Kildemose Festival 2010 (June 25-26th, 2010)
From Aural Innovations #41 (October 2010)
My band the Øresund Space Collective was playing again this year and my nephew from the USA, he was coming along as well as a roadie. I left about 11:30 to head over to Sweden to go pick up the rental van. Sadly, Stefan cancelled at the last minute this morning but I had planned ahead and we had three guitar players lined up in case. All else seem to be in order.
The weather this weekend is supposed to be very good and it is cloudy but warm outside. Anders and Rune, some Norwegian friends of mine are catching a ride in the van with us out to the festival and Nick and PIB will catch a ride later with the Univerzals guys, but we will take their gear.
It was around 15:30 or so when we left the Dragens Hule, very very packed with gear and people. The fucking traffic was a nightmare though and it took us nearly 3 hours to get to the festival site. There were not that many people there yet but the weather was wonderful now and we found a perfect place at the top of the hill to set up all the tents.
19:00 Jonas Munk from Causa Sui was starting off the music as an acoustic duo with his friend Martin Ryde. I only heard part of their set and there was very few people watching them but it sounded cool. Laid back acoustic stuff.
20:00 Ave, a 5 piece Danish band were next and they were not very interesting. They did not seem like a festival band at all. They had a charismatic singer and the bass player had a cool mini-moog but he only played bass lines on it and nothing cool. Despite having two guitar players there were virtually no guitar solos at all. A few more people were around now.
22:00 Jacksons Garden. This was a total surprise and a very rare event. Here is a very old Danish band with all the original members, I think, who only released one record in 1968 and re-released two years ago. It was cool to hear them play. It is quite Bob Dylan inspired stuff with a bit of country edge but some great songs. A small crowd of like 40 people were watching the band. It was really nice around the stage area with some couches and lounge chairs and all the tables, etc.
00:00 Kandy Kolored Tangerine were up and this was a new band for me. They played a type of shoegazer, riff rock with spacey melodic lines that just build and build. Pretty high energy stuff. They had a female synth player but she did not play that much and the two guitar players only riffed except a psyched out solo in one song. Pretty ok stuff.
01:45 It was really late when the Univerzals finally got set up and played and now I was worried for tomorrow as we are the last band and it is 1hr 15 minutes late now and there are 4 more bands tomorrow… will we play at 4 in the morning to 10 people again?? Anyway, the Univerzals opened with Glass Skyscraper and sounded fantastic. They played a lot of new songs which were really rocking and much less ska inspired. Nick writes some really cool stuff and the sax player, Anders is excellent. It is a very tight band with a killer drummer (Troels) and bass player. While, Nick is not playing a lot of guitar solos, Mogens on the synths and Anders is. I was really tired and headed back to the tent at a little after 3 but they played until 4 in the morning!
13:15 Lotus Krokus started 15 minutes late, which was not a good sign. They had one less member this year as the hand drum player was not there. They played almost the exact same songs as last year, which was a bit disappointing. They are still a very good band and have really nice songs all sung in Danish. The crowd was pretty small with only like 30 people watching them but more people were listening up on the hill.
14:30 Marie Louise Munck was back this year again to play their very beautiful space music. They have a lot of fans with the older people at the festival. I enjoy her very much, even though this might come as a surprise. It is very honest music and not pop drivel.
A totally new band to me called Papir was next. They were an instrumental three piece band and pretty young. Both the guitar and bass player had a lot of pedals and were able to vary their sound a lot in this krautrock inspired stuff. I really thought Damo Suzuki should come out and join them. They had a lot of cool tracks. So nice to hear young people playing this type of music from the soul of 70s rock. Keep it up guys.
Aron and the Black Beacon Orchestra were next. I had never seen this line up live before, even though I had seen Aron a few times. It was a great new addition to the festival but would have been better in the night time with some strange projections. They played some familiar stuff and the last two tracks were pretty psyched out stuff and really great. The band is something different live though than the records, which are very hard to reproduce the same vibe live.
One of the festival favorites, Cherry Overdrive were next. I think they have played the past 5 years. I am not sure where all the people came from but this was the largest crowd of any of the bands so far. The Cherry girls are just awesome, what can I say! High energy rock and roll and a lot of great songs as well. They have a lot of diversity as well even though sometimes they string too many songs the same pace in a row but damn, they rock out and the crowd loves it as well. They always take too much time to get on the stage though and we always get behind schedule with their set. We were only about 30 minutes off now though, which was not too bad.
Now, two more bands had been added that were not on the printed schedule and this is where we start to get very delayed. Tigerene with one of the Munch girls, was next and this just did not really fit in the schedule at all after the high energy Cherry Overdrive stuff. They did not play that long though and most of the crowd went off to the hills.
Highway Child was next and they are also another favourite of the festival and always rock the place. I was really looking forward to hearing some of the new material. They were slow in getting set up also but at least they used the drum kit this year, which saved some time. They totally rocked the joint and I liked the new songs a lot but they did not do any jamming in the new songs, only the older songs like Spaciator, Love for Sale, Just like You... Great set and people were into it. It was 11:30 now and we were supposed to start at 12:30 and Sedated Angel still had to set up with projections, etc. It was going to be late for OSC.
I have reviewed the latest Sedated Angel CD and was really looking forward to seeing them live. They had a couple of fire breathers in front of the stage to start the show before the projection guy took over completely. It was some pretty damn cool psychedelic stoner rock. I would like some more delay on the vocals to make it more psyched out. They played a pretty cool set and we got them to stop after like 45 minutes as it was getting really late.
It was 2:15 in the morning and there was only about 20 people in front of the stage when we started up. I was really tired and it was fucking cold out as well. Thomas, our bass player was passed out snoring away in his tent and I could not wake him but my nephew managed to get him awake and he showed up in time to play. I was a bit worried. I had asked the guys in Causa Sui if they wanted to jam with us but they ended up partying a bit too much and it was good we did not need them. Nick was in strange condition but very happy after having tripped out with the Spanish guys and not slept until this afternoon and only for a few hours. Anyway, people seem to really like it and my nephew said he got totally spaced out and liked us. I think the show was pretty spaced out but Magnus played some killer intense guitar and was really on top. Nick was mostly noodling and did not play what seem like half the time, just standing and listening in his own world. Two German guys from Hamburg came especially to see us and seemed satisfied. It was 3:50 or something when we finished.
Kildemose Festival 2010…. Another great year but it is a pity that not more people come out for this amazing place. Great beer, great sound, great bands, good food and just nice people smoking a lot of joints and enjoying life.
Reviewed by Scott Heller