Live Review

The Big Chill Day 1 Review –

• 10th Aug 2010

After sampling some of the acts in the *cough* Uptown arena, I wandered over to the Deer Park Stage to hang around out of curiosity for Thom Yorke. Curiosity killed this particular cat however – I could have peered into a music obsessed teenager’s bedroom and seen exactly the same show, albeit with the addition of a tissue collection littering the floor. But thankfully I stumbled upon Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane & The Heritage Orchestra who were down the list on the main Deer Park Stage.

Stumbling upon used to be The Big Chill’s default mode, the aspect that gave it character amongst the field-to-field t-shirt selling festivals. An early declaration whilst I’m enthusing: I still haven’t got a clue what it was that I listened to, I just know it to be a semi-JFK moment and cause for further hunting out of their material.

Rather like the experience of Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra, Sun Ra tribute, seen at the 2007 Big Chill, a big open, country stage seems to lend itself very nicely to this orchestral business. With Dammers band formerly, the visual spectacle was partly made by trombone slides twinkling away in rhythmic abandon, for the Heritage Orchestra there was many an elbow cranking like a very naughty simile I could use as they sawed away on the fiddles.

This is not to say that the set was constrained by its form. Mike at times went a little existential on our grass damp asses by treating us to death metal type growls but mainly he emoted in Italian as if he was pleading with Don Corleone for his life. His all-black waiter’s outfit didn’t depart too much from that impression either.

The huge collective effort on this stage packed with a minstrels gallery of backing singers, a large string section, a huge bank of electric piano and analogue synths, was certainly putting some heat under the crowd but not enough for an impassioned Mike. With an observance to an ever more strained Trades Descriptions upon the Big Chill’s 2010 incarnation, he despaired: “If you were any more chilled this would be a mortuary.”
That was merely further showmanship on Mike’s part and by the time he left the stage, the vital signs for the Big Chill 2010 were good.

I eschewed the Deer Park stage (see Thom Yorke above) and caught a dimly lit Massive Attack’s last 15 minutes on my way to hunt out Luke Solomon but before that I treated myself to a bit of Kruder & Dorfmeister.

Sixteen years in the biz of show, that’s what their encore informed me. My slight aversion to K&D (as they branded themselves in light show and emcee form) had previously been engendered by believing them to be chancing, fashion-chasing, former breaks and D&B merchants, and the 19-year-olds who pushed in front of me at the barrier, informing me that ‘these are well good’ – or whatever platitude passes for enthusiasm – did little to initially subdue that dread impression. But. Sixteen years in, something must be right.

Having put my ill informed prejudice aside, I was pleasantly surprised by what I found in the Revellers tent this night. Odd still that an electronic music act out of Austria would so closely pastiche Kraftwerk but either knowingly or unknowingly that’s just what they did. Comedy (sorry, smart) suits were donned by everybody check, which was fine for K&D hidden behind the consul, but the sparsely used emcees looked like distant cousins at a wedding reception. (Listen everybody, especially you Plan B, a suit is not instant sophistication or maturity, IT HAS TO LOOK GOOD OR IT LOOKS TERRIBLE – THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND. K&D’s bald MC’s sleeves went diving for the ends of his finger tips whenever he didn’t have his ‘hands in the air’. Norman Wisdom looked better dressed.) A bank of machinery to stand behind check; the cold fish, fixed stares, at monitor screens check; hugely, hugely, impressive sound-to-light show check, a song about autobahns…erm…

Their two-hour time slot was a tale of three uneven halves. The first 30 minutes being an aural declaration of the ‘we know our hip-hop and big beat (original definition)’ type, admittedly it was slickly put together in whatever clip and loop style K&D were employing behind that big consul. The next three halves didn’t take us on quite the same educational journey and considering they were playing in the run up to midnight, in a tent that was definitely up for it, we then had sixtyish minutes of pleasant but slightly pedestrian noodling. The last track consisted of a very odd encore which allowed them to proudly show off a bouncy ball, synched light show, sing-along-a K&D affair, with adapted branded lyrics to the tune of the Beatles’ Let it Be. My opinion of K&D has changed for the better and they certainly did put on a show but I just wish it had been a bit less self-indulgent and a bit more muscular.

After that I spent the next blissful two hours after midnight lying under a tree at the new Lazyland arena waiting for Luke Solomon, only for him to be a no show. My daily listing seemed to clash with the official programme so he maybe did play somewhere at Big Chill 2010 (as well as Big Chill FM) but I was buggered if I could find him.