Sleaford Mods topped the bill on day one
Located in the Custard Factory in the Digbeth area, this repurposed and redeveloped site is now home to a collection of Birmingham’s creative and digital businesses, independent retailers and venues. Over the weekend of 30 - 31 May it played host to Supersonic Festival Ltd Edition, a scaled back version of the festival curated by Capsule that brings a mixture of eclectic, obscure, strange and wonderful sounds to curious audiences.
The two venues, market places, eateries and bars are situated around a quad with a pond in the middle, which over the course of the two days of the festival will be the place to go to give your ears a rest and get some welcome sunlight on your skin.
Friday evening starts with Matmos in the main room, a large barn type space with aged exposed wooden beams that look perilously close to collapsing at any point over the weekend. The Musique concrète electronic duo melt an array of sounds to glitchy rhythms; moving from spooky unsettling voices to sound collages that mix jazz trumpets and breakbeat drum machines with the sensation of falling down a flight of stairs. It’s both overwhelming and unsettling.
Felix Kubin is a revelation and a real discovery of the weekend. He’s playful, tuneful and full of endless enthusiasm as he makes his banks of vintage keyboards and mixers create a coulorful explosion of crunching rhythms and big synth stabs that hark back to they hey-day of Krautrock, referencing acts such as Kraftwerk and DAF. It is real party music and perfect for this late-night drunk Friday night crowd who don’t want to be bogged down with electronic noodling.
Over in the second stage are the masked Evil Blizzard. Their spaced-out, grubby rock plays out like Status Quo jamming with Hawkwind. They aren’t as outrageous as they think they’re being, even if it is still good fun. But it’s time to take a breather before Sleaford Mods hit up the main stage.
Headlining the Friday night are Nottingham’s own irrepressible Sleaford Mods. In the last 12 months their star has risen so much that there is a tangible sense of anticipation hanging in the air before they take to the stage. After seeing them play in places such as The Chameleon and JamCafe to intimate audiences, the large crowd that rowdily greats them tonight gives you a good sense that they may be about to escape the toilet venue circuit. Playing a set that takes heavily from new LP Divide And Exit and last year’s Austerity Dogs, Jason stalks the stage like a man with an entire chip factory on his shoulder. There is undeniable passion and poetry to his lyrics and delivery tonight; and in a current musical landscape where many bands aren’t saying anything, the world desperately needs someone to speak up and represent the disaffected, and on tonight’s frenzied reaction, that band is Sleaford Mods.
Jenny Hval featured on the second day of the festival
If you were religious you could say that the sound generated by 12 guitars playing in perfect harmony is heavenly or spiritual, but I’m not, so I won’t. What Ex-Easter Island Head’s Large Electric Ensemble is instead is a perfect harmonic union of guitars that ebb and flow with the ability to transport the listener from wherever they are in that given moment. It’s a truly meditative moment when they open the festival on the Saturday afternoon, and the warm round of applause that greats the performers at the end is a beautiful send-off for the last ever performance of this truly special piece.
Over in the second stage ex-Codeine member Chris Brokaw is playing a rather ramshackle, loose fitting set of solo songs and instrumentals. There are moments where it connects beautifully, but at other times you feel yourself wishing it to get going. A talented musician, but today happens to be a case of wrong time, wrong place, you feel.
Back in the main stage Alien Whale appear to be having fun jamming away wailing on guitars and I think I even spy a keytar in the mix somewhere; while Youth Man might be on the second stage but their heavy thudding punk is reverberating around the quad area with such relentless energy that there is no escape from it.
Sly and the Family Drone have set up in the middle of the room that houses the main stage and have encouraged the audience to stand up-close around the band. What follows is 45 minutes of loud, textured, improvised noise that favours excessive volume over subtlety. Heavily focused on rhythm, the last part of the performance sees the band handing parts of their drum kit to members of the crowd for a bit of percussive audience participation. It’s a strangely joyful end to an abrasive set.
I’m not going to lie, at this part of the festival there is a cheeky trip to a pub around the corner to see Froch knockout Groves. Returning to the Custard Factory, Jenny Hval is enchanting the audience with a set of oddly bewitching and ghostly melodies backed by whispering synths and delicate guitars. It’s the unsettling calm before the storm that is Swans.
The heavyweight of Swans appears to be too much for the Custard Factory, as soon as they start the power cuts and the main stage descends in to darkness. What must have been a few minutes of sheer panic for the for the organisers is quickly forgotten when Swans, returning to Supersonic after playing in 2010, take to the stage for two hours of relentless, brutal, repetitive riffage. It’s not just a listening experience, their music gradually bludgeons it’s way in to your bones. A heavy, intense and exhilarating end to the weekend.
Supersonic Festival 2014 took place at the Custard Factory, Birmingham on Friday 31 and Saturday 31 May 2014.
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