Offset Festival - 30-31 August 2008 Live Review

We are about halfway through the inexplicably long queue for press passes when it becomes clear that I really ought to have worn shorts today. The afternoon sun is beating down gloriously over Hainault Forest and is finding consummate response beneath my jeans, where a steady emission of biological Araldite is, much to my discomfort, affixing my scrotal sac to my right thigh. Ah, the fickle mistress that is the British summer…

As we confront the main stage, I can’t help but notice that Maths Class are all, bar one, wearing the type of shorts that would have brought some much-needed testicular refreshment to my melting undercarriage. “Damn them!” I think, whilst as subtly as possible trying to rearrange the contents of my rapidly moistening Calvins away from the eyeline of some children dancing around their beer-blushed parents. However, despite my sartorial envy, Maths Class are a good beginning to the Offset experience, venting forth a pleasant jittery cacophony alongside the odd discordant arpeggio or spaghetti western guitar line. They end their set with singer Tim Sketchley frenetically jabbering over the claustrophobic ‘Nerves’ which nicely details their sound.

We veer off from the main stage to catch the final few minutes of Chinastyle’s sub-Nirvana grunge-lite. Their singer frolics around onstage, gesticulating wildly and grinding the tent pole like a coked-up Blue Peter presenter a few hours before being found outside a Soho karaoke bar with a missing wallet, a hooker’s call card and urine-soaked slacks.

Similarly, On the Guitar Hero stage, First Signs of Frost’s singer is busting some equally comical shapes, this time resembling a drunken dad at a Kerrang sponsored Bar Mitzvah soundtracked by Funeral For A Friend. At this point, I am starting to wonder whether a propensity for dancing like a cross between David Brent and Napoleon Dynamite is a prerequisite for getting on the bill of the outer stages but, cavorting aside, there’s some decent widdly-widdly guitar and despite being nothing wildly original, FSoF’s commercial sound means it is not too hard to envisage them getting reasonable airplay on some rock-based satellite music channel.

Back on the main stage Thomas Tantrum’s jaunty jangles and pretty harmonies are just the job in the Essex sunshine. Bubbles drift above the audience as vocalist Megan Thomas sings “I won’t take no for an answer, I want to be your dancer!”, before inciting the crowd to buy their new album on Monday. On the basis of this performance, there may be many who would be more than happy to take her up on both offers.

In the Experimental Circle Club Tent, hirsute one-man band Honkeyfinger is squeezing out some truly filthy southern fried blues rock. It is the aural equivalent of an ash speckled tumbler of Tennessee state bourbon and equally as grubbily satisfying. It actually comes as quite a surprise when the Beefheart-ish melange of thudding drums, caterwauling and feral harmonica is peppered between songs with his improbable English accent, but then I guess music can be a dialect unto itself.

As Honkeyfinger shuffles offstage, I am accosted by some bare-footed nutter in purple cords who claims he used to write album reviews for the Telegraph. Lifting up his sunglasses to reveal heavily dilated pupils, he informs us that we must go to watch Chrome Hoof later on. “They are sensational live!”, he tells me, before proceeding to scribble inebriatedly what I deduce are most likely to be the words ‘Chrome Hoof’ in illegible writing all over my programme. It is a pleasing but utterly pointless aide de memoire. Still, better make sure I go. At the rate he’s going, I’ll be impressed if he is.

One plate of sloppy, but not completely unpalatable chilli-non-carne from the Mexican food van later, we once again head to the main stage to catch The Strange Death of Liberal England. There is a delay to their appearance followed by an announcement over the PA: “Jim Delaney to come backstage – urgent diesel problem”. It occurs to me that if Jim is our purple-trousered friend from a few minutes ago we could be in serious trouble.

I briefly flirt with the idea of going to see the equally wonderfully-monickered Ice See, Dead People, but decide against it. How pleased I am that I do because TSDOLE are awesome. They take the stage with the appropriately named Adam Woolway in signature ginger Carlos Puyol wig yodelling some incomprehensible melody before the band kick off in a frenzied tumult of windswept guitar, rolling drums, xylophone loops, grand waves of rushing fuzz and Arcade Fire-esque chanting that sounds as if it has come from the choir of a local psychiatric hospital . Now, any band that holds up placards between songs proclaiming things like “Put your faith in holy books” might easily be dismissed as pretentious, but when the denouement is a song as beautiful as “A Day Another Day” and sung with as much red-faced thunder as TSDOLE, it is nothing less than enchanting.

TSDOLE’s epic landscapes were always going to be a tough act to follow, but nothing quite prepares me for how cringingly terrible Interlock are on the Guitar Hero stage. Looking like a five strong, goth-styled WWF tag team, they plod along with teeth-itching twin vocals and possibly the most tedious metal drumming to which I have yet born witness. Being a genre that lives and dies by its rhythms, this is nothing less than a fatal error and their onstage chat is Alan Partridge hide behind the sofa stuff. I am certainly not averse to a good bit of metal, but anything as generic as this would have the Dark Lord rolling in his grave.

We move to the Last.FM tent to try and sneak a peak at Die! Die! Die!, but it is thoroughly rammed. It looks like a belting gig, but other than the odd bit of impressively propulsive drumming, I cannot hear much beyond the muffle outside the canvas.

We thus make our way to XX Teens and immediately I feel like I’m back in the eighties with their thick bass grooves and the Ian McCullough-esque, ‘too-cool-for-school’ singer looking fashionably bored in opaque black shades.
Although they do not really blow my hair back, they seem mighty popular with the crowd, none more so than the indie Didier Drogba in spray paint tight black jeans mouthing the words up against the rails at the front. I rather doubt that Felipao would approve.

Exit Ten are up next. The official programme describes them as having “a soaring brilliance that very few bands will ever touch” and cites their influences as “Tool, Mike Patton, Killswitch Engage and Thom Yorke”. It all sounds very exiting. However, bar perhaps Killswitch Engage, they sound nothing like any of these acts. In fact, as musical touchstones go, the only real similarity I can discern is the singer’s unerring pastiche of Incubus’ Brandon Boyd in both singing style and demeanour. Perhaps further listens may lead me to regret saying this but whilst I can happily imagine having them on my iPod to rock out to on the tube home from work, I reckon this would have more to do with my general love of hard rock rather their being anything as special as the PR would have you believe.

Johnny Foreigner hit the main stage with lots of fizzy, angular guitar and the occasional tasty keyboard titbit from their drummer. About halfway through the set, their guitarist mentions that he thinks he’s blown it with a girl over whom he is obsessing and is “at the festival but not watching”. This is met with considerable shock amongst the audience, given that the vast majority had assumed his Brummie-punk Rufus Wainwright pitter-patter was something of an audible rainbow flag. Clearly not.

They can certainly pen a pop song, but there is something about their manner onstage that bugs me. Our photographer mentions that she’d like to hit them with a deep-fat fryer. I concur, although I personally feel a 70lb Sri Lankan grouper would be infinitely more satisfying.

As dusk begins to settle, we take our foray into the Girlcore Dance Tent and enter a world festooned with bizarre 2D creatures and cloth dollies macabrely strung up by their pigtails. Towards the back, a male dancer appears to be making vigorous love to a cardboard apple tree, whilst a posse of revellers shake their funky stuff on a papier maché bed to deep, dirty house, looking like they could sure use a glowstick or two. God knows who’s playing. I think I would need the full contents of Hunter S Thompson’s picnic basket to get to their level right now, so I move on.

Young Knives appear at around ten past eight looking for all the world like they’ve just finished a hard day’s keyboard masturbation at Microsoft. For the first time at the festival, everyone crams up against the barriers. YK have a great line in quirky post punk, punctuated with the occasional knock back into place of the spectacles. “I have just shit in my pants” The House of Lords announces three songs in. Perhaps not a bad idea given the often harrowing experience of festival toilets (although I am told Offset’s have been relatively decent). As Henry Dartnell introduces the deceivingly jaunty “Dyed in the Wool” as their next single and sings “I had to put you in headlock, force you into wedlock” I begin to wonder whether I am witnessing the first top forty record about sheep husbandry. I soon decide I am not.

Just as enjoyable as the onstage action at this point is the large, and indeed unusually heavy, ‘Mr Hoppy’ space hopper which is being liberally flung about the crowd, pinballing forcefully off the various unsuspecting asymmetrical haircuts. There can be no doubt: schadenfreude is the tickliest of tickling feathers.

A quick visit to Colin’s Tent, informs us it is running behind and that Tom McRae will be on later. As it turns out, much later. So, back to the Guitar Hero stage and Fightstar. I don’t think I am the only one here who is struggling to suppress the insatiable urge to request “What I go to School For”. However, looking at Charlie, he might kick my ass. He is huge. Massively more buff than the Busted teen idol I remembered him as. Matching his new pectorals is a bassy foghorn of a voice that sounds not unlike what my mind’s ear would render the lowing of a constipated ox. However, we are in the world of emo and this is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, although played a little sloppily, I secretly rather like the faux angst of ‘Palahniuk’s Laughter’.

Having just covertly enjoyed a song by a band that are essentially quite shit, I wander over shamefaced to catch tonight’s headliners, Wire, a band that have been lauded to the rafters by near-on the full festival line-up. The thing is, and this is pretty much as embarrassing as Suggs advertising Birdseye frozen peas, Wire just do not do it for me. Yes, they chug along nicely, but everything seems a little one-paced and monotonous. Does that make me uncool? Almost certainly, but it’s the way I feel. So nyah.

It is approaching 11PM, so following our serotonin-fuelled friend’s tip-off we head to the Experimental Circle Club for Chrome Hoof. I ask an inhabitant of the sardine-tight tent if CH are on next, but am quickly given my answer as a ear-busting chant of “’Oof! ’Oof! ‘Oof! ‘Oof!” erupts. They take to the stage and look like nothing else in this world. They are at least ten strong and all dressed in mirrorball druid capes bar singer Lola Olafisoye who wears a sheer black batwinged gown with a silver sequinned pentagram beneath. She looks for all the world, with her lean frame and mad afro hair, like some terrifyingly sexy seventies Bond villain. In fact I think Chrome Hoof may be the best looking band I have ever seen. They seem not of this world, like some alluring but malevolent aliens. Their music does not disappoint either, being equally strange and intoxicating, combining elements of progressive death metal, electro, disco and funk. They are an incredible live band and impossible to take yours eyes off. Particular highlights are ‘Pronoid’ and the doom disco of ‘Toynte’ in which Lola moves like a woman possessed. When ‘Mad Air Punch’ comes on, the crowd reaches critical mass and a huge slam pit opens up and, guess what? Who is in the centre but a man in purple cords looking like he has just reached his own sonic nirvana. Go and see Chrome Hoof. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

It is now midnight, so we go back to Colin’s Tent. Tom McRae is already two and a half hours late. I and everyone else in the tent are soon kicked out though, as a heated debate ensues between the organisers. As we move outside, we hear raised voices “He’s got a contract to fulfil, he has to go on!”. Having stupidly not taken enough cash out of the ATM in Dalston, I scramble around for booze and am taken pity on by a kind blond girl who offers some warm rosé in an empty Volvic bottle. Very nicely it does too. Finally we are let back into the tent and Jake Shillingford appears onstage. What?! It’s not even Tom’s turn yet! However, despite the potential restlessness, Jake plays and charms the pants off everyone present, strumming some pretty acoustic tunes (including some of his old My Life Story tracks) and regaling the audience with stories of rough-housing Mr Blobby on Live & Kicking and the ‘Saarf Landahn’ pronunciation of our current location, Hainault – in which dropping an ‘H’ can make all the difference to the meaning of a sentence. A true hero of the DIY scene, Jake leaves to a happy audience, many of whom have never heard him before.

Well, I’ve been to few delayed shows before, but I think Colin’s Tent are looking to break the world record (previously held by Guns n’ Roses). Tom McRae finally arrives onstage at 1:25 – a full 4 hours late – and does so to a messianic welcome. Only the hardcore are left now, but those that have stayed are really treated to something special. In as intimate an environment as this, Tom is masterful. His voice really is something to behold and makes most of the other vocalists at the festival appear charlatans. Although a cliché, you really can hear a pin drop through beautiful renditions of ‘You Only Disappear’ and ‘The Ghost of a Shark’. In fact, Tom has the audience in the palm of his hand to such a degree that even when a crazed reveller wearing a high-vis vest and fire helmet appears at the back of the tent frantically blowing a rave whistle mid-song, only to realise that he has really come at the wrong time, it takes just a wry shake of the head for the crowd to be in stitches. “I feel sorry for him”, he quips, “I think he was trying to start a revolution”. However, all those that were there know that the only extraordinary event was in Colin’s Tent in the early hours of Sunday morning. Tom plays ‘End of The World News’ and incites those gathered to sing an a capella version of the chorus. It goes on for a good few minutes. It may seem like a trite rock star manoeuvre, but this time it is not. It is the highlight of the festival so far. When the crowd eventually depart and wander back to their tents, they do so with a little more belief in the proverb that good things truly do come to those who wait.

So Sunday arrives and I enter the arena to what sounds like a melange of Kraftwerk, M83 and the Klaxons. The noise is being made by Wellington band So So Modern. Modern? Definitely. So-so? Definitely not. They leave to rapturous applause from an audience highly unlikely to have heard them before and their merchandising lady is swamped, many leaving with a CD (including myself). They are certainly a band to keep an eye on. What a good start to day 2.

Next, in Colin’s Tent, with (given last night’s delay) an understandably diligent looking sound desk are We Rock Like Girls Don’t. It is an appropriate name given that not many all female three pieces do make this sort of riff heavy rock n’ roll, even if a great many bands you would see at your local boozer do.

On the Guitar Hero stage, Furthest Drive Home are creating bland, ‘driving down the minty freeway’ kind of music and often veering into Maroon 5 cheddar-cheesery. Worryingly, another band they remind me of is N’SYNC which is never good news. In fact the most remarkable thing about FDH is the guitarist on the left hand side of the stage’s hair. I say this as a comfortably heterosexual man, but the way his luxurious barnet tosses and bounces in the country forest wind is really something to behold. I ought to ask him what conditioner he uses. In fact, I am certain his spectacular bouffant is the reason why there is such a large herd of heavy-set goth girls squealing at the front as if someone had just stolen their favourite black top. Either that, or it could be the pain caused by eating too much cheese.

Walking past the Girlcore Dance Tent, I notice that someone seems to have drawn a short, stubby penis on the outer canvas. Similarly there appears to be impressively large mountain of horse manure heaped up outside the Experimental Circle Club. Whilst the latter leaves me baffled as to its origin (a horse, presumably, but there has been a notable lack of equestrianism as far as I was aware), both turn out to be startlingly prescient of Electricity in Our Homes who are making a great, big tinny racket inside. The crowd seem to be enjoying their corruption of Nirvana’s ‘Polly’ into affectatious and self-consciously arty indie and, no doubt they will be popular with certain NME types. Personally, however, I would suggest that they are bollocks. In fact, more accurately, they are bollocks dangling below fashionably crap pubic hair and an ‘ironic’ monocled japseye.

Much better are You Love Her Coz She’s Dead, a two piece male-female, singer/bass/i-Book combo. Whilst, at first, the audience are unusually static, YLHCSD soon get them going through an amalgamation of the type of dancing usually reserved for New Year’s Eve in Fabric and the handful of genuine dancefloor burners they undoubtedly have within their arsenal. Indeed, Elle Dead reminds me somewhat of a crazed cheerleader hyped up after chinning six packs of Jolly Ranchers.

Thus far the Guitar Hero stage has not exhibited much of note with far too many bands perhaps taking the stage’s sponsor a little too seriously and opting more for ridiculous rock posturing than good music. Although Slaves To Gravity still enjoy throwing the odd fun shape, they also display a dynamism which has been sadly lacking from the majority of the bands on display here. With a more believable swagger and some crunchy gear-shifting riffs, they are reminiscent of Velvet Revolver or early Soundgarden. In some ways this speaks for itself in so far as STG are nothing earth-shatteringly original, but if you do like a healthy dose of good, hard rock, these boys are no bad choice.

Back on the main stage, Hot Club De Paris are making the kind of chirpy indie that befits their Liverpudlian heritage. They also mention what sounds like a somewhat surreal gig they recently played with Frank Sidebottom. Although Frank does not make appearance tonight, HCDP are most enjoyable and “Your Face Looks All Wrong” is a cracking live song.

On the outer stages Underground Railroad are melding Bleach-era Nirvana basslines with DIY avant garde to occasional interesting (but more often than not, repetitive) effect, whilst Ja Ja Wunderbar’s name affirms my belief in the inherent comedy of unnecessary German and do a nice line in likeable plaid shirt power-pop. In fact, one particular ditty berating the ‘crapness’ of a third rate opera they went to see is well worth seeking out.

Blood Red Shoes hit the main stage and lay down a lovely lean, punchy groove. For some reason, during the first few songs, I am under the impression that drummer Lee’s peroxide blonde barnet is a wig and, more concerningly, that it looks like it may become dislodged during one of his more vigorous drum rolls. Thankfully, it seems well secured and I am assured by surrounding revellers that it is indeed his real hair. This is good news as it allows me to enjoy a fantastic band that harmonise beautifully and are as tight as the majority of the crowd’s trousers.

Down by the toilets some bloke is noisily taking an al fresco piss, declaring loudly to those emerging from the portaloos that “when you’ve done a smelly one, you’ve got to air it!”. Good advice, I think we can all agree.

A brief trip to the Girlcore Dance Tent provides me with the sight of two bearded transvestites cooking up some hot beats, whilst Fortune Favours in Colin’s Tent are notable primarily for the fact that their lead singer is the spitting image of my friend Will Paul.

My Vitriol are up next on the Guitar Hero stage. Finally, a rock band on here that I know and like! Still, it seems an incredibly long time since I last remember them releasing a record and even longer – probably a good seven or eight years – since I saw them live. The weather is really beginning to turn now and the heavens open up with the forecasted thunder storms just as My Vitriol take the stage. However, far from putting a dampener on proceedings, the weather seems to tessellate perfectly with their esoteric sound, the storm light shuddering across their forms like a natural strobe. To put it succinctly, My Vitriol are approximately one thousand times better than anything else that has been on this stage simply because there is a bit of light and shade to their music. “Always Your Way” is received rapturously and their cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” is inspired. I soon remember why I used to think this band would go on to great things. I hope there is still time for them.

So here we are. The final band of the inaugural Offset Festival and it is Gang of Four, perhaps the most obvious touchstone for where we currently sit in this great history of music. Dave Allen and Andy Burnham may have left, but it is clear from the moment they appear in front of what must be close to the full festival attendance that an all new rhythm section is unlikely to halt their swagger as Jon King prowls the stage like a caged great ape experiencing funk for the very first time. Seeing them live really brings home how influential this band have been, whether it be through hearing forefathers of Flea in the bass sound, Hillel Slovak in Andy Gill’s guitar or Kele Okereke in the staccato vocals. As the lights finally go down and the crowd begins to disperse, it truly feels like we have come the full musical circle ,tracing the festival’s line-up back to its collective origin.

One of Offset’s real strengths has been how easy it is to get from stage to stage. With no traffic or crowd funnelling, a lap of the arena is possible within a mere five minutes. Don’t like the band that’s on? No problem. Go and check out one of the other seven stages. I honestly cannot remember another event where I have seen so many bands in such a short space of time. Yes, there has been the occasional dross, but would you really want it any other way? It is the very nature of festivals. More important is the fact that there have been some of those magical moments that only happen when hundreds of disparate, hopeful people mass together in a field through the erratic English summer to watch a band either on top of their game or suddenly realising that they are on their way up. We have certainly had these at Offset. Let’s hope this brilliant boutique festival will be with us for many years to come.


Nathan Leong