Wickerman Festival 2007

United Kingdom | by Tamar Newton24 July 2007

The sky over the mountains and forests is a low malevolent black as the wind howls and throws around Eurohike tents with gay abandon. It’s a sad indictment of the British weather that people beamingly say "Aren't we lucky, it’s not raining?" With the gods seemingly sparing us, there, in a sheltered hollow watched over by the benign presence of a twenty-foot high wicker man, the music begins.

Unlike so many festivals, Wickerman proudly holds onto its roots. It is not a random field of fun somewhere populated with people from everywhere - Scottish accents rule alongside Tennants, neeps and tatties. There are families and ‘neds’ (Scottish colloquialism for chavs) and as many sensible people in cagoules as there are crusties and teenage girls with fairy wings and goosepimply arms. The music reflects this. Pub rock gives way to bagpipes bands, who are not picked for their ‘coolness’ but for their popularity. There is no pretension, no liggers and no fucking Jo Whiley.

Neck for example, unlikely to ever front the cover of the NME unless the Scottish National Party seize the UK, have a sudden audience of thousands with their vibrant Celtic fusion culminating in an orgiastic cover of ‘Star of County Down’ and then a quick nip across cultures to the Axis tent, pure deep heavy dub reggae bliss with lollipops and milkshakes for sale. Someone explains how frequencies of bass vibrate differently through his inflatable frog shaped chair. There’s a PHD in this somewhere.

The Peatbog Faeries are another Celtic wig out band - a whirling dervish of organic bagpipe techno, bodrum beats and deep deep Celtic rhythms to make you embrace your 1/5 Gaelic heritage. Pied Piper-like, kids, teens and adults are drawn in by the sound of the fiddle but thankfully don’t disappear forever. Well, only a few. Hayseed Dixie do their Alabama cover band shtick - Highway to Hell, Ace Of Spades etc - but something seems curiously lacking this time. After what was on before, their pastiche seems strangely plodden and novelty only lasts for so long. Just ask your talking Big Mouth Billy Bass. But a cover of Scissor Sisters ‘I Don’t Feel like Dancing’ blows the cobwebs away somewhat. Along with that other festival staple, Pear cider. I love pear cider.

Happy swaying lethargy creeps back with the arrival of Fun Lovin’ Criminals. Hughie’s lackadaisical drawling Brooklyn rap is like an aural spliff but there is a taut edge, a quiver of malice and threat in the sexy slow beats and angrily pulsating guitar riffs. Like The Sopranos coming to life, gloriously exotic but with a vibrantly dangerous edge, King Of New York and Korean Bodega are glorious and ironically alien tunes which seep past the crowd, then across the mist-encrusted mountains and to the forest beyond.

The spirit of Glastonbury doesn’t come easily to these far-flung earthier environs. A dapper, high-pitched man dressed in nothing but a sequinned G-String attempts to camply banter with the audience before cycling through a rather small fire. Arriving late, I ask the man next to me what is happening. ‘Och, he’s trying to do fire stunts but he’s just a fooking prick’, he says dourly. There is, however, a fantastic festival spirit - people are friendly, its superbly organised, well priced and each year new attractions and stages arrive. There’s dance tents, a ska tent, an acoustic tent, a world music tent, various yurts and a circus top to name just a small percentage, but all are within a happy pear cider stagger perimeter. The only problem is relaxing when there are always so many other wonders you’re missing elsewhere.

For example, we catch the end of Junkman’s Choir and instantly want to turn back time to the beginning of their bolshy accordion-led countrified shanties blues that could raise the dead. Well, at least the hung-over. Damn pear cider. And if Junkman’s Choir can raise corpses, then Eat Static can make them jiggle like zombified loons. The throbbing of an evening hangover is eaten alive by the baddest heaviest beats in the world. Beats so primal and filthy and deep down dirty than even Kim and Aggie wouldn’t stand a chance of sanitising them (a bit like the loos really). Wearing alien masks, Eat Static rock on their complicated looking instruments as samples burst forth and multiply, snippets are mangled and beats slowly mutate, break and slowly build up to huge climactic crescendos of noise where your feet become separate to you and dance the whirligig as you stand there opened mouthed.

Sunday

"You haven’t seen a sixteen piece samba band have you?" a harrassed steward barks at another. From the state of my head I suspect they were all in the two-man tent next to me practicing all night. Definitely can’t have been the cider. Better have another one just to make sure. First up on stage are Radio Caroline-Native Americans who perform an invocation for a wonderful festival. As the rain crowds sweep off after nothing more than a mild pee, I think Michael Eavis should be informed of their existence. Uniting The Elements are on next, who clad in gothic theatricals and PVC are far too sexy for this time of day. My photographer and every other male in my vicinity run to the front. I sulk.
 
The open stage in the Acoustic tent throws up some beauties. The Trad Bandits are a four-piece band performing traditional songs with violins and flutes to sweet husky timeless melodies. The audience clap cheer and whistle. This is not music to stand and watch, this is music to participate in. Next, Sam, a boy possibly not even in his teens does a rendition of ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd and lighters are held aloft. In daylight.

Jah Wobble is a revelation and an example to all the budding musicians out there that less is definitely more. No need for vocal histrionics and your hand doing that stupid quivering in the air thing when you have a front woman blessed with a perfect voice.  ‘Visions Of You’ is not a three-minute blast but a symphony in song. A slowly romping bass, courtesy of Wobble himself, unite with whistles, bongos and pure elegance to no time limit and each instrument seems to have its own solo as the rest of the band watch, smile and sway. Calypso rhymes and elegant rendition of poems such as ‘ Tiger Tiger Burning Bright’ and ‘As I Walk Through The Shadow of Death' are equally mesmerising.

The Easy Star All Stars offer a more dub heavy fusion sound covering Pink Floyd and Radiohead with huge smiley aplomb. Always the sign of a good band when your songs can be covered with just bass and saxophone and still sound fantastic. Can’t see this happening with Rhiannon somehow.

Put your hands up if you love The Proclaimers. See! I never thought they were anything but a reasonably popular Scottish band. But seas of people swoop past my sneering visage with some not even in kilts! Screaming teenagers finally leave the funfair to hold mobiles aloft because The Proclaimers are on. You wouldn’t get this with the Wurzels. Because it’s not ironic here. People care.

The Orb are a surprisingly scuzzy driving snowdrift of noise and light, ragga rhythms and squalls of dirty beats and the biggest crush of the festival. "How you feelin’ Wickerman?’" Pretty damn fine thankyou. Beats, lights and noise pulsate throughout the audience causing a trancey mesmerising eclipse with the burning of the Wickerman at its epicentre. The whole festival stops and the sound of bagpipes leads the crowd forth to where the Wickerman stands, burns and disintegrates, causing pagan like excited screams of bliss.

Until dawn people fire juggle, dance, smile and natter. Beats resonate from tents and stages and you want to take in everything and everyone at once. Sunday dawns a bright blue vivid sky and the sun bursts down. But guess what? You have to be off site by noon. Somewhere in the ashes, The Wickerman is smiling.