Gig review: Kelburn Garden Party, Kelburn Castle, Nr Largs

By David Pollock
Published on 02/07/2012 00:00

SCOTLAND’S strong roster of high-quality boutique festivals has been enhanced in recent years by the Kelburn Garden Party, a tiny event with a truly singular atmosphere.

Kelburn Garden Party

Kelburn Castle, Nr Largs

****

At midday, parents and children visited the animals and ran through the Secret Forest; by midnight grown-ups were conducting their own voyage of imagination as crunching, quarry party techno hammered through the woods. And in between a slew of well-chosen bands from around Scotland played across three charming but tiny stages.

Perhaps Saturday night’s most familiar name were Glasgow’s Phantom Band, a group who have already been gigging their way through this summer and who are surely working their way towards some kind of breakthrough, their blend of robust Caledonian-voiced anthems and krautrock rhythms creating a set which prepared the crowd for the hard dancing which would follow.

Elsewhere, the Tinderbox Orchestra are a large collection of musicians who make a sophisticated, jazz-influenced instrumental sound, while the antipodean group Bobok make hyperactive gypsy folk music that’s testosterone-laden but played with skill and verve.

Bearded, sandpaper-voiced blues rocker Lewis Gibson and his band the Midas Touch were great fun, despite their singer’s inability to censor himself (“if the kids know that word,” he croaked, “it’s the parents’ fault”), while Washington Irving – a band – closed the Square Stage with a powerful mix of twee Glasgow indie and resonant modern folk, their take on She Moves Through the Fair proving to be a low-key highlight.

On the other side of the estate-bisecting valley from the campsite area, Ninja Tune’s DJ Food’s sublime set of rock classics mashed together with some exemplary scratching carried on into the night, and early the next afternoon hangovers were shaken off to the emotive rock of The Last September, playing their first festival set, and the tight funk of Federation of the Disco Pimp.