Surrealist Shadows In The Park

Neil Jones on Radio Luxembourg, The Research, Tim Ten Yen and Death at Margam Park's Tapestry Goes West

10th and 11th of August, 2007

You, or certainly I, don’t ask for a better omen at a festival than the tent pegs going into the ground without the kind of effort that leaves you foaming at the mouth. This being so, our canvases erect, the sky a rich strain of blue and sun shining down, we embark on the second Tapestry Goes West festival with a skip in our step.

Margam Park’s real expansive beauty lays just around the corner from the festival area, so the walk up to investigate the early goings-on on the second stage is notable mainly for the dizzy cast of characters who populate the entwining paths. It’s a little like Wales in the days of King Arthur, if he had rationed out cider by the bucket load. Inebriated monks, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Mrs Robin Hood, medieval warriors, a Roman Centurion, Victorian ladies and gentleman, and even Death himself cast surrealist shadows, and floating towards us on the light breeze is the distant sound of a fittingly outr・ mania.

We only catch the last two numbers of Threatmantics early afternoon set, but they shoot their partisan folk at the crowd in a manner that belies the gentle afternoon scenery, raucous staccato melodies and demonical playing welcoming us to Tapestry’s aural fare like a schizophrenic uncle. I’m forced to sit on the grass by friends when of coarse I want to dodge the violin-fuelled bullets with a dance, but maybe that’ll come later, when a few more of these local brews have been sampled in the name of intellectual interest.

Tapestry already abounds with character, The Crimson Moon bar that sits near to the second stage governed by merry-makes from forgotten eras. I purchase a specialist cider off one of the Brothers behind the bar, and skip back over to our position behind Fryer Tuck and his group of retro stars. Drinks are flowing, dresses swaying, and Piney Gir’s Southern belle outfit fits pretty well with the general colour, her ebbulient country sounds floating out with a light-hearted shimmer in the sunny haze.

Hey ho, what’s that on the horizon? It’s a troupe of red deer of coarse, or are they fallow? I’d ask my friend Paul, a keen zoologist, had he not consumed the full pint of cider I’d just bought in one swift gulp. He lays flat out as Radio Luxembourg take to the stage with their cartoon forest background, and by the laws of metaphysics I assume he finds it all very strange.

Luxembourg are treat in the afternoon sun, indie poets sent from above to make us shimmy and shake and shine inside like a million suns, rakish yet down-to-earth Aberystwyth lads who play Pop with a conciseness and poetry that makes me drool. ‘Mostyn and Diego’, ‘Eli Haul’ and other cartoonish cuts off a new EP shimmer like silk as the nearby Panther Girl dancers throw fine shapes, and as the set comes to an end a revitalised countryside ripples with applause.

A walk around to the main stage area reveals a humble jacket potato stall and some unfortunate poodle rock posturing, so it’s quickly back up to the second stage via a strangely-mixed sandwich, where Wakefield’s The Research are going at it with refreshing ardour. There’s something heroically misplaced about indiepop at the heart of a medieval banquet, but, similar to Radio Luxembourg before, The Research drag us into their modern world with a smile and a ribbon, the wistful lyricism of singer Russell “The Disaster” combining with Sarah Williams languorous drumming and Georgia Lashbrook’s bouncing bass and backing vocals to etch out sounds of skewed glamour and romance. It’s low-key, off-kilter Pop that the Panther Girls could have done wonders with, but alas they’ve disappeared into the pastures that soon call us away.

The festival arena is hardly a mammoth slab of countryside, and it’s only a five-minute walk down to our tent at the bottom of the grounds. We embark on this in a haste to grab something quick to eat before the night fare, but it was written in the stars that we should see a sister of Tapestry struggling to carry a sack of medieval joker garb and be obliged to help. It’s a detour that sees us miss the majority of The Hot Puppies set back at the second stage, but from the tracks we do catch I get the impression they’ve developed a fine emotional streak to go with their always polished stage-fa・ade. Singer Becky Newman stands regal in flowing medieval robes and plaited hair, providing a sultry site as the darkness draws in, the Puppies’ final numbers ebbing with a fine indie orchestration as she plays the stage with a feline sensuality. The audience stands genuinely hooked under the hypnotic lights, before the Puppies disappear into the night that spawned them.

My pal Paul has been harking on about the blues for a while in preparation for Seasick Steve, airing his doubts about a man who’s risen from redneck anonymity to become in his own words “the cat’s miaow” in such a short space of time (do they even have rednecks in California?), but before it all happens we’re startled out of The Crimson Moon by some distant karaoke… Tentatively poking our heads out through the Crimson canvas, gravity takes over and we drift back to the second stage, where we’re soon witnessing what’ll be one of the highlights of the weekend.

Tim Ten Yen, bubble-gum Pop Kareoke extraordinaire etches his recent single ‘Girl Number One’ and its B-side with a euphoric air on his keyboard before abandoning his only instrument and bounding around the stage like a rhythmic banshee, his backing machine blazing trails of humorous, bittersweet wonder that bubble behind him terrifically. Ten Yen is a corruption of every trad notion in the book, a cabaret anarchist to terrify karaoke kings and purists alike. Two encores later we’re smiling ear to ear, holding onto our hero for as long as we can till he inevitably he has to ride his karaoke dream off into the night.

Seasick Steve now descends upon us, the opening shards from his guitar cutting into us like razor blades. Higher and higher and higher goes his sound as the technicians sit distraught, until the noise reaches such a level to take us to his own personal planet of rhythmic blues. Steve is a robust character who knows what he wants, his guitar sound reaching out into the night like the call of jackals. Limbs and hearts are set aflame to his uniquely informed Delta plucking, and the sound is so propulsive that it makes you completely forget the intrigue surrounding his authenticity, which of coarse means he’s as authentic as he needs to be. Denim dungarees, a bald head and a beard, the only thing that’s missing to complete the look is a fishing rod, yet in a world of white-man bourgeois blues Steve’s a caricature to be cherished.

The set crawls to a stop with some introspective numbers that maybe don’t sit so well, but it’s been a glorious day, and we’re more than happy to toast it with one more drink. Tapestry is underway with a bang, and tomorrow dawns like some fantastic promise.

DAY 2

Day two of Tapestry begins with a sun the extent of which we haven’t seen all year, so it’s maybe a glitch in our good sense when we sign the big black board at reception, tying us into a contract to play football a little later on. It’s certainly a bracing idea, and we stock up on water in heated anticipation.

It’s an ideal day to explore the grounds of Margam Park that I’d not seen since childhood, so up we go past the barriers into a rural fantasy land that doesn’t spit us out till a considerable time later. The long walk up past the ostriches, piebald cows and calves, wild horses, deer and fallow takes us round the final corner to the castle, and the site of it hits home with a medieval kind of awe. It’s a real historical landmark of Wales, and so impressive sitting there in these enchanted grounds, the huge brick surface gleaming robustly in the sun.

The Margam Park lake that lays next to it is full of character, white swans eating bread from the hands of passing kids and a curious-looking Huckleberry-Finn like haunt just out of reach across the river. An ice cream and a tour around the gift shop provides a break of shade before we hurry back to the field. Bands are taking a bit of a back seat to the other Tapestry events this afternoon, and a medieval horse show on the big expanse in front of the main stage area is great for the kids, the Black Knight facing off against Baron Lucifer like the WWE in a field in Wales, with a long-haired troupe playing Status Quo in the background.

The football match takes place soon after in a comedy haze, before the night beckons and we prepare for the final fling. It’s been a quirky day and a half to say the least, the unexpected being thrown up all over the place, but as Chrome Hoof appear on the main stage in stunning sequined silver suits like a Doctor Who apparition, the biscuit is really taken. It starts with a duo of dancers, pirouetting through an elegant electronic number, before the rest of the band appears and the sounds start pulsating into the night.

Chrome Hoof’s singer Missy M adds a slab of African soul to her band’s already immense orchestration, which sways with flourishes of sultry electronica and elegant strings. It kind of takes me away in a tumbling wave to lands beyond, an intense visual landscape, the striking silvery glam imagery enticing me for a moment before another crescendo blows me back. The Hoof are a formidable act if ever I’ve seen one, taking the kind of electro-pop ethos of Ladytron and translating it into the language of satyrs with a kind of festivity that simply has to be seen to be believed.

The set ends to the pointing finger of the mysterious Missy M, and everyone follows a silver-suited cohort out into the night. A few hundred people climb a sparsely coloured hill, and a wicker man stands on top awaiting the sacrifice. He lights up the night in reams of flames, and Chrome Hoof’s convincing fantasy is consummated. Tapestry ends in a rustle of embers, and the Port Talbot countryside is suspended in sci-fi dreams.

© 2007 Neil Jones

© Miwsig