This is one of my favourite weekends of the year. We're really lucky to have a music festival just a short walk into town - and the line-up seems to get better every year. The Friday night is normally folk and the Saturday more indie/ rock/ pop.
The line up this year for the folk night started off with a local band - Bemis - here they are on MySpace http://www.myspace.com/bemisuk
Apparently the two guitarists met at a party in Portsmouth 3 years ago and the rest as they say is history. I know this because some random bloke next to us turned to me to inform me of this detail and others (like the professions of the band members). Why he did this, I have no idea. I guess even small local bands are entitled to fanboys.
Next up was Jim Moray http://www.myspace.com/jimmoray. More traditional music - and he obviously does alot of research into finding early recordings and the history of the music. Really interesting stuff and good that these things live on and the stories are still told.
Lau was my favourite act http://www.myspace.com/laumusic. There's more of an experimental edge to them - the sound varies from really frenetic to ambient (check out Lau – Horizontigo - a. Horizontigo. b. Alright in the Held apparently a song about a fear of the flat lands of the fens!). I was really impressed by the musicianship and the way that they use their instruments really creatively to get such a range of sounds. They didn't play it last night but I'm also a big fan of their cover of Dear Prudence Lau – Dear Prudence, ordinarily I don't like Beatles covers (as you don't mess with perfection) but this is a great cover of one of my favourite songs...
At the top of the bill was Cara Dillon - again great musicianship and a stunning voice. There was obviously a big following in the crowd and they didn't disappoint but the highlight for me was the originality of Lau. Can't wait to get back over there this afternoon for some local bands followed by Badly Drawn Boy, Field Music, Peggy Sue and Haunted Stereo tonight :-)
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