The Big Chill reveals site changes on opening day

Rain is not the first thing I think of when I think of The Big Chill. I am more used to sunshine being the defining feature of my Big Chill weekends in the glorious valley setting of Eastnor Castle's Deer Park. Unfortunately, this year I arrived on site on Thursday to find rain, rain and more rain welcoming me and 35,000 others onto the site. It was a bad start to the weekend for us as we struggled to find a camping space and finally put our tent up to the sound of moaning from our horrible neighbours, who felt entitled to a front garden for their tent in spite of a jam-packed campsite that was far busier than Thursday has been in previous years.

However, Thursday was to get worse before it got better: my friends arrived at the Family Camping gate at about 11pm to discover that there were no wristbands for them as the ticket office had run out. This was annoying of course, but also understandable and forgiveable so late in the evening, especially with the uncharacteristic number of Thursday arrivals this year. However what isn't understandable or forgiveable is the level of help offered to these 'Guests', who were at one stage told there would be no wristbands at all for them that night. Understandably stressed, these would-be festival-goers stood in the pouring rain being rudely told by the attendant staff that they "would just have to wait" and that they didn't "know when [they'd] be getting more in", when in fact there was another gate boasting a full complement of wristbands just 100m up the road which involved no waiting in the rain at all. How come we were able to find this out and no one staffing that box office or gate could? It just seemed ridiculous and was a rather glum start to what is usually a very well-managed festival.



Still, we got some sleep and awoke to blue skies on Friday morning, making everyone feel considerably brighter. The site was just as lovely as I remembered as we walked down the footpath from our hill-top camping location into the valley-set arena. With four lakes, beautiful old trees and enough green space for everyone, this is one of the most idyllic festival locations around, although it must be said that this year's site was considerably more sparsely decorated than in previous years. I had put last year's more minimal aesthetic down to the torrential downpours that kept crew from working in the weeks leading up to The Big Chill 2007, but it seems the lit-up neon trees, balloons, four poster day beds and other decorations are now just a distant memory. The site still looks good, as it always will being so naturally beautiful, but is nowhere near as extravagantly adorned as the first Big Chill I attended in 2005. With at least three stages dropped all together, and the new stages that replace them all significantly smaller than their predecessors, you have to wonder exactly where all the money from the additional 10,000 tickets sold this year has been spent.

We began our weekend with Jim White on the Open Air Stage, a performer I had not come across before, but one I hope to meet again. If the programme is to be believed, Jim White has lead a colourful life so far, with real-life exploits that include stints as a professional surfer and Milan fashion model, as well as personal struggles with religion and drug addiction. Playing a lushly atmospheric set of rootsy blues rock songs, the band weave dark and terrible musical tales of churches, motel rooms, truck stops, and lost love from America's Deep South, which seems as good a start to the weekend as you could ask for. Indeed, in spite of the melancholy sounds, the sun still manages to make an appearance as this intriguing set draws to a close.

Our original plan was to wander across to the Club Tent next to catch Son of Dave, but after a long wait another band entirely appear on the stage and we are eventually informed that Son of Dave has been moved onto the Open Air Stage to fill in for an artist cancellation. The only problem is that by the time we find this out, we're too late to see any of his set. Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and this one is the fact that we then happen upon Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, who are now playing Son of Dave's slot.

Johnny's is a name I have heard bandied about in music-loving company for some time now, with a debut album, 'A Larum', recently released to critical applause, and single 'Tickle Me Pink' picked up by iTunes as a Single of the Week back in June, this classically-trained actor and his band seem destined for big things. Sporting floppy blonde locks, a checked flannel shirt and public school boy good looks, Flynn looks considerably younger than his 25 years. His sound is part anti-folk, part country-blues, with Flynn turning his hand to a variety of instruments including guitar, banjo, mandolin and even trumpet and violin, creating a range of sounds that are by turns sombre and sad, then upbeat and joyful.

Following this set in the Club Tent is some-time Tricky collaborator and Mercury Music Prize nominee, Martina Topley-Bird, continuing her tour of the UK's summer festival circuit. Having already seen her perform backed by a full band at Glastonbury this year, I was surprised to find her playing a stripped down set with only her percussionist for company. However, this only served to highlight Martina's normally unsung talents as an instrumentalist, as over the course of this performance she ably tackles keyboards, guitar, xylophone, drums and myriad other percussion instruments, whilst always maintaining her trademark sultry soul-jazz vocals. The 40 minute set mostly showcased highlights from her new album, The Blue God, with more recent tracks such as 'Poison', 'Carnies', and 'Phoenix' going down well, but it was the sad, slow, handclap-driven 'Lying' from first album Quixotic that was my personal highlight of an extremely strong show, marred only by some annoyingly persistent feedback issues. The set ended with a quick cameo from Topley-Bird's fellow Bristolian, Son of Dave, performing their bluegrass-inspired duet, 'Devil Take My Soul' from his 2006 album, '02', ending the set on a high.

The sun was now out in full force, which was a welcome surprise after the doom and gloom that's been forecast for the weekend, so we took this opportunity to grab a jug of cocktail and enjoy the sunshine. One of the things I have particularly enjoyed about The Big Chill in previous years is the fact that it offers something rather different at the bars: rather than the standard weak lager in a soggy paper cup that is so-often spotted at UK festivals, Ray & Nephew's former involvement with the event meant there was usually some sort of cheap and lethal rum punch on sale from the bars, a large jug of which usually cost around £15 and generally seemed to be The Big Chill beverage of choice from the amount of jugs seen lying in the grass. Not so this year – with Ray & Nephew one of the many brand partners culled from the festival in 2008, the only jugs available on site were from the vodka-based Cocktail Bar, which cost a whopping £28, nearly double the price of the rum cocktails last year, which was deeply disappointing for me and my friends who had been looking forward to the infamous Reggae Rum Punch.



Taking our one and only over-priced and ice-heavy cocktail jug of the weekend over to one of the lakes, we decided to play a round of croquet (darling!) on the croquet lawn – something I have always wanted to do at previous Big Chills, but have never got to due to massive queues. This area of the festival, one that was always absolutely packed in previous years, was pretty much dead now that the Southern Comfort Fat Tuesday bar was no longer situated next to it, another victim of this summer's radical re-think of the festival. Back in 2005 and 2006, Fat Tuesday was one of my favourite venues at The Big Chill, pumping out disco, funk, and hip-hop to a smiley, sun-worshipping outdoor crowd. While last year's Fat Tuesday area may well have been a disappointment, just a shadow of its former glory, I was still shocked by the organisers' decision to can it altogether, and found myself glaring resentfully at the Words in Motion spoken word tent that was now sat in its place.

With no plans to see any particular performers for a few hours, we took the opportunity to wander the site a little and get a feel for the changes put in place this year. The Rizla Lounge seemed to be absolutely banging all weekend, constantly packed full of beautiful people grooving to Balearic beats under its palm trees and plants, with a constantly enormous queue to get in. It did look great, but there was no hope of entrance at any time that we passed it and there are always better things to be doing than queuing at a festival.



The Sunrise Celebration area of the festival was lovely, bringing a laid-back, chilled out, hippy-esque vibe to The Big Chill, which seems to have been lost all together in recent years. This year, the real place to chill was at the Sunrise Celebration area, with it's collection of smaller sound systems and independent cafes, that were usually selling food and drink for considerably less than the vendors in the main arena.

After some further drunken bumbling, dinner and a snooze, it was suddenly very late, and to my disappointment, we found we had missed Roots Manuva and Roisin Murphy, both of whom I had been looking forward to seeing. My spies tell me that both put on excellent shows, but unfortunately I was not there to see them as planned.



Rounding off the night on the Open Air Stage was Thievery Corporation, playing their only UK festival appearance this year. As a big fan of theirs back in the early noughties, I was rather excited about finally getting to see this band, who rarely play in the UK at all. However, I was more than a little disappointed, as their sound seemed to have got safer, less edgy, more straight-forward soul-y in the intervening years since I had played The Mirror Conspiracy album half to death. While it was a technically good set with excellent sound, great musicianship and some nice displays of showmanship from the performers involved, it all just seemed like the work of a totally different band from the darkly jazzy, bossa-inspired comedown crew I used to listen to. But styles change and musicians move on – it was a good set and these criticisms are entirely personal and subjective. We then moved on to see the evening out with The Orb on the Castle Stage, playing their acid dubby madness to a more than up-for-it crowd before heading back to our tents to bed.

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