Altitude Festival 2010: Rated!

Meribel, France - 20-26 March

France France | by Lorraine Bow | 29 March 2010

Lorraine Bow dons her ski gear to find if music, comedy and snow make the ideal festival at Altitude.

Overall - 8/10

This is Altitude Festival’s third year. The festival, which was founded by Andrew Maxwell and Marcus Brigstocke brings British, French and German comedians together, plus live music, DJ’s and Howard Marks to provide the funniest apres ski you can imagine in Meribel - in the French Alps.

Going for the Edinburgh vibe, rather than Snowbombing, Altitude offers skiing/snowboarding, comedy, food, music and night time electronica for revellers who make the pilgrimage. The Alps give the perfect backdrop for the friendly, relaxed atmosphere the guests seem to emit. It’s small, which makes it easy to get around, and bump into people you’ve met along the way. It is the friendliest, funniest frostival I’ve ever been to!

Getting There and Back - 6/10

Altitude wants to cut carbon emissions and encourage revellers to arrive by luxury overnight coach. This leaves on Friday, and arrives in resort at 17:30 on Saturday. Some guests arrive by plane in Geneva then connecting coach from Switzerland to France, and arrive at a similar time. The rewards await those who invest in the day of travel - in the form of a week of on and off piste comedy action.

The Site - 10/10

Set in the stunning, snowy yet sunny Alps, Altitude festival offers a Buena vista for everyone who visits the centre during the daytime, whether they take part in the mountain’s snowy activities or not.

Altitude offers better accommodation than most festivals – a comfortable homely, clean, serviced chalet which has a hot tub overlooking the mountains; this is a definite winner to come back to after a hard days extreme slope action!

Most of the après ski happens in Meribel Chaudanne. Chaudanne is small but has all the amenities you’ll need: bars, restaurants, shops, a spa, heated outdoor swimming pool. There are a small amount of festival locations – mainly Jacks bar and Evolution, which both serve food as well as providing the entertainment. The size makes the site easy to navigate and find the friends you brought with you, or made along the way.

Atmosphere - 9/10

Altitude’s guests are a blend of seasonaire skiers and boarders, who are already residing in Meribel, and the L-platers who have travelled from England and Ireland. The seasonaires appear to know each other, yet are still welcoming and friendly to their temporary guests. The camaraderie amongst the L-plate crew is evident, and creates a friendly atmosphere during the après ski, as people often pitch up to join each other’s conversations, then say hello as you bump into each other around the site. It feels more like an episode of Cheers towards the end of the week, and everybody knows your name.

Music - 7/10

Altitude’s music theme offers an acoustic slant in the daytime and early evening, then dance DJ’s for the night owls. The only improvement could be having a larger quantity of artists offering punters more variety, however this is a comedy festival, so there is no time for boredom.

Musical highlights included Newton Faulkner - it was difficult not to be blown away by the one man ‘Teardrop’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘You Spin Me’ covers played out in the highest gig of the festival - Pierre’s Plates at the top of the Burgin Saulire lift. Newton covers percussion and melody on his guitar, but if you close your eyes, you’d imagine there are two or three players on stage. During his original songs, he includes the audience, by giving them parts to sing or melody lines to hum or aahs to do. It offers a spine tingling interactive show that is unmissable. The Quails provided the indie injection, playing their original, upbeat songs to a baying crowd. There was a secret gig from KT Tunstall, plus late night visual manipulator DJ Yoda, the Dub Pistols Sound System and Barry Ashworth’s DJ set all kept the crowds dancing until the wee small hours.

Comedy – 9/10

Altitude is gearing up to be a snowy Edinburgh festival in the future, according to organiser Andrew Maxwell. As he and Marcus Brigstocke founded it, comedy is always going to be high on the agenda. Both of them offered some brilliant shows, and one of the highlights of the festival was when Andrew had food poisoning and Marcus covered his compere slots, initially by imitating him. I overheard audience members the next day saying they preferred Marcus’s material with Andrew’s voice!

Unexpected highlights were 4 Poofs and a Piano, who are a lot more risqué in their live shows than they are allowed to be on TV, with interactive songs that the audience were encouraged to sing such as “Do you take it up the ass” providing titillation and amusement for days, as it was such a catchy tune. Abandoman, who do improvised hip hop with guitar and song chorus. They choose two audience members, gain details about them and their lives, and rap about the two individually then bring the two separate punters together for the final verse and chorus – definitely worth seeing as the live show exceeds any description on paper. Al Murray also provided a certain English solidarity in his own inimitable style.

Uppers

Andrew Maxwell – 9/10
Andrew’s loud Irish tones can be heard halfway up the mountain. His general demeanour is as funny as his anecdotal humour. He chose to wear a Santa hat for many of his gigs, a site hard to smile ar.

Marcus Brigstocke – 8/10
Marcus offers amusing satirical and slightly darker humour in brilliantly visual ill-fitting suits. His unassuming entry isn’t as punchy as Andrew’s but he certainly came up with the goods on the night when Andrew got sick.

Newton Faulkner – 9/10
Offering a one man acoustic version of many well known hits, including his own, this show left the room electrically charged and happy. Well worth seeing.

Mark Walker – 8/10
Mark was Al Murray’s fluffer, which was fun in itself, but his smaller show at the Cactus Cafe had to be seen. It was very rude and involved much of the audience and even a trombone demonstration.

Al Murray – 7/10
Al was a headline comedian at this festival and he definitely came up with the goods. He used most of the front row for his opening act, using a step dad as the punchline for his two stepsons repeating, “You’re not my Dad” in an angry Kevin-The-Teenager way to the audience’s obvious amusement.

Abandoman – 9/10
Two white boys, one holding a guitar doesn’t usually make you think about hip-hop, but these two will surprise you on many more levels than that, by improvising their whole show using two audience members. One to watch.

Howard Marks – 9/10
Needing little introduction, Mr Nice’s show gives amusing anecdotes about his rise and rise in a gently humorous way. Held at the Fromagerie, punters were treated to somewhere to smoke and eat fondue prior to his talk.

DJ Yoda – 8/10
Ripping up the dancefloor with mash up tunes and visuals, Yoda delivered his show at the Pizza Express in Meribel. If you’ve never seen a Yoda set, think of every song within a given theme - say 80’s - that you can imagine putting an appearance with a riff, chorus line or some other tag, and the visuals to go with it.

Barry Ashworth – 9/10
For the night owls, this unpretentious, ‘let’s get on the dancefloor’ attitude to a set was delivered perfectly. Dick’s Tea bar was full to capacity of Altitude Festival revellers enjoying this late set.

Downers

Travel time – 6/10
Oh Meribel, why aren’t you an hour away on the train?

Variety – 5/10
A larger selection of comedians would ensure that no show is repeated to keep things fresh. More choice in music realm would attract a larger crowd.

Random Events

Bumping into the Terminator and Superman on the slopes is going to stay with me for a while. More fancy dress is to be encouraged.

A piste appeared outside the Auditorium, without it having snowed. There were some brilliant boarder tricks on show, and all are encouraged to take part!