Sunday overview

If I had thought the previous couple of days had been hot, then nothing prepared me for Sunday. As lunchtime temperatures soared towards the 30s I gave up hope of dancing and had to settle for cowering under a tree up the valley behind the stage, watching those braver souls than I who were out ‘aving it while the sun had got his hat on.

Literally every shaded patch on site was rammed full of people as festival favourite Norman Jay brought his Good Times show to the Open Air Stage. Jay’s Sunday lunchtime sets are something of an institution at The Big Chill, indeed there’s an old joke that the DJ packs the sun in his record box for the event and today was no exception as the sun blazed down. However lame we might have been, hiding in the shade, the Big Chillers dancing to Jay’s soulful beat brew were undeterred. From our vantage point up the valley the rest of the site appeared to be empty as the festival crowded into the Open Air Stage arena to dance to his tunes.

The Skatalites attracted a similarly sized crowd to watch their ska reggae set. Back in 1964, musicians who had played on some of the most popular records in the fledgling ska scene got together to form a band and 37 years on, despite a few line-up tweaks and changes, they are still playing together live, bringing 40 years of Jamaican musical tradition to the stage. Their sun-drenched summer vibes kept everyone dancing throughout a set that just goes to show that real performers only improve with age.


The Castle Stage beckoned next for one of the highlights of the weekend as Shlomo & The Vocal Orchestra stepped out onto the stage. Shlomo is already one of the UK’s finest beatboxers, and the first section of this show was really quite impressive enough as he demonstrated his talents using a sampler to build walls of vocally produced music that sounded like a whole team of musicians had been involved. Shlomo already had the audience on side, his compositions being met with woops from the crowd, but then beatboxing choir The Vocal Orchestra joined him onstage and things got really heavy. On his own Shlomo makes enough music to sound like a record but the orchestra made a massive noise with original compositions, improvised jams and even a cover of Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al” that sent the audience into a frenzy.



Running back over to the Open Air Stage we caught the tail-end of Issac Hayes who was finishing up an extremely crowd-pleasing set of his trademark Hot Buttered Soul. We were just in time to catch “Soul Man” and “Shaft” and judging by his reception at the end of the set, I wished I could’ve seen more from one of the original legends of soul funk.

The Big Chill is not really a very Sunday night kind of a festival and by 22:00 the site seemed rather empty as lots of people left to head for home and Monday morning at work. We drifted about for the rest of the evening, catching a little of Specials & 2 Tone founder Jerry Dammers’ new project, The Spatial AKA Orchestra at the Castle Stage. However their crazy dark orchestral sound was just a little too weird for our liking and we found ourselves ending the festival dancing to Crazy P’s DJ set of funked up party grooves at the Finlandia Cocktail Bar before calling it a night.

The Big Chill is the original boutique festival weekender and 12 years on it is still going strong. There is fabulous food, great cocktails, numerous bars, plentiful clean toilets, water points everywhere and more showers than at your average festival (even if the queues are still mammoth). The musical programme is always varied, innovative and interesting, not to mention the addition of on-site art installations, comedy, cabaret and itinerant performance offerings. At The Big Chill the punters are always smiling and The Malverns valley setting is one of the most naturally beautiful in this country. Throw in some fabulous weather and what more could you ask for from a festival?

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