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Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Kildemose Festival 2015, Ørbæk, Denmark July 30- Aug 1st

Chris and his wife Camilla picked Sue and I up about 14:00 and we had an uneventful ride out to the festival site but too much traffic….  Took a while to set up the tent and blow up the sleep mattress but after an hour we were ready to listen to Baby Jesus! We heard Sarkastik Ironi from the small stage while setting up and they were pretty funny and crazy band..

The festival site was more or less that same as it always is but the addition of a 2nd stage is really great. I love the extra decorations on the stages they have added and little touches here and there.
Baby Jesus











I had seen Baby Jesus at the CPH Psych fest last year but I think the band has improved now. Very focused 60s beat sound with a high energy. They don’t really offer anything new but do this sound really well and authentic. The small crowd really dug them..

Magic Jove
Next up was Magic Jove, a great 70s blues rock trio from Malmö, Sweden. I know Tim, the drummer a bit and he also plays in Agusa.  I just love the vibe of this band. It really reminds me of mid 70s Robin Trower. The band have a great dynamic and potential but until they realize they can set themselves free and jam and take their songs to the next level, they will be limited with these 3-4 mins tracks. This type of music is meant to be jammed out, bring some excitement to it and not just like it was on the record. Cool band.

Set List: Guardian Angel, Ashes, Don’t drag me Down, Trumlåten, In Chains, Floating, In the Fields, So Long, Black Clouds, Sonic Understanding

Hoofoot
Hoofoot, also from Malmö are a progressive jazz rock band that recently released their debut album on their own label. Four of the members have played in ØSC with me at various times and on many of the records. Anyway, this is a killer instrumental band and was nearly my favorite of the entire festival. This was an amazing concert. Wow.. The band had a great time as well. They played about an hour and did four long tracks, including two new songs that don’t yet have titles.  Two guitars, hard driving bass, fender Rhodes, synths, and the occasional saxophone. Killer stuff…

Set List: Last Flight, new song, Take 5,6,7,8 + 9, new song #2

Agusa, another progressive rock band from Malmö, Sweden was next on the small stage. They have also just released a new record. They are very influenced by Swedish folk melodies and mix this with up-tempo organ driven prog rock. This was the first time I had seen them with the female flute player and that was a nice addition. The crowd was really digging it and the band is playing really well these days.  They played the entire new record (2 album side long tracks) and all but one of the tracks from the first record, I think.  They started a bit late as the bass player had disappeared until 15mins before they were supposed to play and all the gear was locked up in his car so the could not set up until they were nearly supposed to play!
AGUSA
Set List: Uti vår hage, Gånglåt till Vintergatan, Kung Bores dans, Kärlek från Agusa

The last band of the night was the young Danish act, Fribyttedrømme from Copenhagen. They also have just released their debut record. I previously reviewed the band’s 7” record.  I was really looking forward to this concert and the band did not disappoint playing an amazing show.  They had a couple of guys doing some liquid oil projections and this looked really cool. Actually, I think this is the first time ever at Kildemose their have been real lights (different colours and a real light programing station). Some fog as well. It looked cool and the band was really flying out into space. Think of this band as bit like Pink Floyd with long floating songs, twisting guitars (there are 3), and spacey organ and sounds. Really spaced out at times.   The sound was great all day but sadly Fribyttedrømme had pretty awful sound for the first half an hour (they had their own sound guy, who did not really have it together).

Set List: De Konstruerede, Kosmonauten, Ørken, Kviksand, Fribyttedrømmen, Himmellegemer, Fem er det magiske nummer

Fribyttedrømme
Day 2

9:30  Up and it is quiet at the moment. IT was not super late ending around 12 last night. It was pretty cold at night. It is a mix of cloud and sun now and looks to be a nice day.

Doublestone
This day was supposed to start at 10:40 with Dead Pan Interference but they never made it. Skifting had to cancel due to illness so the schedule was a bit more relaxed and did not start until nearly 12 where Baby Jesus played a 2nd set. Sounded more or less the same to me but I was not paying that much attention and walking around and talking to friends. Call the Breeze were a Danish Indie 80s sounding band. I did not hear much of them. 

Doublestone, I had not seen in a few year and they rocked the place. I was surprised that a lot of their songs were not sung in Danish and they did not start off like that before. Pretty high energy stoner rock stuff.  People seem to dig it.

Basiru Susuo Trio was a nice change from the rock music and people were just relaxing in the sand and enjoying the music. Basiru is a rally cool guy and I talked with him a bit about us collaborating on some music in the future.

Dør Nr 13 is a band I saw at a CPH Psych Fest pre-festival event and it was not really to my taste. They have a very charismatic singer and the band seems a bit bigger this time. I think the singer also did a solo set after Chris Cacavas on later but no one was watching really. Pity. Anyway, I did not pay a lot of attention to these guys.
Dør Nr 13

The Wands played a fantastic set on the main stage.  This is one of the most active psych bands in all of Denmark. They have toured all over Europe the last year and even made it to the USA.  They have released a 7” and a full length record, which is into at least the 2nd pressing now, I guess. I like the way they work with the harmonica, cool 60s psych sound but also experimenting some. Good band.

The Wands
Måneskjold (Moon Shield) is one of the few space rock bands in Denmark after the demise of Troldmand (RIP) but including Mantric Muse, and ØSC. A bit Hawkwind inspired at times with three guitars, bass and drums (no synth or space sounds at the moment in the line up). The material is all pretty high energy with a lot of cool guitar parts and sung in Danish also. I really like this band a lot but it is really a mixed bag of songs. Some totally awesome tracks and some that are just too average and not really speaking to me much… They have made some recordings recently in Sweden and are working on mixing this for a release later this year. We will see.
Måneskjold

Chris  Cacavas is an American who was backed by a friend. They were played acoustic and electric guitar and pedal steel and mostly if not all original songs. It was also something different. Blues, folk, strange songs.. People were relaxing and enjoying a lot, I think, especially the older folks in the audience.

Set List:  No Tomorrow, So heavy, Wool Sweaters, Arlene, Devil on my Back, Going Down, Jesus Rolls/Communication, Your Eyes, Fear, The Rapture, ??, Cheap Wine

Hodja was a huge surprise for me.  This band is a trio with members from the Reverend Snake Oil Company, who I had seen here before. Singer, guitar and drums, all of which were amazing players. This was really down, dirt, gritty nasty blues with super passionate singing and intense drumming and some cool guitar parts as well. Crowd was into and I really dug them as well.

Hodja
Nils Gröndahl is an experimental musician whose main weapon is the violin but hardly played in a traditional way. He uses the violin to create the tone and sound that he wants and then he does intense modulation via looping and effects. He also does some spoken words stuff and gets these hypnotic rhythms going. It was really far out but if you were patient and did not run away right away, I think you would dig it and he had a good crowd who was pretty mesmerized. Cool but far out stuff.

 Telstar Sound Drone was next and now it was dark and you could take advantage of having a pretty cool light show and once again the liquid lights.  I have the 7”, the 10” and the full length LP.  They played a few songs not on any of their records, which were cool to hear like Drugs Help, Hurricane and Æbelturen.  This band has a pretty distinct and spaced out but also hypnotic and a very energetic singer. He actually has more energy than the music itself, which is sometimes a bit crazy…   Cool stuff. and pretty intense.

Telstar Sound Drone
Set List: Through the back of your Head, Light Arrows, Drug’s Help, Satellited, Æabelturen, Evaporation, Feels like a Ride, Feel it, Hurricane, Golden Needles

The last band of the night was Bite the Bullet (half the guys from Highway Child). This is nearly the house band for the festival if you add up the number of times they have played including with Highway Child.. Anyway, the band played a more experimental set on this night as their drummer could not make it so Paw (guitarist) played drums on all but one song and Christian (bass Player) played the bass on a few songs and guitar on the rest.  I was really surprised how cool the music was without the guitar. The songs really did stand up. I think it was really bold of the band to do this.  Paw played all the drums on the record so he is knows how to do it but still this is a guitar driven rock and roll band. Anyway, it was a great concert and high energy and Thomas the singer was amazing..
Bite the Bullet
Set List: I feel Love, Going Out, Be like You, What am I doing Here, Desire, Everybody has a broken Soul, My Soul, I will not Die, Seaside, Uniform, Space Drums, Baby Girl got Soul

Day 3

10:30 I had a very rough night with a plugged up nose and serious leg cramp that had me screaming in pain (not pleasure, and not sure what the neighbor tents though!). Anyway, after an ice cold shower and some breakfast I was feeling better.

Orcas
11:30 The Orcas started things off. Another young Danish band into the 60s beat pop psych thing including the vintage instruments, and hair styles! Pretty good but nothing new or interesting. They need to add a few twists besides singing in Danish.

Flora Fauna was next. This was a five piece band that played pretty spacey and psychedelic stuff at times and also sung in Danish. Quite incredible how many bands are singing in Danish these days. There used to me on one except Spids Nøgenhat in the psych scene that sung in Danish. Cool.


Flora Fauna
Excessive Visage and Hellkamp were late coming from Germany so Morgan Square needed to play earlier on the big stage instead of the small one in order for the festival to keep the time schedule. Anyway, I had recently seen and reviewed a Morgan Square show and their recent EP… I have been pretty impressed with this band and also really liked their show today as well.  I am not sure what is the best way to describe them…  a mix of Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, 13th floor elevators and a will to experiment with different ways of singing and arranging the songs and also doing some jamming. The bowed saw adds some strange effects as well. Cool band. Not sure what the set list was.
Morgan Square

The Universals
Langsyn sounded like a mix of Bob Dylan and Widespread Panic but with out the great songs… I thought they were pretty boring but there were a few good tracks. I did not see the whole show, only heard them from the distance. These are good bands to mix into the program though as it is so different and a lot of people like to chill to this.

No sign of Nick from the Univerzals yet but the others are confident he will be here soon.
The Univerzals started about 25mins late and had to play a slightly shorter than planned set.  It is great that Nick has put this band back together and they are playing again.  I have really enjoyed the two records that they have made. The tracks at the concert were from both plus an older and quite heavy song called Space Train that I had never heard. Great musicians with awesome saxophone, synths and guitar solos… Nicks voice was pretty rough on this day but the performance was excellent.

Set List: E55, Glass Skyscraper, UFO, Mars Man, Space Train

I missed both the German bands, Excessive Visage and Hellkamp, as we had to set up and take down our stuff for the ØSC concert next on the big stage. I did pop by and hear a few mins but neither band was my taste. As I recall they were both some sort of Indie rock.

ØSC, we played a very good concert. I was really happy with our performance despite Mogens and Jiri, not being that happy as the guitars were too loud on the stage. Wish they would have said something during one of the breaks. Anyway, when they hear the show they will realize they did play very well.  This was the first time we ever played with the guitar player, Lau from Fribyttedrømme but I think he did a great job.

ØSC (Pic by Sabine)
You can hear the show at the link: https://archive.org/details/OSC2015-08-01.SBD

Baby Woodrose was next on the big stage and this was by far the biggest crowd of the entire festival. Where did all these people come from??? I heard there were 300 at the festival.. Sounds about like normal..  Anyway, Baby Woodrose totally rocked the place and the soundman Anders cranked it up as they were way louder than any other band that played the whole weekend! A very intense set including an old On Trial song (Flashing’ghast) and also a brand new song Mind Control Machine!, Disconnected, Information Overload, Volcano, Born to Lose and a few others…  The cover of Freedom by Richie Havens was really cool... I think they played about an hour and 10mins. 
Set List: 01.Information Overload, Disconnected, Let yourself go, Flashing’hast, Volcano, Love comes down, Mind kontrol machine, ESP, I can't stop, Freedom, World ain't round, Born to lose, Pouring water on a drowning man, Nobody spoil my fun ->Baby Woodrose blows your mind

The Sonic Dawn (used to be called the Mind Flowers) were the last band on the small stage and were really rocking the place when they suffered a series of power failures over about 20mins, which totally destroyed the gig. Damn.. I felt bad for them. They are such cool people and the band has really developed from just playing short 60s tracks to a more developed sound and longer more intricate tracks…  Not sure what the set list was…  They did the best they could be the momentum and vibe was certainly wrecked but the breaks.

De Underjordiske is another young new Danish band from the Northern tip of Jyllland who play their own unique sort of psych rock.  They had great reviews at Roskilde Festival this year and seem to be gaining quite a following. So far they have only released one 10” single on the Levitation Records label. Anyway, close your guys and go back to the UK, circa 1986-1988 and you will hear a band called THE Cult, but with lyrics sung in Danish… That is what this band sounds like. Quite uncanny at times…

The final band of the evening is a very special group of freaky people with a great sense of fun and humour and love to put on a crazy and cool show. They are called Elevatorfører.  They have also only released one record back in 2013 but I think they have another soon. Anyway, a fun way to end the festival…

Another amazing festival with about 300 people in a beautiful location with excellent beer. Wish they could get some improved food choices though; I heard a lot of people not too happy with the food this year.







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