So, that was Mutations Festival, where a Beastie Boy packed out Chalk to the busiest I’ve ever seen it, where the Green Door Store got a leak (get well soon GDS!), and where most people made last minute changes their plans to try and avoid Storm Austin (or was it Storm Beolo?) – weather so bad that even more of the West Pier fell in the sea.
Hutch opened the festival for us, winning over an early doors crowd with their twang pop, packing on to a tiny stage at Revenge. It’s impossible not to like Hutch – a ray of sunshine to banish the wind and rain briefly. Later in the day the weather eased off a little and we made it along to Daltons just in time for M. Woodroe’s set. Fresh from the release last month of The Treatment of Fractures EP last month on Venn Records, they played one of the weekend’s most intense sets we saw. We also had Opal Mag on our schedule for Friday night, but they had to pull out, which meant that we didn’t have to leave early to see Working Men’s Club, with visuals provided by the legendary Chris ‘Innerstrings’ Tomsett, whose work has improved many gigs by local acts
On Saturday afternoon we saw Big Long Sun at the Prince Albert. A joyous riot of sound, which Jamie Broughton and his band make look effortless. Every time I see them I overhear people in the crowd won over by them, which if it continues – and there’s no reason it shouldn’t – means that they’ll be huge before you know it. Unfortunately choosing Big Long Sun meant missing out on Snayx, who I’ve not seen in far too long. It also meant missing out on Plantoid at Alphabet, but that was OK, because only a little while later they played a second set of the day at Chalk. Making a huge sound worthy of the biggest stage at the festival, their blend of psych, prog and even a bit of latin too was the perfect segue to the bigger acts later on.
You might have spotted some Mutations Festival previews – Everyone’s very excited about Mike D, and if you got in early enough a festival ticket would only be a tenner or so more than the good tickets to go and see him in London. You get a lot of bang for your buck at Mutations. The other big names – Fat Dog, Squid and Dove Ellis are not to be sniffed at either. But even if you were a member of one of the worlds most influential hip hop acts, you still haven’t earned a mention on Brighton Music Blog. Before this week we’d spotted Big Long Sun and Hutch on the bill, but this week’s final wave of announcements brough loads more Brighton bands onto the line up, so here’s a shoutout for M.Woodroe, Maximilian, Opal Mag, Oral Habit, The Stanford Family Band, Snayx, Plantoid and Deary (who aren’t all Brighton based but Dottie has been spotted behind the counter at the Bella Union shop and various gigs in town, which is enough for me).
Matt reminisced about his time in bands – “We’d meet up at Tiffany’s, we’d smoke cigarettes, have a cup of tea, and then we’d go to Resident. That was our routine, on the dole in a band – and we’d look and see what was coming up, we’d pop in and buy a ticket. And we used to sell tickets for our gigs in there too. We’d make tickets out of playing cards, and we’d hand them to whoever was going to sell them. And back then you knew where the information was for gigs, and I wanted to recreate that now for this sort of very fragmented landscape we’re in.”
Last month, MEMORIALS released their new album All Clouds Bring Not Rain. They played a stripped down acoustic set in Resident on launch date before heading to France for promotional duties. They’re currently on a near sold out UK tour which took in Brighton last night.
