and if I manage to pay myself back for even something like my phone bill it’s a small miracle.

We’re pretty low key with our publicity as I’m always scared of over hyping things. It’s like ‘wow this is the best festival in the world ever’ well no actually it’s one of over 500 festivals in the country and everyone has their favourites for different reasons – you can’t please all the people all the time and there will always be one or two who think it’s crap, that’s just human nature. You see it all over the forums and I always think ‘god please don’t let that be us’ but you can’t control it. Freedom of speech and all that. This is the first year we will possibly have some ‘proper’ festival press on site – I’m terrified they’ll be rude!

Illustration by Faye West.

Aeon is a wonderfully afordable festival compared to many others. Is it difficult keeping the cost down, and if so do you think the big festies such as Glastonbury are overpriced?

To the first question – in a word – yes – it’s very difficult keeping costs down! Just the little things like having a full time accountant now all adds up behind the scenes. But I don’t think you can compare it to the likes of Glastonbury – the production that goes in to that one is awe inspiring – in fact The History of Glastonbury is like my bible *lol* I find the stories from behind the scenes really heart warming and you know as an organisation they have set the bench mark for all events – their management structure and Health & Safety awareness is amazing. I like the concept of ’boutique festivals’ though – hence our tongue in cheek ’shoestring boutique’ moniker.

Equally though there is only so much one person can do in a day and for most people special times involve having a laugh with a group of friends not standing in queues for toilets or over priced warm beers, or spending hours hunting for your friends because you went off on a drunken ramble. That said there are two sorts of people – those who go to festivals and those who work at festivals. All my friends who work at festivals prefer it when they’re behind the scenes making stuff happen.

I do really feel as well that just throwing money at something doesn’t make a party and personally I get a kick from doing things on a tight budget. The crew know I’m tight as a gnat’s arse! We’ve got some awesome artists this year for a really good price and I think part of the reason is the agents know we’re doing it all for the right reasons. It’s not about the big headliners for us – it’s about showcasing the underground well regarded stuff that if you know your music makes you go ‘wow that’s cool’ and if you don’t you know you can take a chance and see something you wouldn’t normally see and it’ll be really good. I did contact a couple of agents about some bigger acts this year out of curiosity to see how much it would be and they were like ‘Aeon who?’

Keeping the balance between family friendly and cool party is in the top 5 of my list of requirements for definite. As a single parent I want to know my son is safe.

Shobrooke Park Estate, Crediton – where Aeon is held.

Aeon takes place in a beautiful part of Devon. It appears to be a very eco-friendly event, is this something important to you, and if so has this been an easy practice to take on?

Honestly? I think it can be easy to over hype being ‘Green’ and in fact not take into account how important it is to support the local economy. I live in a little village on Dartmoor and work at the local preschool there – my family have been there over 30 years so we see firsthand how rural economies struggle and last year I joined a committee to build and start up a village shop after our one was closed down.

At the festival it’s therefore important we use local traders and cafes and encourage them to source locally. There are various community groups from Crediton who run things and fund raise on site as well. We struggled with our recycling last year but this year we have a proper green team on board to take the pressure off us on site and the company we use for our skips has their own processing plant just up the road from the festival site that recycles 85% of stuff. The policies behind landfill are actually really strict these days. We dish out bin bags to everyone and encourage them to take care of the park but in reality we live in a disposable culture that drives me up the wall. I think this isn’t helped by festivals being very fashionable at the moment and companies doing cheap deals on tents and welly boots means that many punters still feel they can leave stuff behind even at small festivals like ours. It’s definitely getting worse for events and certainly puts costs up. We encourage car sharing as well and this year are trying out Festival Coaches to see if a shuttle service from Exeter works too.

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Last year I spent a ridiculous amount of money on a larger festival, ensuring I got to see some bands I had always wanted to see. I’m not sure if I am just getting old, or maybe not so rock and roll, but I certainly didn’t enjoy this experience as much as I used to. I got angry at the shear masses kicking up dust, mile long queues to simply refill bottles of water and spending stupid money on horrible food (apart from the tea and toast van, which became my staple). Because others had let us all down by creating fires and explosions with gas canisters, gas stoves had been banned and it was impossible to do any proper camp cooking.

So, when Aeon swung round towards the end of last summer – just as most people were getting over festie camping and portoloos – I surprised myself again with how much I enjoyed the weekend as a whole. There was just no effort or stress involved and it felt like a massive garden party. Although there wasn’t any particular headlining act I had travelled miles to see, the bands were all so easy going and cheerful that everyone danced with the same enthusiam as if hearing their favourite ever song. In fact I shredded my new wellies from all the hopping and jumping. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I might do a way with shoes this year and hop about on the grass underfoot instead. Fancy joining me?

The facebook group for Aeon can be found here. Our listing post can be found here.

Sune and Sharin of The Raveonettes give us a shock and awe performance.

Watching The Raveonettes with my friends – wet and bedraggled but happy.

It was straight to the festival and to the front of the crowd to watch The Raveonettes do a typically kinetic set of howling, fuzzy guitar riffs, liberally sprinkled with lots and lots of noise. Just how the audience like it. The Danish duo, made up of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo are a dark force to reckon with and played an incredibly tight set, featuring songs from their fourth album, In And Out Of Control. I hadn’t see them play before and I came away thinking that the bands waiting in the wings such as Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Crystal Castles and Vivienne Girls still have a long way to go before they steal the crowns off of these two. Later I managed to get in some talk time with Sune who refused the offer of dinner with his bandmates in favour of shooting the breeze over mugs of vodka cranberries for a whole hour. (Interview to come in the next few weeks)

The next day, when I was a little less exhausted from twelve straight hours of travelling, and no sleep, I was able to properly explore the festival and see it through renewed eyes. Truth be told, it was refreshing to find myself at an overseas festival. The crowd were relaxed, extremely friendly (stand next to any random group of strangers and within a few minutes you will be conversing away happily in a garbled mix of Franglais) and the FOOD (and drink)! It doesn’t matter how many boutique festivals are springing up over England, festival des Vieilles Charrues trumps us with champagne bars all over the site (to be sipped insouciantly while you watch French rock gods Indochine) and food tents which can provide you cheese plates and fruits de la mer to go with your choice of wine. It being slightly earlier in the day, I was trying out the regional cider which was so tasty it practically made me weep, and made my way over to watch the Fanfarlo set. Unexpectedly, this was probably my favourite performance of the festival. Having toured constantly for the past year (watch the mini documentary on their website which painfully documents their incessant and exhaustion-inducing schedule), the performances of the songs from their 2009 release Reservoir have taken on a whole new level. Each band member seamlessly flitted between a myriad of different musical instruments; no-one ever held onto a guitar, trumpet, violin, mandolin or musical saw for more than a few minutes before doing some musical-chairs. I’m not sure how well France was aware of Fanfarlo, but the full audience loved every song they played, and noisily demanded an encore – which unfortunately they didn’t get, but then, the band do only have about twelve songs in their back catalogue.

Fanfarlo talk about life on the road and divulge the little known fact of lead singer Simon’s childhood love of ham radios.

Traditional Breton music. Everyone knew the dance moves but me.

Night time gave me a chance to flit between the bands playing. I watched Midlake, the indie Texans who are fast gaining popularity over on this side of the pond, serenade the audience as the sun set, their hazy Americana sound drifting over the breeze and through the fields. Then it was a hop, skip and a jump to watch Sexy Sushi, the raw Parisian rap of Fefe and – I didn’t see this coming – some traditional Breton music involving some old men, a couple of accordions and a lively crowd who were all versed in the dance moves that accompany the traditional folk style. Then the midnight hour was upon us and the audience was heading in droves to watch Phoenix, who are clearly the prodigal sons of France. I’ve heard before that some of the French don’t appreciate the fact that Phoenix record all of their tracks in English, as opposed to their mother tongue, but there was no such bad feeling in the crowd that stood around me that night, sending waves of love and adulation towards the stage which prompted lead singer Thomas Mars to briefly lie on the stage in slightly dazed wonder at this epic night.

It was frustrating to have to leave on Sunday, as I missed performances by Pony Pony Run Run, Julian Casablancas and Etienne De Crecy, but work commitments dictated an early departure. Nonetheless, I had such a great time that I am already planning next years Festival des Vieilles Charrues (which will be the 20th anniversary of the festival). Brittany was the perfect setting for such a chilled festival, and a welcome addition to the festival calendar.

In May, Dougald Hine, co-founder of new literary movement The Dark Mountain Project organised Uncivilisation in Llangollen, Denbighshire. The three day festival of music, writing, thinking and doing was an astounding success, challenging the preconceived notions that our current way of living can be made ’sustainable’. I caught up with him for a post-festival chat…

How are you feeling now the festival is over?
I’m exhausted and still piecing together what exactly happened, but it feels like it was something big and worthwhile.

Were you pleased with the turnout?
We had 400 people over the weekend, which was as many as the site could handle – and a real mixture of those who already felt deeply connected to Dark Mountain, those who were sceptical but wanting to engage, and those who were just curious to find out more.
 

Dark Mountain by Emma Raby.

What were you wanting the audience to gain from the experience?
We wanted people to come away with a sense of the conversations going on around Dark Mountain and the spirit of the project.
 
Explain the dark mountain project in layman’s terms:
Dark Mountain invites people to think about what we do, if it turns out that our way of living can’t be made “sustainable”. It’s also about questioning the stories we tell ourselves about our place in the world, about progress and our ability to control nature. What if the mess that we’re in – ecologically, economically, socially – is rooted in those stories?

How easy was it to handle being a speaker and the organiser?
It wasn’t easy – I was living on four hours sleep a night, at the limit physically and emotionally, after the most intense few months of my life. Looking back, we really needed a larger team around the festival, but that’s hard when you’re doing something for the first time. We’ve had a lot of people getting in touch since who want to help organise future events.
 

Time to Look Down by Mags James.

How did you get the guest speakers involved?
For me, a great event should be a mixture of people you’ve wanted to see speak or perform for years and people you’ve never heard of, but who turn out to be amazing. It’s hard to choose highlights, but Jay Griffiths and Alastair McIntosh were particularly important voices for me – as were Vinay Gupta and Luke Concannon. There were things which, in hindsight, we might have done better. The main stage was too male-dominated – and we needed more convivial spaces for conversation and participation. But I was pleased with the contrasts between the speakers and the interweaving of ideas and performance. I just wish we could have spread it out over three weeks, rather than having to cram it all into three days.

Were you aiming for a specific ’sound’ for the festival?
One of the surprises after the manifesto came out was how strong a response we got from musicians and songwriters. Chris T-T and Marmaduke Dando both have songs inspired by Dark Mountain on their new albums, while Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. has been involved from very early on. So the festival sound was shaped by the places where the project has struck a chord. There’s a lot of common ground with some of the powerful folk stuff going on with people like Jon Boden and Chris Wood, who was our ideal choice to close the whole weekend. But there was a real diversity of other sounds, whether it was delicate jazz ballads from Billy Bottle or hilarious death blues from Bleak.

Dark Ruins by Lisa Stannard.

There seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding in the media about the purpose of the festival. Why do you think it was so hard for some people to understand?
Well, firstly, because Dark Mountain is work in progress – it’s a conversation, an exploration, not a single line of argument or a political platform. Most campaigns and movements deliberately try to distill what they’re doing to simple soundbites. That’s not a priority for us, because we’re trying to hold open a space for difficult conversations, for figuring things out together, rather than claiming to have a set of answers. Secondly, the stuff we’re talking about freaks people out. If you try to talk about the possibility that we might not go on getting richer, living longer, having hot and cold running electricity 24-hours-a-day, people think you’re predicting – or even hoping for – some kind of Mad Max scenario.
 
Are there plans for another festival?
Paul and I are still recovering! But we’ve already been contacted by someone who’s planning a four-day Dark Mountain gathering in Scotland this autumn, which is great.

There is no Plan B by Lisa Stannard.

You can read our original listing for the Dark Mountain Festival here.

Feelin’ hot hot hot… we arrived at the field with a blanket and straw hat, and headed straight to the bar. Queuing for what felt like a life-time in the blistering heat, sounds of Johnny Flynn drifted through the air along with the smells of barbecued sausages. Queuing aside, we were happy.

Ciders in hand we weaved through camping chairs and stepped apologetically over blankets, occasionally catching the odd sandaled foot or splashing a little cider over a resting head… all part of the joy of festivalling, we found a spot, lay the blanket on the ground just in time for Laura Marling to take to the stage. ‘Afternoon everyone!’ Laura’s soothing voice echoed over the masses, ‘what a day!’…. people woo’d and clapped and cheered. In two years, Marling’s voice and lyrics have matured from pretty ditties to soulful folk… and her performance this weekend reeled in an eclectic crowd. Folk of all ages stood, eyes fixed and humming and Marling’s voice resonated. Songs from Marling’s latest album I Speak Because I Can mixed with original tracks from My Manic and I had us reminiscing, spinning around and singing-along.

Between sets we ate, drank and lay gazing into the brilliant blue ether… catching a bit of celebrity football, Mumford & Sons giving it their best. Seasick Steve was next up, and took to the stage with crowds-a-roaring. Unfortunately, due to minor sunstroke, we weren’t around for the whole set, but from what we saw, as always Seasick gave a cracking performance.

Mumford & Sons belted out there emotive country-inspired folk, now well-known from their vast radio coverage, and had the audience fixed. Looking and sounding the part, and slotting in perfectly to the Hop Farm scene.

Whilst queuing for a lamb kofta and chatting to a wonderful lady who lives on a pig farm in Cambridgeshire, who told me stories of her days as a festival queen in the 70s… (she was so small she used to crouch on the loo seat, feet on the seat – to avoid sitting on it… little ladies – take note!) Ray Davies performed and it came as pleasant surprise to hear the well-known Kinks records: Lola, You Really Got Me and all the rest. At the age of 66, Ray’s voice carried across fields, still very much in tact.

Last but not least, good old Bob Dylan appeared on stage, his (very) husky tones hooking the expectant field of fans, and taking them on a tumultuous journey through a plethora of songs steeped in sentiment.

Finally, an incredible set from Devendra Banhart ensued; no longer the long-haired folky-dolky guy that once plucked at our heartstrings, Devendra has completely reinvented his style: short-back-and-sides, checked shirt and long yellow cardie buttoned up; the sounds were funky and playful, his voice endearing and still with that jagged edge that made him famous. Even a few Roxy Music covers were thrown in to get us grooving. We danced until the cows came home.

All in all, a grand day out. Thank you Hop Farm!

Another year, another bank holiday at the start of the summer, and another edition of the Dot-to-Dot Festival, a sprawling mess of bands and audience occupying venues and bars in cities up and down the land. This year sees it spread from birthplace Nottingham and second city Bristol to Manchester, taking in three regional centres that, it could be argued, have long lacked massive centrally-located indie festivals to call their own and to ground their musical calendars.

Thanks to a snail-paced jam on the M1 we missed the first band of the day (Frontiers, in Rock City’s main hall) – instead, the day began for us in Rescue Rooms with the lads of The Cheek, who sadly failed to sparkle in the mood of the glorious sun twinkling down outside. Their name may bring to mind something skinny and sharp from the late 70s but the lead singer’s suit certainly didn’t. It looked like he’d borrowed it from his dad. Their poppy punk sound came across like a sort of watered-down Suede, which held my interest for all of ten minutes before I headed out for a wander.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Trent SU, the second-largest of the venues at the festival, had what seemed to be the most appealing consistency in acts, even if it meant foregoing Blood Red Shoes and Wild Beasts (both bands having appeared at previous editions of the festival, however, and both bands were, inevitably, awesome – also, it illustrates just how frequently Dot-to-Dot manages to pick out the next big bands mere months before they break).

Small Black were gracing the stage as we arrived – hailing from Long Island, they’re something of a blog darling in corners of the web and I can completely see why. Their music is a very carefully crafted pop that bears a resemblance to geographical cousins like Beach Fossils and Memory Tapes, bands that specialise in a kind of laid-back, fuzzy sort of sound. It’s instantly unlike anything specific that you’ll have heard before, but equally, instantly recognisable. The four lads manage to balance melancholy, longing, joy and ecstasy in a way last seen regularly in the films of John Hughes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Upstairs in the bar, Islet were going through their usual routine of tearing up the stage. I’ve been an ardent fan of theirs since their lead singer screamed in my face back in March when they supported Los Campesinos! at the Koko in Camden – their bizarre mélange music, all drum circles and hollering and ambient noise and funk grooves and… oh, why bother with a description when I can offer a demonstration:

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Back downstairs, and Washed Out (or, rather, New York resident Ernest Green) has taken to the stage with his tripped-out ambient house and his friends (and geographic neighbours) in Small Black join him, adding extra layers to his sound. The clash with Blood Red Shoes appeared to have left the audience numbers a touch low, but nobody there regretted their decision – there’s something of the madchester in Washed Out’s sound, like a chilled-out evening at the Haçienda (or at least how that would seem in my mind). A case could also be made for saying it sounds like Chicago house played on a tape player with low battery. The results, regardless, are wonderful.

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The second of my 50-50 choices then arrived, as Liars won out over Wild Beasts – but can you blame me? The American art-punk band has doggedly refused to stick to any kind of consistent style, with their latest release, Sisterworld, yet another masterful addition to their discography. Lead singer Angus Andrews cuts a demented figure on stage, strutting and preening like a preaching Mick Jagger – his voice, the drawl of a doorstep drunk at 4am, smitten with violence, joyfully spitting the lyrics to ‘Scissor’ like some kind of mental declaration of war. Proper, proper good.

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It is then, unfortunately, something of a timetabling error to follow this violent display with Beach House, a delicate washed-out band that would have sat much more comfortably next to, well, Washed Out. The audience, still somewhat full of bloodlust, is quickly bored and begins to dissipate, which is a terrible shame considering just how brilliant Victoria Legrand and Alex Scully’s sultry Kate-Bush-meets-a-shoegaze dreamscapes are.

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I’ve written at length about how much I love Los Campesinos!, so for some of you it will be no surprise that I’m going to say that their set headlining at Trent SU was something of a triumph. I’m not being biased here, though, in all honesty – this really was a magnificent performance. The crowd, who all day had looked a little bit sun-frazzled and unable to conjure up much more than the occasional whoop (even during Liars there were visible signs of struggle during the rounds of applause), suddenly sparked into life. Jumping! Singing along! Gareth couldn’t have looked happier, and his usually awful singing was merely average. A definite peak for the day.

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Had to take a quick break here, because at this point it had been something like 8 hours of standing up with neither break nor sustenance – I grabbed some a sandwich in the still-open Lee Rosy’s Tea Room, a wonderful establishment that’s at the heart of Nottingham’s alternative music and arts scene. Somewhat a shame, then, that this year it isn’t hosting the acoustic acts – Primavera Sound, held on the same weekend, appears to have snapped up many of the bands and artists who usually make it here, leaving us with a smaller-than-usual Dot-to-Dot. It is inescapable, too, to note that the festival is far from sold out. Usually leaving a venue for another is something of a risk – in previous years it has been impossible to see the headliners on any stage without waiting through several hours’ worth of bands beforehand. The breathing space is a welcome change, but the lack of people inevitably means that the festival feels less like a party.

Yuck took to the stage of the Bodega after midnight, looking every bit like they’d been enjoying the £3 pints of 7% cider in the bar downstairs for the past few hours. Already something of a convert to their cause, having seen them several times around London over the past few months, I’d been waxing lyrical to friends all day about their brand of borrowed-from-the-90s slacker rock. Their stage banter was a little dry, and their response to a call from an audience member for their closest thing to a hit, ‘Georgia’, was met with a deliberate omission of the song from the setlist, meaning that this was not exactly their most friendly appearance, but nevertheless it proved a decent gig.

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Dot-to-Dot ends with Stealth putting on the last of the shows as the night turns slowly into early morning, and after fighting my way inside for the end of Casiokids’ brittle dance set I realised that my day (and my feet) were done. Another excellent bank holiday weekend festival – despite the smaller crowds and slightly smaller lineup, it’s still proving itself one of the most important festivals in the regions that host it, and it also provides an excellent way of kick-starting the festival season.