A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL Day Two October 2012

Juffage is a one man multi-tasker: playing guitar AND hitting a floor tom for one song, sitting at a drum-kit AND playing a keyboard the next. There's looping of sounds, passages of crackling feedback and walking amongst the audience too. Keeping experimental sounds playfully rickety and on the move: a great start to Sunday at A Carefully Planned Festival.

Ten years in, I finally get to see Norwich pop-shriekers Bearsuit live. Promising lots of their new songs their set is disrupted by sound problems ("It's like you've come to our bedroom...") and re-worked due to a faulty keyboard: "just the hits then". Despite the interrupted flow and the frequent apologies, when playing the quintet were impressively forceful. By the last two songs they sounded like an unstoppable art-punk force of nature. Unapologetically ace but sadly over too soon.





Lynx Africa, the trio formed by Mat Riviere, Jam On Bread and Grace from The Middle Ones, update Young Marble Giants and Velvet Underground & Nico minimalism with an over-amped, ramshackle noise. There’s a fierce concentration from the three as they move between ukulele, floor tom and keyboard (perched on stackable metal-frame chair) but then a glorious abandon to the insistent rhythms and repeated patterns of each frazzled song. Excellent stuff.





Temple Songs have come a fair old way since I encountered them on debut self-released long-player "15 Bygones". The melodic 60s pop clatter is still intact but live as a four-piece there’s less fuzzy abstraction and a harder lofi edge. And Jolan Lewis remains ridiculously prolific – I’m not sure I recognised a single song from that 14 track album - which isn’t even nine months old – in this 30 minute set.





Dad Rocks! is dedicating songs to everyone at Kraak: ‘Battle Hymn Of The Fox Father’ to the parents of touring partners Tall Ships “for doing such a good job in raising them”, ‘Major Labels’ to the Manchester duo who made a fan-video version of the song, and ‘Pants’ to his son "who I miss terribly". Snævar Njáll Albertsson: surely one of the nicest guys in music but also a genius song-writer. He manages to find humour and poignancy in the hum-drum and domestic and turn it into life-affirming beauty. Dad Rocks! claims the band are all full of colds and on their last legs, the music tells a different, healthier story: a sublime performance with trumpet, violin and double-bass accompaniment.





The Dad Rocks! Set List: Weapons / Downaging / Funemployment / Take Care / Major Labels / Battle Hymn Of The Fox Father / Nothing Keeps Up / Pants

I’d had the briefest listens to O Messy Life’s “The Quarter Life Crisis Of Conan” before today. It reminded me of a mellow Wolf Parade with all the kinks taken out or the more countrified moments of Bright Eyes with less angst. Live the Newcastle-based five-piece shed the country-rock leanings for something more emphatic and darker... “this one’s about suicide pacts”. Time now to check out their other releases.



Alasdair Roberts is performing solo at 2022NQ to a rapt, seated audience. It is almost like a huddle of acolytes before the master folklorist taking the faithful through an unearthing and re-working of historic Scots music. Sadly not everyone in the room is captivated, with the sound of noisy talking from the bar and back of the room invading the space. Well the chattering asses missed out, these songs ancient and modern (including some from his new album due in January 2013) were worthy of patient attention.



This was my first encounter with Two Wings and I couldn’t make my mind up about them. The Glasgow five-piece had the stiff formality of Trembling Bells in their more trad folk-rock moments but then switched to songs with a more soulful or country-rock feel. I was continually wrong-footed by each turn they took. And then their final song was a basement-roof-raising fury with throat-shaking (literally) intensity and pounding drums.

We Are The Physics are not my usual cup of Red Bell but the Glaswegian punks – skinny jeans, thick glasses, utility wear outfits – were great fun “we’re sorry to interrupt your day...but we promise it will be over QUICKLY”. Rapid-fire riffing interrupted with start-stop jerking movements and poses together with a winning sense of the ridiculous followed at break-neck pace.



We Are The Physics would prove to be the last band I saw at A Carefully Planned Festival but showed one of the delights of this two day event: the size and breadth of the programming meant there was plenty of room for discovery. With minimal links to band pages on their website in advance or no form of programme other than a schedule available (for a £10 weekend ticket that might be asking too much), it created a level-playing field which forced you to try to something new, often based just on the band name or the proximity to the act you'd just seen.

A few years back two Northern Quarter multi-site music festivals ended up competing head-to-head: which was more grassroots, which represented Manchester’s independent Northern Quarter best, which showcased new bands more effectively. It wasn’t very a grown up or dignified spat. And it's questionable whether they had the goods to back up their respective arguments. After Carefully Planned All-Dayers and now in its second year, A Carefully Planned Festival has occupied this role (and the slot left vacant by In The City) quietly, unassumingly and with a adept focus on great, great music. Carefully planned, cleverly executed, effortlessly delivered with care: all in all, an excellent weekend. I’m eager for next year’s event already.

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL Day One October 2012

If you’re going to start anywhere for a 100 band two day weekend festival, start big. Scotland’s Second Hand Marching Band today are a thirteen-piece ensemble who make a beautiful, stomping and boisterous noise in the basement of 2022nq. The band sound like a Caledonian collision of Beirut and Woodpigeon with added kick-drum clout. They switch from loud ecstatic unison and massed chanted choruses to just a lonely wandering accordionist and heartbreak. What a marvellous start to A Carefully Planned Festival #2. Send their first EP to someone for free here.



Sitting with one leg crossed over the other in the back room of the Castle Hotel, Tekla Szerszynska played a set of entrancing songs about pitter-patter rain, Jekyll minds and parks. Her chiming harp-like guitar picking and halting vocals were much more grounded than it sounds; a song about “dig your head out of the clouds” summed up her more down-to-earth approach neatly.

After many failed attempts today was the day I finally saw Plank! live. And they did not disappoint – despite viewing from the back of a packed Soup Kitchen. There was a static back projection of the festival poster and no lighting changes so on the face of it ‘not much going on’ but the muscular prog-pop instrumentals rippled and switched direction with a ferocious precision. Final song ‘La Luna’ with swift fingered fretwork was particularly immense.

Then to Kraak to see Anguish Sandwich. What a treat. Lofi slacker rock and surf scuzziness meets Television Personalities in an energetic, shouty embrace with great, pummelling drumming. The Northampton trio were selling their debut EP: “what else is it about?” asked a doleful Chris East. It was immediately bought and carried around for the rest of the day; an inconvenience worth putting up with. It’s ace.



In the Castle Hotel I caught the end of Rubicava from Kidderminster (“we say Birmingham because no-one’s ever heard of Kidderminster”) before seeing late addition to the bill Songs For Walter. Laurie Hulme’s tribute to the lives of his grand-parents, domestic and romantic, was here performed as a three-piece and with four songs not on this year’s “Meet Me At The Empire” EP. The newer ones, including a single released in November ‘Tougher Than A Soldier's Boots’, show his attentions moving away from his grand-parents but retaining their effortless charm.



“We’ve a 12 year old drummer normally but he’s in Paris”. Kiran Leonard’s band is frighteningly young – he’s a teenager himself – even without this revelation. A lack of years is no boundary to exploration though as his four-piece backing band and the twitchy Mr Leonard navigate an agitated set that makes Frank Zappa, Of Montreal and The Mars Volta look wanting in ideas. It includes a silk-wrapped saxophonist, kitchen utensil percussion, medal-giving and a dance performance that brings the audience to their knees. Insanely off-the-hook but with songs like ‘Port-Aine’ and ‘A Purpose’ the hyper-restless Kiran Leonard shows he can be emotionally devastating too. I filmed his solo rendition of ‘A Purpose’ but it was in near darkness. Instead go and listen to the version of his album “Bowler Hat Soup” performed on an 1898 American reed organ. Stunning. And Kiran Leonard is now working on a 25 minute song called ‘End Of Times’ about the apocalypse. Expect it before Christmas.





I caught a few songs from Leeds band Just Handshakes We’re British at Soup Kitchen: pleasing indie-pop songs but on this brief encounter they have not matured as much as I hoped since seeing them last January supporting Allo Darlin’. Maybe I need to listen some more - they went down very well with the dancing crowd.



Then to The Castle for Easter. Here bass-player Gavin joins Thomas Long on guitars with a new bass-player taking his place and ”we still have the same drummer Andrew”. Whatever the adjusted line-up, Easter are still fiercely loud and fiercely exciting. Such an intimate – and packed to the gills - venue adds to the intensity but that’s to take nothing away from the band – energetic holding-nothing-back playing from all concerned. Another highlight of the day.



Then to Free Swim’s debut North of England gig in the upstairs room of Gullivers. The band are on-stage and eager to start but soundman Dennis (how apt) is absent. The band’s foot-on-the-accelerator impatience is palpable and once out of the traps, on Dennis’s return, they are unstoppable. Heavy riffing for opener ‘The Eureka Moment’, foot on monitor theatrics, bass solos played by a giant panda and pumped-up playing by the freshly inked four-piece. The crowd has a who-are-they moment before embracing the Surrey band (“any Southerners in?”) whole-heartedly. At the end Free Swim are not allowed to leave without an encore (at a festival?!) – a cover of Lit’s ‘My Own Worst Enemy’ – and then finish with an ecstatic queue on stage of women wanting to have their photograph taken with Yolanda the Panda. Wild times.





Free Swim set list: The Eureka Moment / Croydon Fernandes / The Smell Of Pregnancy / I Want To Be A Mountaineer / Swooping Swoopily Like A Swooping Swooper / Scoring Bamboo Shoots / Rubix Rue / My Own Worst Enemy

Walton Hesse are a more subdued proposition after this noisy excitement but are no less engaging. How the Manchester-based six-piece are not signed to Loose Records or a similar Americana-friendly label is beyond me. Their restrained country-rock oozes quality. A great finish to an exceptional day.

I would have paid a tenner to see pretty much any of these bands. As it was, I paid £10 (early bird weekend price) for two whole days. Astonishing carefully planned value that beggars belief. Day two to follow.