- Now The Big Chill festival may be the kinda place where you'll hear a random 50-something-year-old shouting "wicked!" or a mum bemoaning to a toddler, "No, princess, those are your emergency pants," but it's also so much more. Seemingly bigger than ever in its 14th year, and taking place for the seventh time at the stunning Eastnor Castle Deer Park site, The Big Chill is a surreal melting pot of people, styles, and sensations.
FRIDAY
Touching down in the heavenly Malvern Hills on Friday afternoon with the sun shining and the weather sweet, we hastily pitch our tent and head for the new alfresco Rizla Arena. Here we encounter clowns, fairies, and all kinds of fancy dress miscreants jumping about to the energetic beats of Richard Norris. Complete with palm trees, this area is decked out to look like a terrace in Ibiza—apart from a '20s-style van, from where Rizla's Invisible Players are delivering the goods. Interesting.
Meanwhile, over at the Cocktail Bar, Le Vagabond Boogaloo Club is playing feral gypsy funk and has all kinds of characters kicking up the dust, while others sit back and enjoy a cold beer. Welcome to The Big Chill. As chilled as you want to be.
Delving deeper, we make a curious discovery in the Club Tent: Alabama 3 from Brixton are unplugged and sharing their own brand of "Sweet Muthafuckin Country Acid House Music." (These are the guys who made the Sopranos theme tune, but not a lot of cash.) "I've come to see the Reverend," a friendly middle-aged man down the front tells me. I nod and smile.
Starving like Marvin, we devour some delicious tagine at a shisha cafe nearby the Castle Stage, while the sun sets to the sounds of songress Martha Wainwright. The mellow duo Quiet Village then start a set, accompanied by some neat visuals, but it's now almost 9pm and so we head across to the main Open Air Stage for Róisín Murphy. And, from her vocal delivery and stage presence to the choreography and costume changes, what an incredibly powerful performance she gives.
Half an hour later it starts to rain. Taking shelter in the Club Tent, up front we see Roots Manuva prowling around the stage as the crowd goes mental to classics like "Witness (1 Hope)" along with fresh material like "Again & Again" from his forthcoming album Slime & Reason. "The Big Chill sure has got BIG!" he booms out over the mic.
Clubbier than the Club Tent, the Rizla Arena was in trouble with the noise police earlier in the day but they are now back on track as we stop by for a second visit, just in time to see 2020 player Greg Wilson exit the van and Justin Robertson step up with Fatboy Slim's "Star 69." (What the fuck?) We are not deterred, but we are short on time. We therefore walk back to the main stage and—en route—hear Robin from Hexstatic pumping out some party tunes at the Cocktail Bar.
We said we wouldn't miss original ambient housers The Orb on the Castle Stage and we don't. These guys are playing a lot of crowd-pleasing gems, including "Little Fluffy Clouds" and "Blue Room," but we finish off our night in the Media Mix Tent, where Richard Fenwick's edifying User Guides (for example, what to do in the event of an earthquake) are being shown, over three screens. Safe in the knowledge that we can now survive a quake, we are ready for the next live act: the "E is for experimental" Exceeda and their Platform X project. Their performance was mainly about railways and involved an Exceeda-style musical mash-up of danceable footage, including a particularly amusing Sir Jimmy Savile sample.
SATURDAY
Saturday starts with a leisurely stroll back to the festival. Passing by the Kids' Tent, we see performance poet John Hegley with a tent packed full of people. He's talking about an armadillo called Amadeus and a Brillo pad, but it's all too much for our fragile minds and so we walk up to the Enchanted Garden. Here some folk are topping up the cider levels, while others are having their weary limbs massaged by the experts. We decide to hydrate (responsibly) but the blizzard of wasps around the fruit juice stall puts us straight on a course for the Sauza Tent/tepees, where Alucidnation lends a serene sensibility to our day.
The sun's now beating down, so we decide to make the most of it and stumble on. Part exhibitionist, part workhorse, an agile performance 'zebra' darts by on stilts before stopping to pose for photos—and a spot of hula hooping. Elsewhere, over at the Cocktail Bar, those knowledgeable guys from DJhistory.com are revealing their special Secret Weapons stash, and it's flowing freely.
Keen to expand our musical horizons even further, we dip a toe in the deep water that is Mercury-nominated Rachel Unthank & The Winterset. Now it might just be the sunburn, or it might be the whole folk genre, but these darlings of the broadsheets are giving me the chills. It's indeed a relief when (the slightly less gloomy) Beth Orton takes over on the Castle Stage. Dehydration, Rachel Unthank, and Beth Orton is a crazy brew though, and I start to drink… irresponsibly. (Hey sponsors, where's the cheap booze at?)
Thinking that we'll cheer ourselves up with a spot of comedy, we move on, noting the massive pull of The Mighty Boosh on the Open Air Stage—is this the biggest crowd yet? Probably. Whatever, to rapturous applause Mr. Fielding bounds on stage wearing a tight disco 2000 jumpsuit and crows (rather ironically) to the crowd: "Look at the state of you!" He then pulls a turn that takes in all sorts of subject matter from shitting to astronauts. It's English comedy at its most surreal, but we're not sure Noel's hitting the right notes for the older folk in the crowd, some of whom are covering their kids' ears.
Either way, the mood changes in an instant when Tom Middleton's Summer of Love DJ set kicks in. He immediately grabs the audience with mash-up choons like "You Got the Love" and "My House (Jack Had a Groove)." "You love it, don't you, you ravers!" laughs Tom over the mic as smiley culture graphics and '80s newspaper clippings highlighting the horrors of rave flash across the huge screens. Hands are raised and the crowd sways, smiling and singing as one.
Leaving the unwashed masses to take Tom's Jedi trip though 20 years of acieed, we climb back up the valley to the Art Trail. (So, so, so much walking!) From here the vista seems almost unearthly as the festival pulsates with life below. The trail is just great, but having previously read about deer ticks—and being a soft-skinned city-dweller—I'm somewhat alarmed to find myself surrounded by ferns. Country Code flash back: "Please be aware that as the site is a working deer park, there is a small risk of tick bites. You are more likely to be bitten if you walk in or go near ferns. If you are bitten, it is recommended that you visit the First Aid Tent in order for the tick to be properly removed..."
[Note to self: Like the fact that several parents are wheeling their kids around in wheelbarrows, the tick thing is something I probably shouldn't mention.]
Anyway, we decide it's time to return to the festival proper, by dropping down (via the Disco Shed) to the Media Mix Tent for the Bomb the Bass AV show, which features new work from Future Chaos, with VJs and vocalist Paul Conboy live on the mic.
Elsewhere, a quick scout around reveals Âme dropping some addictive calypso-style beats in the Club Tent and Coldcut's Jon More moving over for Solid Steel fav DK in the Sauza Tent. Nevertheless, for us, tonight is about the eerily seductive Trentemøller on the main stage with his band.
And it's a high-impact and theatrical performance, as it turns out, with the chemistry of a drummer, a guitarist, and Anders at the helm on the keys, Mac, and mixer. All the while a stream of sensual B&W visuals and kitsch imagery of dancing ladies from the '50s plays out behind them.
As Trentemøller concludes his set bubbles, spawned by the super-large bubble machines sold on-site, float over the crowd before bursting, leaving those below thinking it's raining again. Some find this highly entertaining; others don't. Perhaps it's a bit like Trentemøller Live in Concert?
To finish off our night on a more up-tempo beat, we call by Derrick Carter, who is banging it out to a crowd who are far from finished in the Rizla Arena.
SUNDAY
"Witness the weakness!" shouts my camping companion, shaking the rainwater from her sleeping bag. Rise and shine it is, except today it looks overcast, and it obviously rained again overnight.
Feeling slightly more human after a breakfast of pizza, we pack up camp so that we can leave early. This inevitably means missing many things we'd like to see, such as the T for Tibet, the burning of the house on the hill, David Holmes, Lee "Scratch" Perry & Adrian Sherwood, Camille, and Leonard Cohen, but today our chill time is limited.
So we join young and old as they flock to the first major gathering of the day—Sir Norman Jay's Good Times set of "sunshine music." Norman's sets are a bit of an institution here and the first thing he does is thank the crowd for braving the dark clouds. Introducing tracks over the mic, old school-stylee, he presents a cocktail of sounds from the past, present, and future. At last the sun breaks through, as if at the command of the music. Norman maintains his 100% sunshine record, just, the spirit of the crowd is elevated, and right now it's easy to see how religions start.
As we drift back through the site to depart, we notice that the comedian John Shuttleworth's also drawn a large crowd to the Castle Stage. Yes, it's been quite a big one for the comedians, not to mention countless other artists and the 39,000 revellers who experienced The Big Chill's kaleidoscope of entertainment this year.