SAS, Somersault Festival, and a Sunshine Sandwich

It would be fair to declare this year's Somersault Festival, which took place this past weekend, a "Sunshine Sandwich" as the fledgling festival (now in its second year) enjoyed a Saturday of glorious British summer weather bookended on the Friday and Sunday by torrential downpours.  Boy, did it rain, but in true Brit-festival style though the audience simply pulled on wellington boots and ponchos and kept on dancing whenever the raindrops started to fall (sometimes sideways), causing steam to rise from the crowds in front of the main stage and the entire site to become a gigantic mud-pit.

I was fortunate enough to attend this year's event as an exhibiting photographer for the festival's chosen charity Surfers Against Sewage, and a set of my images of marine plastic pollution (a number of which were produced specifically for this exhibition) were displayed in reclaimed wood frames around the two SAS tents.  It was a real honour to be asked to exhibit for SAS, a charity who do incredible work campaigning for the health and ongoing protection of our coastlines and oceans, and it also meant that I got to attend the festival (and pitch our tent right next to my car in the "Artists and Guests" campsite - probably the only benefit of the fancy red wristband that I was given, but possibly the best considering the weather).  SAS hosted a number of talks in their big, blue, tent as part of their "Ocean Lectures" series with speakers including wooden surfboard maker James Otter, scientist and surf explorer Dr Easkey Britton, Finisterre founder Tom Kay, round Britain and Ireland solo sea kayaker Joe Leach and big wave surfer Andrew Cotton - who I led a very last minute Q&A session with onstage when SAS campaigns officer and festival lead Dom Ferris had to dash off to do a radio interview.  There were daily handplane making workshops run by Otter Surfboards, music workshops with musician Millie Upton and a very special exclusive performance by Rae Morris who played to a packed tent just before her appearance on the main stage on Saturday.  In amongst all of this the team of SAS regional reps and volunteers collected signatures for their Marine Litter Petition, sold raffle tickets and signed up new members from amongst the festival audience - they worked tirelessly despite some awful weather, and were a pleasure to share the weekend with.  There was more to Somersault than just the SAS tent, however, and I got to watch The Staves perform (they are wonderful, but every time I have seen them live it has rained so hard that I have been soaked to the skin), as well as the wonderful Mankala Band, Bombay Bicycle Club, Jimmy Cliff, Cornwall's very own Rogue Theatre, and the incredible Young Blood Brass Band who rounded out a great weekend of music and good times.  When the rain wasn't completely rodding it down, I managed to pull my camera out and fire off a few shots, so if you couldn't make it this year then you can see what you missed and make sure that you get in nice and early next year.  Enjoy:

It wouldn't be a music festival without some outrageous flower garlands.

A view of the "southern" arena, on the western bank of the River Bray at Castle Hill Estate in North Devon.

Somersault is fantastically family friendly, and there were heaps of little monsters dancing around.

Somersault's main stage on the sunny Saturday.

After the rain there were two footwear options available:  wellies, or nothing at all.

Rae Morris performing an exclusive gig in the SAS tent.

My "Colour Wheel" image on display outside the SAS tent.

"The Problem In A Nutshell" offering a bit of blue on the outside of the blue SAS tent.

My "Firing Squad" photograph showing a line-up of shotgun cartridges found on a Cornish beach, which probably originated on the east coast of Canada during their water-fowl hunting season.

Rogue Theatre brought their incredible woodland show to the gardens of the Castle Hill Estate.

Surfers Against Sewage's Marine Litter Museum (with an image of mine hanging above it) shows the age of some items found on beaches, demonstrating how litter persists in the marine environment for decades.

The wonderful team of SAS regional representatives and lead volunteers (flanked by Campaigns Officer Dom on the left and Reps & Volunteer Co-ordinator Jack on the right) who worked tirelessly all weekend in some awful weather to share the charity's message and engage festival-goers with their campaigns.  Thanks so much for having me along guys.  Please check out the wonderful work that they do and give them your support here.

Jagwar Ma - Guilty as Charged

Last night they played the Park Stage at Glastonbury to a crowd of thousands, but a couple of weeks ago Jagwar Ma performed in front of what is likely to be their smallest crowd this year, in The Old Crown Courts in Bristol.  The Aussie three piece are hard to pigeonhole with a psych/electro/indie/rock sound moulded by the Sydney synth scene, and in such an intimate setting (three people deep from the front row to the sound desk) they rattled the roof of the old, crumbling, building.

I was there to shoot the event for Nokia, who put on the gig as one of their #LumiaLive sessions featuring rising stars in unique settings.  I love the challenge that these Lumia Live sessions present, with the usual bright, flashing, lights of a live performance paired with the less than standard locations - there's no getting a media pass to get side-of-stage here, as the audience filled the judges bench, jurors stand, witness boxes and gallery.  I had to climb around furniture and crawl between feet to get the angles that I was after, but that's what I love about these shows.  I also took portraits of the band in just about the creepiest location that I've ever used for a shoot - the dark old jail cells in the basement beneath the courts.  

Jagwar Ma played a storming set and frontman Gabriel Winterfield even managed to make light of the fact that, what with the previous gig that they played in Bristol being aboard a boat, perhaps the person in charge of their bookings was making a joke at the expense of their nationality.  The band are based in the UK now, however, and with Noel Gallagher hanging his hopes for independent music on them they look set to maintain their rapid trajectory.

As usual, pioneering French music film makers La Blogothéque were on hand with a dazzling amount of kit to film the performance…check it out below.

Two-Point To-Do List: Ella Eyre Live in Session

There were only two things that I had to do:  

1. Capture the images on the shot list that Nokia and the event organisers Mission had given me.
2. Not get in shot during the two songs that the film crew from La Blogothèque were filming.

I was shooting a special performance by Ella Eyre (an incredible young singer best known for her vocals on Rudimental's hit "Waiting All Night") for the first Nokia Lumia Live Session of 2014.  The Lumia Live Sessions set out each year to showcase incredible new artists in unique and memorable settings, and this first event of the year was to have Ella performing her set amongst the dodgems and vintage rides at Dingles Fairground Heritage Centre in Devon.  It was a fantastic location but Ella's voice outshone everything else - strong, soulful, and incredibly controlled - the small crowd were completely captivated despite the colourful flashing lights of the historic fairground attractions surrounding them.  She was backed by her live band playing semi-acoustically, before performing her encore sat on the bonnet of one of the bumper-cars with just her unplugged guitarist and no microphone.  I managed to keep track of the songs in her set and stayed frozen to the spot during the two songs that were being filmed by ground-breaking French music videographers La Blogothèque, lying on the floor at the front of the stage during one of them with a stage monitor blasting right into my ears.  I still managed to end up in the background of a couple of their shots though(although I'm blaming this on their slick editing), so don't get to fully tick that second box.  As for the first job on my list, well I managed to get the shots asked for during the gig - as well as a few nice backlit ones during the soundcheck when Ella sat in a dodgem car tweeting about the gig on her phone, absent mindedly singing pitch perfect into her microphone whilst a single spotlight shone through her impressive hair.  Check 'em out - I hope you dig.  

Spotlit

Lights, Dodgems, Action!

Vintage Fairground, Modern Neon

Dingles Fairground Heritage Centre

Performing "Waiting All Night"

The best seats in the house were far-and-away the dodgems.

Perhaps I should take stickers next time?

Merry-Go-Round

Keep your eyes and ears peeled for Ella Eyre this year.

Soundcheck - check.

To keep up to date with the Nokia Lumia Live Sessions of 2014 click here - each gig is by invitation and there are various ways to win tickets.  If this event was anything to go by then I'd say it'd be well worth keeping an ear to the ground.

Check out my images and the La Blogothèque video from the last event of 2013 (on a rainy beach in Cornwall) here.

And The Staves Played On

I found Alex, my oldest friend, on the beach building a fire.  It was his job to organise this whole thing and as the sun dropped people were starting to trickle onto Porthcurnick beach from the coast path and the small lane that runs down onto the sand.  Over the past year he's organised a series of small, intimate, performances by rising stars of the music scene at unique venues for mobile phone company Nokia.  The theme of the Nokia Lumia Live Sessions has been undiscovered artists in undiscovered locations and he's put on gigs such as Kodaline in an old tannery in Dublin, Fenech Soler in a fight cage in Leeds and Lianne La Havas in a skate park in Liverpool, to name but a few.  This was due to be the last Lumia Live Session and was to feature British folk sisters The Staves performing fireside on a small beach in Cornwall to an invited crowd.  

Of all of the Lumia Live Sessions that he's had to organise, this one was perhaps the most unpredictable due to the vagaries of the British Summertime weather.  It had been a lovely, sunny, August day and there was a fair crowd on the grass and benches around The Hidden Hut cafe above the sand.  There were paper cups of wine and seven enormous paella pans were being tended to by a team of chefs and the brightly coloured food looked, and tasted, incredible.  Around 150 people had been invited (plus some of the cafe's regulars and passers by) and as is so often the way at events like this in this little county, most of the crowd knew each other.

The Staves made their way up from the water's edge just after 8pm and the three sisters arranged themselves on the rocks and piles of logs beside the small fire.  They were performing accoustically, with French film makers La Blogotheque recording the performance and they'd placed their microphone right next to me.  The crowd was absolutely silent, listening intently to the sister's familial harmonies and the gentle guitar over the sound of the outgoing tide, until a few bars into the second song the rain began to drip...and then drum.  It was a summer downpour of biblical proportions, the heavy black cloud like a bruise appearing over the hillside and emptying onto the beach within minutes.  People ran for cover under the low cliffs, umbrellas appeared over the three heads of the Staveley Taylor sisters, and the French film crew hurriedly covered their expensive equipment in whatever jackets they could find.  Many people left as the rain set in, but the performance was simply being relocated to the Hidden Hut cafe just behind the grass.

Two large gazebos had appeared, tables were cleared and The Staves reappeared a short time later in the serving hatch.  Periodically the rainwater would build up on one of the gazebos and overflow, crashing down onto the already soaked-to-the-skin spectators.  But the band played on, and ended their performance with an encore in the midst of the small, steaming, crowd.

This was one of those events where it seemed that every other person present had a big, fancy, camera so I'm really proud that Nokia have used a load of the images that I shot for their website banner images and other post-event publicity.  I'm certainly really grateful for the opportunity to attend such a unique gig; if you get the chance then spend some time watching the La Blogotheque films of the other five Lumia Live Sessions and checking out The Staves beautiful music.

Take 5: West Coast Cool

Chances are that nobody but my Dad will read this post all the way to the end, but if a few of you do and it gets into your ears, then it's been worthwhile posting.
It's a shame how sometimes it takes the passing of a great artist in order for their work to be thrust back into the view of mainstream audiences.  Dave Brubeck passed away a few days ago, on December 5th, one day before his 92nd birthday.  He was a jazz pianist and composer, a figurehead of the "west coast cool" scene and considered to be one of the foremost proponents of "progressive jazz".

Through my late teenage years, in my Dad's house dinner times were often announced by the sound of a cork popping from a bottle of wine and a jazz cd starting up.  It was never something that I paid a great deal of attention to; the music wasn't there to be listened to intently (as with most modern 3 minute thirty second songs) but more of a background layer, a decoration, something that you could dip in and out of as and when you pleased.  Over time I absorbed a lot of classic albums, and have a healthy respect for jazz as an art form.  I grew up playing the drums; jazz is difficult beyond words, it is another level of musicianship that just ties knots in my "4/4" trained brain.

Brubeck led the charge of West Coast Californian jazz musicians in the 1950's, helping to sign musicians such as Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan to Fantasy Records before then moving onto the Columbia label.  His life didn't feature any of the headline grabbing tragedy that characterised the biographies of many of his contemporaries who suffered under the needle and the bottle, it was simply driven by musical curiosity and a strong work ethic.  Take a listen to "Take Five" in the video above, and if you dig, then dig a little deeper.   

Blue

Image: Mat Arney.

Marcus Shelby, performing with his trio at Pearls, San Francisco, December 2007.  

Image: Mat Arney.

Sunshine Hit Me

Sometimes, when it's rodding down with rain outside (particularly if it's still supposedly the middle of summer), you need a bit of audible sunshine to supplement the lack of a big yellow orb in the sky.
Enter The Bees (aka "A Band Of Bees" if you're state-side) a six piece band from Ventnor on the Isle of Wight led by Paul Butler whose analogue sound harks back in subtle homage to classic artists of the 60's and 70's and manages somehow to both relax and uplift in unison.  
I caught them at the utterly fantastic Port Eliot Festival back in mid-July (more to come on that soon) and managed to get myself a spot down near the front and fire off a few shots on my trusty little 35mm Olympus Trip.  They came out pretty good and have provided me with the perfect excuse to tell you that, if it's raining when you wake up tomorrow morning and you need your day brightening up some, look these guys up and get some sunshine in your ears.  Even if it's not raining, their soundtrack will make a good day better. 

The Soothing Songs of The Stone Siblings

Back in December Angus and Julia Stone, a stupidly talented brother-sister duo from Sydney's Northern Beaches returned to Cornwall to play another live show in Falmouth just a stones throw down the river from the sawmills studio near Fowey where they recorded the bulk of their last album Down The Way. Sorry, I didn't even realise I'd made that "stones throw" pun until I just re-read it. I'm leaving it in though, no shame.

It was probably one of the hardest gigs that I've ever tried to photograph - all low lighting, twinkling and backlit, exacerbated by the fact that I rocked up with friends and had a drink in the bar before going in rather than getting there early and waiting down the front with my cantankerous camera. When I did get in there, I was promptly surrounded by enormous box-headed rugby players so had to shoot these stood on my tip toes. I would've just hung at the back listening with my eyes closed though, they're that good live.

I'd urge you to do your ears a favour and go give them a listen. They're both so damn talented that they've also got solo and side-projects on the go too so with a bit of internet rummaging you should be able to turn up some real nice music.

And if you're into Julia Stone's sound then seek out Lisa Hannigan and her album "Sea Sew", she was the cellist and duet vocalist on Damien Rice's "O" album and has some really nice material.

Blues Gone Green

A couple of music based pieces in fairly quick succession with the addition of this piece, but it's not without good reason I assure you...
Last Sunday afternoon I rolled down the hill to The Eden Project to catch an interesting show: Blues and Roots maestro Martin Harley was playing the final show of his "Blues Gone Green" tour in the inspirational environs of the Mediterranean Biome, the culmination of a bike powered, completely emission free UK tour.
Between August 20th and September 19th Martin pedalled 1,200 miles and played 27 live shows, averaging around 50 miles per day on a "Big Dummy" cargo bike fitted with racks to carry his guitars. My friends at Finisterre kitted him up with a load of technical clothing to equip him for all of the vagaries of the British summer weather, and he arrived last Sunday from Plymouth to play his final show in fine form. Martin was playing solo shows (as opposed to fronting his three-piece band the Martin Harley Trio) with all of the power for the PA system provided by a special "solar" truck covered in photovoltaic cells, introducing some songs from the new album and mixing up beautiful acoustic folk ballads and blistering slide blues stompers.
A ripping show after a month pedalling a massive bike up and down hills - big props to him for showing that you don't necessarily need a massive hermetically sealed all mod-cons tour bus, or even a comfortable saddle, to transport you between gigs in order to arrive refreshed.
You can just go slow, inhale some fresh air and enjoy the view en-route.

Read his own account of the tour on his "blues gone green" blog here.

Photo above by Angus Cowan, photos below snapped by Martin.

"So which one is Mumford, and are they really all his sons?"

Back in early July the Crown Princes of the British folk/rock scene revival, Mumford & Sons, played a gig at the Eden Sessions supporting Doves. I'd been looking forward to this gig for ages, mainly because it's not all that often that bands make it past the end of the M5 to this corner of the country, and also because it was technically speaking my last day of "proper" work for the next couple of months.

So having written it in big red letters on my calendar, circled it loads, and bullied a load of friends into getting tickets too, I was late and missed half of their pretty short set. I have a very valid excuse, mind; a rare and incredibly good left hand point-break just up the coast from me had been woken up by a long-range ground swell (even rarer outside of winter) and was firing for the afternoon on the pushing tide, so I went surfing with a friend. We kept checking our watches and working out how long it'd take us to race down to the Eden Project after "one more wave", but they were the sort of waves that you can't drive away from.

We did make it there in time to catch the last 5 songs of their short support slot, and they were on fine form. Here's a shot from in the thick of the crowd as they fully got their stomp on, and one from up above looking down.

Probably one of the last times that these guys will be opening for another band rather than headlining I'd guess.

A few weeks ago my best mates girl Nicolle e-mailed me a link to this video - she's a massive music head and fully has her finger on the pulse (and runs a rad music blog) - it's of Mumford & Sons jamming on the streets of Paris (and singing in French no less) playing 'The Banjolin Song' and 'Awake My Soul', it's 9 minutes and 48 seconds of great music that is well worth checking out. It's on vimeo and isn't downloadable hence I can't throw it up directly on here, so apologies, but a move of the mouse and a left click is all it'll take:

http://vimeo.com/12718108