Swimmer One: Comments

Green hills and rumour mills

There is a weird rumour flying around that Swimmer One have some involvement with a foul-mouthed happy hardcore band from Leith called Sparklegash, who formed about three weeks ago and have since been sending threatening letters to DJs and journalists, including a couple of people I know. How this rumour started I have no idea, but there is no truth in it at all. Sparklegash are quite vile, frankly.

Our paths have crossed though, which may explain why some people think there’s a connection. At the weekend I went up to Montrose for the No Theme No Reason festival, to watch Laura singing with her band the Tea Dance Orchestra. If you haven’t heard of the festival, well, I’m not surprised. It’s not exactly T in the Park. It doesn’t appear in any listings, and is not advertised. You won’t find it on Google (well, you might now I’ve written this). You won’t even find the site unless someone gives you very specific directions, involving lots of discreetly placed - but, to a strangers’ eyes, utterly enigmatic - road signs. I drove there in a thick mist, up narrow country lanes, with a very confused local taxi driver who had never heard of the farm or the festival, and had never driven up these lanes before despite having lived there for years.

The No Theme No Reason festival is run by Turid Reppe-Roverselli (sister of Shona Reppe, the very talented Scottish puppeteeer) and her husband Fabrice. The two of them own a farm up in the hills near Montrose, and every summer they invite a few friends, friends of friends, friends of their friends and family to play in their barn. There are between 100 and 200 people, plus eight or nine bands, a campsite, lots of children running around, various farm animals, and a cute dog called Marmite. There’s a barbeque, a bonfire, and kite-flying. You get woken up at the crack of dawn by a cockerel. You watch bands while standing on a floor covered with straw. It’s brilliant.

Laura played early in the evening. It was all very mellow and lovely, and remarkably slick given that they’d only started rehearsing that afternoon, and decided to include in their set a new song which they played together for the first time in the barn’s loft 15 minutes before curtain up, with Ben their bass player straining to hear himself above the noise of a heavy metal band playing downstairs. Later on Shona sang Heart of Glass by Blondie, with her husband on drums. She had to read the words off a bit of paper because she couldn’t remember them, and the band got half the chords completely wrong, but it still went down a storm. Then two of Laura’s friends, Jo and Caroline, suddenly decided they wanted to sing Sweet Child of Mine by Guns and Roses, commandeered the stage, and did the whole thing a cappella. This went down a storm too. It’s that kind of festival.

There is chaotic, though, and there is chaotic. Throughout all of this, three slightly dodgy looking people I didn’t know had been hanging around the barn, complaining that they hadn’t got to play yet. No one seemed to know who they were, just that they went by the name of Sparklegash. They were pretty wasted long before they got on the stage, as far as I could see. They didn’t even have any instruments with them, just a laptop and lots of props - sweeties, whipped cream, a plastic doll etc. They eventually went on stage at 2am.

Sparklegash’s set - their first ever gig, apparently - was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen. Their music is basically lots of samples strung together more or less at random, with songs sometimes morphing from jazz to hip hop to techno in the space of about 15 seconds, punctuated by animal noises. There are three people in the band. The two women, Fang and Bucket, look like coked up Bratz dolls and spent the whole set shouting ‘you fucking cunts! You’re all fucking cunts’ at the audience. They drank Buckfast, pretended to have sex with each other, threw sweets at the audience, and introduced every single tune by saying ‘this is our last song’, even the first one. The bloke, Atroshiz, was a long-haired hippy stoner who spent half the set crawling around the floor on his hands and knees and the other half playing the previous band’s drumkit hopelessly out of time - having, it appeared, only decided he wanted to play drums at all two songs into the set. At the end they announced that they were going to play the entire set again. The only thing that stopped them was the sound engineer cutting the signal to their laptop - which was a good thing because by then Atroshiz had passed out on the drum stool. Does this, I ask you, sound anything like Swimmer One? It doesn’t really, does it? So no, Sparklegash are nothing to do with us. Their second gig will be at the Bongo Club in Edinburgh in July, I see. I suspect I’ll be washing my (short) hair that night.

On the whole, though, the festival was a delightful place to go for a weekend. I spent Sunday morning bouncing up and down on a giant outdoor trampolene, laughing hysterically (I was still drunk, I think). In the afternoon we all went skinny-dipping in a muddy duck pond near the farm (after which I had to check myself for leeches). Then we ate venison, pork, cheese and fruit salad in the garden. Like I said, No Theme No Reason is not like T in the Park. It’s loads better.

I’d like Swimmer One to play there next year. You should join us, if it’s ok with Turid and Fabrice, and you’re willing to enter into the spirit of things (sharing your food, not swearing in front of the kids, not hogging the trampolene, not freaking out when everyone gets their kit off and jumps in a pond, that sort of thing). I might need to text directions to you though.

Andrew

I tell you what Andrew....when you’ve washed your hair that night,why don’t you come over and do mine?I have terrible problems managing my Rapunzel-esque tresses!

Posted by Logan 5 on 06/11 at 03:15 PM
I am impressed with your narrative style of driving the point home.

Posted by R4 Cards on 09/02 at 03:57 PM

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