It’s been a few weeks since this year’s Big Chill at Eastnor Castle and I’ve had some time to reflect.
I’ve been to every Big Chill they’ve had at Eastnor and they’re always good fun… This year’s was a little different though. To be perfectly honest, the line-up was sub-standard. Who were the headliners? I can’t really remember - none of them made much of an impression. What about the other acts? The best were the ones I’d either heard or seen before: London Elektricity, Bonobo, Emiliana Torrini, Hextatic, Ukelele Orchestra, Alice Russell, Benny Sings…
There were only a couple of surprises in there for me: Roisin Murphey and Fat Freddy’s Drop. Roisin is a loon but fantastic with it and Fat Freddy’s are totally unique. Now, both those acts were awesome but therein lies the disappointment - in previous years I’ve come away with dozens of records on my shopping list. This year I came away with two.
The funny thing is though, I had easily as good a time this year as I did last year. Why? Where the standard of the main stages seems to have dropped, everything else about the festival has grown up. The bars had great line-ups, with well-known DJs playing all day every day. Fat Tuesdays was particularly good, (my highlights there being Brewster and Belson, Andy Smith, Bugz in the Attic, Soul Jazz and Yam Who?) but the Strongbow tent rocked too. Then there was the more-surreal-than-usual Art Trail and the crazy circus tent thing that I didn’t make it into but everyone’s raved about since.
I completely expect next year’s festival to be a belter. All they need is to get the live line-up back to the level it’s been at for the previous years and maintain the goings on around the periphery. I have every confidence that they’ll do it.
Oh, but PLEASE Big Chill, get more parking attendants for the Monday! It took 4 hours to get off-site last year and over an hour this year simply because the one chap there manning the gate (understandably) couldn’t cope with ten thousand cars.
