Friday overview

Last weekend in the Malvern Hills of Herefordshire perfect weather held out for the 25,000 festival go-ers attending The Big Chill festival, the sixth event to be held in the idyllic grounds of the deer park at Eastnor Castle.

Now in it’s 12th year, the Big Chill is one of very few independently run events of the same size and now has something of a cult following. Walking down the long sloping path from the hilltop campsite into the valley-set arena for my 3rd consecutive instalment of the festival, I remember why I fell for The Big Chill in the first place: as the main site comes into view in the valley beneath you, complete with four lakes, thick woods and shady spots, it is a truly beautiful sight and the perfect antidote to the usual show grounds and airfields that most British festivals call home.



We began Friday with reggae rum punch and the Funkywormhole DJs from Hull, Leicester & Norwich playing sweet sun-drenched vintage reggae and soul at The Dub Shack: the perfect soundtrack to the clear blue skies of the weekend. As we sat in the grass and looked around us, the only sign that the site had been a total bog only a few days before was the absence of some of the more intricate festival decoration that usually characterises this event: the village green gazebo and athletics track, the parasols and picnic benches outside the Fat Tuesday tent, the 4-poster bed seating of 2005. Walking around, I had to wonder if these accessories were missing because of the inclement weather of the previous weeks, or because times are tough in festival land as this year’s event was far from a sell-out. Certainly much of the festival seems a little scaled down from previous years: the Village Green Stage was significantly down-sized and it’s programming now just a footnote in the back pages of the programme, the Art Trail is no longer a separate event, now blending into the rest of the festival and there were certainly less people on site than in the two previous years.

After meeting friends and some rather fabulous pie, we found ourselves heading to the Open Air Stage. As Mika had to cancel his performance due to illness (news which The Big Chill audience greeted with massive cheers every time it was mentioned, so probably best he did have a headcold, really...), the rather wonderful Richie Havens was moved up into his place to fill the gap. Havens’ soulful blues-y folk seemed to move the crowd as effectively in 2007 as it did back at Woodstock some 38 years before, his own timeless classics met with the same rapturous reception as his cover of “All Along the Watchtower.”



Kruder & Dorfmeister headlined the Open Air Stage on Friday night, bringing their Summer Sessions show to the table with guest performances from MC Earl Zinger & Ras MC T-Weed. A rare treat to see them play in this country, it was with some excitement that I went to see what they have been up to since my last encounter with the duo some 5 years before. A far cry from the stripped down, chilled out sets that made their name, Peter Kruder & Richard Dorfmeister played 4 hours of 21st century Viennese house, breaks & dub to an enormous crowd who were more than happy to see them. With VJ Fritz Fitzke providing the eyeball entertainment, this was one big show that kept the swollen crowd dancing till the very end.

The need for more cocktails brought us to the tail-end of Mad Professor’s dub set in The Dub Shack, playing out on a less-than-adequate sound system. Why book someone whose music relies on deep and dirty bass when you know you will not be able to let them crank it up on the stage they are booked on due to environmental health constraints? It seemed a waste of perfectly good records and so we headed into the Club Tent to see DJ Marky & The Stamina MC. The Brazilian DnB legend is normally a reliable festival favourite, but there was something rather limp about this set and as Marky brought his latino breakbeat rhythms to a very thin crowd, I couldn’t help but think I’d heard it all before. It was certainly a world away from the “guaranteed roadblock” the programme had promised.

Finishing Friday night in Big Chill Nights, an excellent new addition to The Big Chill’s after hours offering, I found myself drunkenly dancing to the Club Fromage Emporium of Smut, pop so cheesey as to be a health hazard, the like of which I never thought I would want to hear again. The tent was jam-packed with silly-dancing pop party people, dancing to anything from PJ & Duncan to Bon Jovi and all thrown together by the DJs in so kitsch a fashion as to make an extremely entertaining end to a long day.

Latest Updates