Live Review

The Big Chill Day 2 Review – Eastnor Castle Deer Park

• 10th Aug 2010

The Random Half Hour returns. An inglorious tradition loved by 80’s radio and Roxy NiteKlub-type DJs as it used to give them a chance to use up all those embarrassing records.. But for Tom Middleton and an appreciative crowd his kickoff half hour was not just about guilty pleasures but was a brilliantly playful way to take full advantage of the bonhomie building for a great crowd, in a great setting, in great weather.

We were treated to gleeful stuff from: the Teddy Bears’ Picnic, to The Jungle Book’s King of the Swingers, via Eric and Ernie’s Bring Me Sunshine (engendering an outbreak of heel kicking dancing from passing traffic), which so warmed the crowd that when he started on the ‘proper’ music with a Latin flavour, this Svengali had everyone doing his bidding: “Call me old fashioned but I don’t see any reason why a samba train isn’t possible!”, and lo, as he decreed, it happened, “Only another 35,000 people for the biggest samba train in festival history”, he further encouraged over the mic.

The sense of joy and mischief in the whole selection of tunes played through his two-hour set was evident on all faces and dancing limbs at the Starburst arena. And with such judicious tune selection I can’t help but feel that his playing of Smokebelch was a tribute to the great Andy Weatherall playing later on, in part, in competition to Tom’s wee small hours set up at the Lazyland stage. Tom knows that not all legends have to come from another time or take themselves too seriously to count.

Following Tom with some of the accepted classics was the John Peel-esque fumbled stylings of DJ Derek. Naturally he filled his quota of dead air and wrong speed mishaps to full expectation. Plenty of chat pon de mic too of course; that’s what they came for after all. Slightly souring the occasion and completely oblivious to DJ Derek I witnessed an unsavoury incident. He had just finished playing Police and Thieves and was segueing to Eddie Grant’s Living on the Frontline via a tale of how he once made his way through the rubble strewn streets of Bristol immediately after the race riots. Yet at precisely the same time, behind the DJ booth, the incredibly inhospitable and overly intrusive fluro jacket clad security jobsworths who have blighted this year’s once easy going festival, were frisking three young black lads. The irony could not have been more pointed and I for one, was furious at the spectacle.

Back to the music: besides the ‘deliberate’ mistakes, with this much experience comes ring craft. Derek was riding the bass-lines like a good selector should and imploring the crowd to: “Feel the bass-line”, when there was a bass-line to be felt. He took the one-trick pony to a post-modern level but there’s no denying the packed crowd in front of the stage more than enjoyed it.

It didn’t look promising at first for Roots Manuva on the main Deer Park Stage – had his star waned? I was able to get to the front with still about ten minutes to go but in no time the arena soon packed out. Mr Manuva took the stage in what looked like Chris Eubanks’ hand-me-downs including some impressive ‘dancing shoes’. He shook the albatross of Witness The Fitness off early doors but even so, it was a confident, assured and jumping set, with his hype man and vocalist earning their corn in front of a real drums and bass section. The Sigue Sigue Sputnik a-like bass player worked some real magic too as the bass level at the front of the stage was internal organ loosening.

MIA’s set that followed was immense in all consuming senses but speaking as someone who used to buy gabba, I’ve got to say that this was bludgeoning even for me. Spectacle though it was, I had to leave her for Andy Weatherall who’s start time overlapped. And so to the Paradiso stage for Andy. The last album of Weatherall’s that I bought was the Sci-Fi Low-Fi mix tape on Soma Records which consisted entirely of rockabilly so I had no idea what to expect as a the modest Weatherall took his place behind a very humble looking, plastic floral clad, consul. It fell to a member of the preceding act, the 20:20 Soundsystem to give him an introduction, quite rightly declaring him legendary.

Weatherall started in a very minimal, locked groove kind of way, letting every initial track breathe and mixing meticulously, riding the EQs with a producers panache. Then he let out the slack with more dubbed and grooved tech-house type tracks eschewing any vocal hooks for at least the first 30 minutes. Only gradually did the pace pick up and become more banging and kick heavy with almost jacking vocal stabs in places. There was very little turntablism in evidence but what was used was used sparingly and done to great effect.

It has to be about 16 years since I last heard Weatherall DJ live and this set could almost have been from that time but then true techno is almost ageless and despite what he has done in his own career, including the solid gold remixing duties on Screamadelica, it is a huge comfort to hear somebody not go for the big button pushing track after track or resorting to novelty, rather just have faith the simple progression of a two hour set. My feet told their own story as Henrik Schwarz took the stage after, I realised I’d managed to blister my toes, voting literally with my feet as it were, so I limped off back to my temporary canvas home with shouts of “Alan!” ringing in the air: the joke de jour for Big Chill 2010 it would seem.