Daring to gyre and gimble in the wabe of Glastonbury is about as treacherous manoeuvre as any festival organisers could ever assume yet the summer-long sunburn show must go on. If Hyde Park’s overblown commercialist haven that is Wireless were the South Pole, Kent’s second ever Hop Farm festival would be at the utmost northern point possible on the planet, without a single advertising placard. Apt then that it should fall on the weekend of Independence Day. God bless individualism. Whilst the most part of this year’s run-down reads like the index to a dated Uncut magazine (The Fratellis and Paul Weller bring their oh-so-90s-it-hurts Mondeo man MOR to the main stage), the crown jewels are buried in the haystack that is the inspirationally branded Third Stage.
Nowhere near enough about North Wales’ prime purveyors of poppy post-punk The Joy Formidable has bursted out of blog holes thus far, although with such a vivid audio assault as their early evening pristine chimes and chirps, status, perhaps cult, is sure to ensue. Blasting through the technicolour lo-fi trash hits barely contained within debut EP A Balloon Called Moaning as if the fate of the universe hangs in the balance, frontwoman Ritzy Bryan calmly seduces every ear drum and every male eye ball, before ripping them ferociously from their sockets, lodging them in her back pocket for half an hour and reluctantly handing them back until they shred stages, faces and guitar strings all through the sadistically scorching summer climes. New Wave will never be the same again.
Not quite tuned into the same wavelength are The Chapman Family, a North Westerly quartet already disregarded as a cult as deviously disruptive as Mormonism. In reality they are neither cult nor family. What they are is an inspirationally aggressive amalgamation of filth-ridden angst, inaudibly audacious bone-shredding shrieks and pure, triple distilled emotion. Kids is the bastard offspring of Maxïmo Park bundled in a 300°C infernal washing machine with a pain killer or two and six strands of Robert Smith’s barnet. Smashing an Argos grotesque guitar into the quaking stage beneath like a gothic grim reaper possessed before calmly discussing mutual acquaintances stage right, Kingsley Hall blends together fiction and reality, rationality and insanity, whirring all sensibility into hypnotic obsession. Relieved to escape in one piece, hearts pound and teeth chatter before The Chapman Family disappear up the M1 to their miserabilist hub that is home. The darkest side of the moon never seemed so God-damned bright.
