Apollo's Rainbow

Neil Jones on roadkill auctions, Flipron, and all the magic of Shambala 2007

24th, 25th and 26th of August, 2007

  The only thing spectacular about entering into the Northampton country car park of Shambala 2007 is the laid back nature of the festival staff, but walking in past the floating balloon landmarks and through the jolly entrance (the people there frisk you for glass bottles in various super-hero outfits), you start to feel a little of its consummate lunacy.

Sweets are offered at the awning that hosts the reception, I’m asked for my preferred method of procuring a programme (the choices are a) sing for it, or b) put your hand in your pocket), before we emerge onto the site itself, a huge football-marked dome colouring the horizon’s forefront while the background spreads itself out like a fairground heaven. Yellow, red, blue and green, hand-made shop banners glimmering in the distance, the sheer look of it makes me jump cartwheels inside, and I look forward to getting amongst it with joyous anticipation.

It’s a bit of personal bad luck, but an absent friend, who usually embarrasses me with the luxuries of his pop-up tent, has been replaced by another, and though seeing Victoria’s tent emerge from its bag with the alacrity of a cat is quite a blow, it’s not too long before my canvas is out basking beside it like a beached whale, and it’s off into the festival arena for the first taste of Shambala 2007.

I’m not sure what makes me choose the Blackout tent as my first stop, as I’d originally been heading straight for a shipwreck I’d spotted in the distance, but I wander in just as Klinker is immersed in his music. He’s making a shattering noise of sheer post-punk hopelessness, and taking such glee in doing it as to render it utterly hilarious and brilliant. He seems to be calling himself Carpet Sniffer in between songs, and thrusts about for a good while, hammering wayward guitar lines out to his own backing film footage depicting scenes of gritty, grimy urbanity and nakedness, before a twist comes when he begins heartily trying to saw a violin in half with its bow. By this point a man in professor garb who had been observing the screen at stage front has uncrossed his arms and joined in with some studious poetry and encouragement, before Carpet Sniffer offers a searing riposte with an effort called the “f*** c*** f*** c***” song, in which those evocative words are pronounced in a frenzy that in any other realm would see him arrested. ‘Fuck off Batman’ then hits its mark like Lewis Carrol in a mental hospital, and before we know it it’s over in a flurry of self-abuse.

Utterly shocking, but its off to explore some more. A huge dome decorated in hexagons like a football shades a small skate park; The Beduoin Lounge sits nearby like a canvassed jazz caf・, there’s an elaborate water shooter game here, a solar-powered games room there, and a giant cartoon mouth opens up to a kids’ playground, behind which the place spreads out in its colourful splendour. It’ll take a while to discover it all, and evening is fast approaching, so with Klinker’s sparse rhythms in the head it’s back to the tent to prepare.

I hear stories of a wooded area that’s host to hammocks suspended fifteen foot in the air and a giant glitter ball, which you can get to by crossing a lake, but can’t pay much notice as the glitter spray flies freely and I begin to take the appearance of an extra in Star Trek before venturing back out into the promised land. Spit and Polish had sounded good as I’d flicked through the programme earlier with affected disregard, and here at the Sunset Boulevard their promised shanty-folk makes for a cheery half hour, though they are overshadowed slightly by the tent itself, which is a pretty amazing affair.

These Shambala canvasses don’t seem to be hastily-arranged efforts by any means, and the Sunset has the silkiest, snazziest tent roof I’ve ever seen, drooping and stretching out above like a royal drape, the only thing missing a few jewels here and there. One more underground Chas and Dave routine from Spit and Polish later and it’s back out into the evening, the walk to the next stage taking me past a five-a-side football pitch with real three-quarter sized posts (wow!) and quality nets (yes!) as stalls display their wares like an avant-garde car-boot sale, and bloomin’ hell - a twenty-five foot catwalk emerges out from a nearby boutique stall like style itself…

The Cabaret Tent is next, an arena from Broadway via Mars, a colourful circus-style canvas housing large bar and insane promises. The Irrepressibles stand inside tuning up like the best band you’ve ever seen, a multi-instrumental classical-folk-pop explosion waiting to happen, and how good it would be if it did, but, after numerous problems with the PA, the singer treats us to an avant-garde rendition of Tom Jones that leaves the retinue slowly dry.

Lights from the teeming festival now glimmer under the stars like happy reflections, and the last stop of the night, The Dome, pulses with sounds refined immaculately from hip hop for the dance generation, a teeming mass of nihilism, lost to the world, but really quite funky. A passer-by gets sucked into the fun, but today has been something like walking inside the frame of a Pisanello painting, and that’s quite enough for me. Tonight I’ll sleep to the opening rhythms and flourishes like one happy Shambala cat.

Day 2 

My first thought this morning is that yesterday’s report may have failed to mention The Organ, who pummelled The Beduoin Lounge quite late with a set of retro-rock-inclined pop that had Rambo dancing with Cinderella. It wasn’t that Organ of course, but despite their oversight in naming themselves after one of our greatest recently-deceased bands, they really were quite good, and today various Shambala parts continue to come together under the hot-hot rhythms like small miracles.

There’s a stunning atmosphere as we venture out for the first tastes of the day, the carnival crowd glowing opaque. A couple of hours are spent in the sun beside the 5-a-side football pitch, teams gathering together from around the festival to compete under the loony eye of the Shambala ref, who governs with the surrealist air of a cartoon character, possibly Yosemite Sam, shouting acclaim and derision in the direction of bewildered competitors while giants roam [pictured], and if you’re like me it’s fascinating to see the smattering of outlandish and generally liberated festival-goers reduced to a slight shyness by the Beautiful Game. Young kids flourish and a Rastafarian excels in goal, but most are terrified into a sub-par performance by the Shambala official with the loud-speaker and shortest referee shorts in history.

We drift away as the danger grows of being asked to play (I wouldn’t mind this, but my friends are carrying various injuries), and low and behold at the Blackout tent we run straight into a loony old friend. Klinker is slightly more subdued today, I originally think, before he starts fiddling with a flashing electronic contraption in his pants. This seems somewhat terribly to rejuvenate him, and his terrible post-rock reaches new heights of lunacy. Yesterday Klinker was hilariously raucous, but today the antics veer more towards the strange and slightly perverse. We inwardly beg to be spared another glimpse of his crotch, but inevitably see it once more during a between song ramble, the “f*** c*** f***” song following in barbed psychological empathy. And here comes the violin again, but Klinker’s plays it today with a more distracted air, like he has a tune somewhere on his mind, and the effect is almost wistful. One more flash of the contraption in his pants and it’s over for Klinker for another year, but this is not a man we’ll be forgetting in a hurry. Rod Hull on acid?

7.30 is dawning and it’s a time I have etched on my mind… There’s just enough time to head off back to the tent to get assaulted by a glitter gun, join a wedding party and get a divorce, before heading up to the stage I had discovered earlier with Flipron etched on its schedule board. No festival is complete without the Glastonbury retinue’s unique brand of shambling poetics, and Shambala won’t be until ‘Skeletons on Holiday’ has danced out through the attic-themed arena like a Caribbean spectre.

The setting for Flipron is perfect, and perched five foot in the air on a creaking platform, they soon render the place an enchanted den. ‘Rusty Casino’s Casino Rustique’, ‘Hungamunga’, a new track called ‘Zombie Blues’ and ‘Big Baboon’ rule with party grace, organ pumping, accordion parping and lap steel swaying to the beguiled, haunted-house poetry, and it’s the best small party I’ve ever attended, a rustic-regal feast of unlikely musical glamour with which no other band can possibly compete for the foreseeable future. The night gets more beautiful from here, dancing, the fireside, tea and port, the whole of Shambala glowing with activity, and it’s with a smile on the face that we’ll start the new day.

Day 3 

I can’t quite believe how good this festival is turning out to be. Sunday morning is coloured in wonder, and the day spreads itself out before us in regal shapes. It takes a while to emerge from the tent, but an early walk up to the Sunset Boulevard past the Village Disco (a bona fide disco that’s a hot dog stall only in veneer) reveals Senegalese kora player Kadialy Kouyate in majestic form, playing his elaborate and ornate instrument with humble wonder. The sound seems to trickle out of the kora like milk, and a sacred, festive kind of atmosphere unravels to its sounds.

Kouyate is an underplayed phenomenon, graceful and seemingly tuned to another plane, and another blinding, quintessentially Shambala experience follows soon after with Baraka down at the main stage. I’ve not frequented the area at all so far, not by design but more because of all the other stuff going on at the event, and I’m almost sidetracked again on the way here by the pirate ship stranded without explanation on the grass and an impromptu badminton match, but Baraka are so, so special.

Featuring members from Zambia, Ghana and Dominica, and led by an Irishman who seems to have rhythm and flavour dripping from pores, they play a set of Calypso, Reggae, Soca and South African Township that sets the afternoon in subtle flames, a similar humble wonder to Kadialy Kouyate leaving a magnificent mark as we sit and enjoy.

The programme promises a road-kill auction back at the Cabaret Tent, to be followed by a safari show, but shamefully a bout of Rebel Soul-area shopping distracts me, and some German expressionist cinema at the Blackout tent leads me back to my tent where I hastily gather some things for a hot-tub before the night fare. Time is ticking by though, and it does feel a little bourgeois queuing up when there’s so much going on, so a shower is taken, and it’s back out quickly into the land of dreams.

Giant monsters roam on stilts, hula-hoopists attempt to master their art, and the main stage it sits in quiet anticipation before an organ resounds to thrust me back into a place I seem to have been before, quite recently. It’s d・j・ vu, and a wiry haired troubadour is ready to slay the main stage like a golden-age cartoon apostle.

A purple shirt shines, a glint in the eye shows the way; and ‘Zombie Blues’ finds its feet like a glam-rock tower. Bolan for the poetic generation. ‘Skeletons on Holiday’ sprays its spooky lap steel magic and ‘The Flat-pack Bride of Possibilities’, a story that Chuck Jones left in Tim Burton's drawer, winds around us like surrealist silk. It’s Flipron of course, and singer Jesse Budd is glowing as the smoke distorts him from below, wielding an accordion like a folk-rock god, and treating us to more and more of the jewels in his crown.

‘Cerberus is as Cerberus Does’ eats us alive with its droning organ and mythical/comical imagery, ‘Hungamunga’ sets us on fire with it’s quirky ghost train rhythms, ‘Big and Clever’ feeds pure poetic air and cool defiance to outsider souls, ‘Hanging Round the Lean-to with Grandad’ makes us cry, and ‘Big Baboon’ shoots a final blast of imagery and melody to set us drooling in absolute complicity. Flipron have arrived on the big stage not a moment too early, and this, you have to believe me, is a wickedly good band.

A wander around the venue takes us past the village disco, past the log fire and the hey seats and the old shack houses, I remember rumours of the lake bridge and the woods where the glitter-ball shines, but still don’t believe it, and suddenly, a cool wind drops, and it just might be all over. We’re left to reflect on Shambala 2007, an outlandish, kaleidoscopic feast in every sense of the word, through which Apollo sprayed his gold dust trail. It’ll be back to the harsh old world a million times richer.

© 2007 Neil Jones

Flipron pic by Accordiana

© Miwsig