Kildemose Festival- Fyn, Denmark 8/5-7, 2011

This was my 4^th year in a row coming to Denmark’s best music festival. I am still really surprised that so few people come. I think it was about the same as all the previous years, around 200 people. Thomas and I arrived nice and early on Friday afternoon about 15:30. We could set up our tents, etc.. They were doing some construction so there was a huge mountain of earth where most of us camped usually so they had a new camping area about 400m walk from the festival site in a beautiful area on a hill. Pretty far away if you are drunk at 3 in the morning and have to walk back there in the dark. The weather was quite ok and it did not really look like it would rain today. We had some hassles with cables, etc when setting up the hard disc recorder to record all the bands as we usually do but in the end it worked out and it was all up and running by the time the Diff played.

         

17:00  The first band was Unnamed Unknown from Denmark. They are a young hard rocking aggressive band that worships at the temple of Nirvana. They were ok at first but I grew tired of their Nirvana sound pretty soon. Let’s see where they take the band.

The Diff

18:30 The Danish Grateful Dead cover band, the Diff is starting. More and more people are showing up now and all the Fuzz Manta folks are here except Lene her and the Cherry Overdrive girls will come later. Papir is also all here. The Causa Sui guys are all in a great mood and glad to not be playing at 3 in the morning. The Diff played a really great set, one of the best I have ever heard them play. They opened with Darkstar and played a few of the Dead songs that I actually like like West LA Fadeway and Truckin’. They were really excellent and did not play too long so we can try to keep on schedule. This festival always has too many bands, and too little help for the soundman and time between bands so the last band on, really plays late.

Set List: Dark Star, Sugar Magnolia, Fire on the Mountain, Cassidy, West LA Fade Away, Touch of Grey, Truckin’ The other One, No Fade Away

ET Mumason

20:00 A guy from Iceland, ET Tumason was next and really caught me by surprise. A guy from Iceland playing really southern delta style blues on acoustic guitar with slide. He was very passionate as a singer on some tracks. He also told an incredible story about being strip searched at the Iceland airport after coming back from Copenhagen once and they asked him to play a song after they did not find any drugs on him and he played a song called You’re an Asshole. Wish I had filmed this one. He had his moments.

Causa Sui

21:00 Causa Sui was next and I was really looking forward to this. I had met the Dutch guy who had come to our ØSC concert in Holland and the Germans that had been here the last couple of years and there was even some people all the way from Switzerland mainly to see ØSC and Causa Sui. Cool..  The sound man was different this year and he was doing a great job. Sometime the drums and bass were a bit intense in his mix but you could really hear all the instruments well. Causa Sui had the best live sound I had ever hear for them. The new tracks were also cool and it was a good variety of old stuff and one from Summer Sessions as well. One of the German guys said he thought, I think Red Valley was like the riff for Electric Funeral by Black Sabbath but just slightly slower and different for the first part of the track.

Set List: New Work, Party Shadow, Red Valley, El paradiso, new track, Soladad.

Next up was Basiru Suso, a kora player from Mali. I had seen him play some years ago with Danish guitar player, Michael Nordsø. He was by far the tallest person at the festival and the only African as well. I talked with him a bit and he was super cool. I hope he will jam with us one day. Anyway, he played by himself and it was a really cool change of style and he plays really beautifully on this instrument and sings and also jams away as well. He had the audience really into it at times as well. There is a nice video on you tube.

A blues Rock band that I really like called Blindstone were next. They are from a small town in Jylland in Denmark and there records have been released on a NY label and they have played some special concerts in many places but I have never seen them live. They are big fans of Frank Marino and so I am I and they have even covered one of his songs. I was really looking forward to this and the band did not disappoint but I was really surprised that most of their set was cover songs. The singer and guitarist, Martin, said that was just what they were in the mood for playing and they were a bit rusty! They opened with Are you Experienced by Hendrix and the sound was great. They did an old Journey song called Karma from one of their first three records as well. They played a couple of their own songs and a cool Funkadelic jam which included Red Hot Mama, but they had taken all the funk out of it and made it into a full rock song. I had never heard a version like that. They ended the set with the Frank Marino song, He’s Calling and dedicated it to me. Thanks Martin! They only played about 50mins so we could make up a bit of time.

Set List: Are you experienced?, Karma, Keep the rock alive, Funkadelic Medley, Grabthars, He’s Calling

          The Univerzals were the last band on and started at 1:37 according to my clock. There were still 70 people or so and it had not rained at all and it was a little cool but not bad. They played a very good set and for like 2½ hrs until 3:45 in the morning. I think it was nearly all the same songs as they played last year and a lot of the new ones that will be on the next record but since the band had played a lot this year and also rehearsed every day this week they were great. If you don’t know them, they play jamming, psychedelic world music with synths, guitar and saxophone (quite spacey at times) as the main instruments. I crashed out around 3 as I needed to be fresh for my own gig tomorrow at 13.

The Univerzals

Day 2

          I was up at 10 and still feeling a bit tired but doing ok. PIB, our drummer will be here in an hour or so. ET Tumason will start the day off today at 11:30 or so.

12:30 Not a lot of people watching ET today and he played totally different songs, which was cool. We are setting up and all is going well and looks we will start on time or even a bit early. PIB injured his hand this morning and it is really swollen up and looks painful. I asked Jakob from Causa Sui if he would play drums or step in if PIB just could not but PIB wanted to play even if he was to suffer. He has a big bag of ice.

15:46 We had a great response from the crowd and it was a very fun concert. We played about 75mins and then Stefan thought we were done and took of his guitar and everyone stopped so we were sort of forced into a 10 min break even though we could play 45mins more. We did come back and play 35mins more and finished on time to keep things on schedule for the festival. Stefan played really great guitar and Nick was matching him with some cool trading solos. We even had a jam on GONG’s Master Builder riff but Thomas did not know the bass line to follow so it went a bit strange but still cool. Rasmus from Causa Sui played synths with us for the 3^rd time. I was very happy with our concert and afterwards sold all the 11 vinyl records and some CDs as well to people in the audience. The first set of our was nicely video taped as well. Sadly, someone in the bar cut the power and we lost the hard disc recording. I was actually very mad and upset and just wanted to go home. The sound man was very cool and checked on the internet and it seems you can retrive the file if you don’t record more on the disc so that is what we did and I will try (I was able to retrive the file, only missing the last 5-10mins of our concert, phew!).

The Sensational Psychopoppers were next and this was a new band made of mostly members of the DIFF. I was talking with people and putting my stuff back in Thomas’s car but heard their whole set. It was a strange mixture but some pretty cool rock and roll, with some funk and some psych edge. They seem to be having a lot of fun.

Cherry Overdrive

Cherry Overdrive, one of the crowd favorites at Kildemose were next and now the festival was about 45mins behind schedule and there are still 5 more bands to go. A lot of people in front of the stage for the Cherry Girls, who put on a really solid set and this included a few new songs, one of which had a really funny song title. I enjoyed their set as always but you know what you are going to get. 4 women, playing rock and roll and they psyche out once or twice which is really cool. They could just play it totally straight all the time but they don’t. Respect!

18:30 Strange Forces has not yet started and they were supposed to be on at 17:45. I hope it will not be 3 in the morning when Siena Root plays. Strange Forces are an Australian band living in Berlin. They are a 3 piece psychedelic rock band. They started off their concert very powerful like a steamroller and hawkwind with a lot of phazer on the guitar, which was really cool. I was pretty blown away. They slowly became much less intense and played almost like post rock like stuff that was very melodic and much less heavy than the way they started with a very heavy groove and phased out guitar. Still, a pretty cool band and I had never heard of them before.

Siena Root has arrived and they are all in a good mood and I was really surprised to see that they had Sanya as the singer. Wow.. she is amazing and has not been singing with them for some years now. Cool….

21:30 The Croatian band, Fjodor was next and I was really looking forward to seeing them again. They no longer have the sax-synth guy from Seven that Spells but a new young synth kid. They played a lot of new songs and some had quite funny titles, like Astral Erection! The synth guy said some really funny things between the songs. They had a song about Tsunami and it had a crazy intro and then a real Ozric Tentacles like guitar line. People were really into it and they played a cool set and really different from the last time. The guitar player he was more in the background the sax took the lead in the old line up but now he was stepping up and playing a lot more lead guitar and really freaking out sometimes like Niko from Seven that Spells!

Ramgoats

22:45 Ram Goats are just stating to play now and we are 1½hrs behind schedule. They had a lot of gear and always take a long time. There is the most people I have seen yet today for the band, who play their own style of Reggae but are really good at it. Nice to have some reggae that is not some crap dancehall or real super polished stuff. A good band but they always throw the time schedule off a lot. They should be the last band of the night next year!

00:10 Ram Goats are finished now and Vomit Supreme has to set up and play. Siena Root was suppose to play at 01:00 so it will be really late now. I was lying down in my tent for Vomit Supreme and really tired so I did not see them at all or take any pictures. It was feeling like it was going to rain now and the sky was very dark with clouds as well. Sure enough it started before Vomit Supreme was over. They played really high energy rock and roll. It is really pouring down now.

02:00 Sometime after 2 Siena Root started and it was still raining. Besides Sanya they also had the guitar player with the dreadlocks nearly to the ground. They opened up with long instrumental Rasayana. The set was very heavy on the older songs like Trippin’, The Rat, Coming Home, etc.. Waiting for the Sun was played also. Another long space out jam on Reverberation. KG did not have the sitar with them though but he could play a lot of keyboard when necessary because of the 2^nd guitar player. This is a really good line up of the band. People really were into it, even though it was wet, raining and shit weather.

Set List: Rasayana, Dune/Trippin, Waiting for the Sun, The Rat, Reverberations, Words, Little Man, Until time leaves us again, Coming Home, Nightstalker, Jungle Funk (these were all the songs on the set list but I was not awake to hear the end of the show)

Day 3

Usually Kildemose is over but this year they decided to have 3 bands play on the Sunday as well while everyone is packing up and stuff. A older spiritual fellow named Tommy Tilopa played for like 45mins at 11 while we were having some breakfast and packing up our tents and stuff. Very laid back stuff.

12:15 Papir hit the stage for a set up instrumental psychedelic rock. There were not that many people watching them, about 40, I guess but they were excellent. This is a band to really watch for. They have a new album out later this year on the Causa Sui label. I am not sure what the set list was and we had to leave before they finished as I had to meet my daughter by 17 and go see Warren Haynes tonight.

This was musically the best Kildemose ever and I really hope we can recruit many more people from Copenhagen to come next year. I would really like to see some more African music again, maybe Whoareyoupeople, a Copenhagen afrobeat band could play. Get one or two bands from Malmö, like the Carpet Knights, SKL or Technocolor Poets. Spids Nøgenhat.. You never know. Special thanks to Jan, the soundman, and the great video crew and all the friendly people from Fyn who volunteer their time to make this a great festival. See you next year. 

http://www.kildemosefestival.dk