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home » festivals » Sidmouth Folk Week » Sidmouth Folk Week 2011
Late Night Extra – The Mad Hatters Tea Party - Silent Folkin' Disco go down the rabbit holeSidmouth Folk Week 2011 reviewTuesday 16th August 2011 Well what a great concept this is, a disco, as loud or as quiet as you like it, where you can have a conversation with friends you haven't seen since this time last year without having to bellow into their ear to make yourself understood. So what’s it all about then? Well firstly it is a very strange experience to walk into a venue at midnight to be greeted with silence...no music at all...jut the sound of one thousand plus feet jumping up and down on the dance floor and whoops and hollers of vague choruses from the hand waving, head shaking audience. As you go in, you pick up your multi channel headphones and adjust them to either an ear battering loudness or a gentle background ambience, in this instance to one of two channels (although some silent discos have as many as five channels to choose from) So, half the crowd are dancing to Jim Moray's eclectic folk mixes and half the crowd to Lemez Lovas' South American hi energy beats of salsa, rumba, tango and cha cha cha. The experience is quite something to behold and quite something to participate in, as once the headphones are cranked up you become oblivious to all around you with no extraneous noise to distract. Also, of course, you never get bored.......don't like this track? Just flick the switch and try the other channel. Want to chat up that fit bloke dancing in front of you? Just drop the headphones around your neck, tap him on the shoulder and hope he does the same... and if he does you can throw your best chat up lines knowing that no one else can hear, lost in their own world of music. This was a truly great night, full of laughs as the DJ's competed for their audience starting off with Jim Causley, getting everyone in the disco mood by playing cheesy dance classics (so, very unlike the music he sings in his own shows!) followed by Jim Moray taking huge mixing risks which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.... not that the audience cared, they just went for it. Mixes such as Seth Lakeman's 'Kitty Jay' mixed in Michael Jackson's 'Billy Jean' worked beautifully, and it was a real education to hear the original folk version of 'Hog Faced Man' segued with the 1950's rip roaring rockabilly version. Meanwhile Lemez cleverly spun and weaved his way through Latin America old and new, but Jim proved to be the audience favourite; although by 1.00am it was hard to tell which part of the audience were dancing to which DJ. And what an audience it was! Some dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland; one wheelchair bound punter had a table built into her chair set out with crockery and cakes ready for the tea party and chair also appropriately decorated. There was also plenty of cross dressing with boys pinching their girlfriend's best frocks for the evening, people in morris kit and quite others in not much at all (well it was a hot evening!) Ultimately everyone had a fantastic time, from kids to pensioners to hard core dancers; and it is certainly something I shall be doing again. Well done to the two Jims and Lemez for giving us a thoroughly fun packed evening. review by Josie Kemp 
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