camp a low hum 2008

I’m not going to do the usual day by day report of who played when and what they were like because:

a) I gave up writing notes at the time, because I was having too much fun and alcohol

b) It’s a cliche, but the festival was about much more than just the bands

Size matters

Camp A Low Hum 2008 took place at Tatum Park scout camp, about an hours drive north of Wellington. It was packed to capacity. Which meant about 500 people were there. This puts it on the grand scale of a local village fete. Rather than your run of the mill city of mud and piss festivals we’ve come to know / loathe, it was like gatecrashing a big party with the best bands in the country playing.

Pretty much everyone there knew each other, which was evident when Matthew Crawley of Thee Conjurers began their set by welcoming everyone in the audience by name. Far from being cliquey, it came across as genuinely friendly - like he was pleased to see we’d all made it along.

The Reduction Agents

My favourite band of the festival. They got people dancing at 4 in the afternoon, when we were all relatively sober. Apart from their bass player, who slowly collapsed like a felled tree halfway through their set.

They have the ramshackle tuneful charm of the poppier moments of the Velvet Underground and the punk rock oomph of Brakes. Singer James Milne is a brilliant song writer, and several of their songs are classic tunes undiscovered everywhere but New Zealand.

Check out 80s Celebration:

Connan and the Mockasins

Suprise of the festival for me. I’d heard their tunes on Myspace and was a bit nonplussed - all sounded a bit light and twee. Live though, dressed as giant geese, it all made sense. ‘Sneaky Sneaky Dog Friend’ is a pyschedelic pop gem.

Brand New Math

I didn’t want to like this band as apparently, the singer shouted abuse at me when he was drunk when I went to the toilet. But I didn’t hear what he said and as it turned out, Brand New Math were excellent. They reminded me of The Unicorns, but with Ian Svenonious singing. The songs have the same kind of musical Allsorts feel as the Fiery Furnaces & Los Campesinos, and like both those bands, there’s that all important thread of a good tune holding it all together and keeping you interested. The song about Debating stood out and as I was watching them, I thought they’d be great playing at Artrocker in London. Then I found out they already had. Doh.

Zombies

A zombie movie was shot during Camp and on day 3, it was fairly common to see the undead shuffling around, mingling with the indie kids or rocking out at the noisy stage. It was also an excuse to crack out some fine B-movie schlock rock horror bands - Teen Wolf and Thought Creature.

pic by Rebecca Faulkner

Fighting the Shakes

Started off messy but tightened up to give the crowd a good aural kicking with Albini/Hot Snakes esque frenetic rock n roll. Should tour New Zealand with Untitled Musical Project, would be a cracking bill.

Bongo curse

It’s a worry at festivals everywhere, that you’ll pitch your tent only to discover your neighbour has brought along his/her set of fucking bongos. Or hand drums. Whatever they are - they sound like shit. Unless you can play them properly, which you can’t, you sound like a moron slapping a beer belly. Round the camp fire at A Low Hum, several bongos appeared with hippies attached to them and although tolerated at first, began to annoy the living shit out of everyone when they started playing at the same time as the bands on the nearby stage. This resulted in a well organised ‘Ban the Bongo’ campaign. A petition was passed around camp but was later sabotaged by a hippy, who drew a penis on it and ran away.

Pic By Rebecca Faulkner

No one stole our beer

We left 20 cans of lager in the communal fridge in the kitchen, and no one nicked it.

Pheonix Foundation

I’m sure they’re lovely chaps, but there was an inherent smugness to the performance that put me right off them. Ultimately, what we got was Athletes/Coldplay meanderings with a few country trappings on the surface. A fan of theirs gave me a lift back to Wellington and told me she thought they’d had a bad gig and I should reserve judgement.

Simming Pool

More festivals should have swimming pools

Making a boat of jammy bread

Ah, the joys of performance art. Stumbling around the main stage on Monday, we came across men dressed as fish playing behind two ladies constructing a boat of baguettes smeared in jam. Someone from Radio NZ told me we were watching a famous NZ DJ turned sonic artist, but I can’t remember who it was. Was fun though.

Los Hories

Two thirds of Los Hories did the rounds of London’s finest rock clubs as Grande Cobra. I always had a soft spot for Grand Cobra, but this new incarnation seemed to work its garage rock magic even better. It’s stripped down Hives style riffing, with a touch of Blues Explosion sermonising. It came across as resolutely old skool in amongst the herky jerky keyboard bands, but was one of my favourite sets of the festival.

Pressing play = DJing

Me & my mate Col were primed to do a DJ set in the party area on zombie night. Equipment and time issues meant this translated to plugging Col’s mp3 player into the PA and pressing play. We still had a blast and were grateful for the opportunity to dance to our favourite songs, but it was a shame there wasn’t a designated DJ/club area for the playing and dancing to of records. On day 1, Auckland’s Quay Street Social Club were set to rock the party into the wee small hours, but had their set cut short for various reasons. A DJ/party tent at Camp 2009 would be a good addition I reckon.

Tourettes

Away from the city, in the middle of nowhere, the clear summer night sky at Camp A Low Hum had more stars than I’ve seen in a long time. Taking a breather, myself and Col lay staring at them by the nice stage while The Brunettes played in the next field. Our peaceful respite was disturbed when Tourettes took the mic and started a spoken word set. Initially, fake gangasta accent and crotch grasping put me off but Tourettes won me over with the quality of his rhymes. It was real poetry people, and his story about camping on the beach and unrequited love near moved me to tears. As people started filtering over from the main stage, he pulled out the comedy stops with rhymes about - somewhat ironically - hip hop cliches and trying to pull. It was a brilliant set and one of the pleasant surprises of the festival.

Liam Finn

Undoubtedly an extremely talented geezer, Liam Finn’s music has still yet to click with me. He gets full marks for eschewing the easy path suggested by his heritage (ie, getting an acoustic song and playing Crowded House style tunes) preferring instead to piss around with different instruments and not shy away from a distortion pedal or two. His debut album is a big deal over here in NZ - and there’s every chance he might widen out that success when he tours the US later this month, camping out at SXSW.

It’s also worth noting that he’s fond of the stage. I’m no statistician, but I reckon he was onstage about 64% of the entire festival, guesting for just about every other band playing.

Blink

Blink is the Camp A Low Hum organiser, the supremo. Basically he should be knighted for his services to contemporary rock n roll. He’s in it for the love rather than the money, and his benevolent presence throughout the festival was as much about ensuring we all had a good time as making sure everything was going smoothly. The man’s a saint.

Thee Conjurers

Ukele powered (at times) primal soul band from Auckland, who unfortunately had the career span of a mayfly, because The Brunettes poached all the members. What with Liam Finn’s frequent guest appearances, it sometimes feels like there are only about 12 musicians in the whole country and all bands are drawn from the same pool of eager talented musos. Thee Conjurers were the first band I saw at Camp A Low Hum and in the baking hot sun, played a fired up set of raw power punk n soul classics of their own penning. I expect they’ll be back soon under a different name, when they’ve done their time with The Brunettes.

Dick Dynamite

High octane rockabillies, who benefit from a hairy animal on drums intead of the usual tidy greaser. Amazing double bass player raises this band above the usual run of the mill Meteor clones and some contemporary lyrics (they sing about violent video games instead of the Ace Cafe) give it a cool twist. Probably the best show I saw in the noisy stage.

The Brunettes

Sub-pop signees, this duo is as close as you get to NZ indie royalty. They have an ear for a tune and they’ve worked on getting their overall 60s packaging just so - but for me it was a touch too thought through and choreographed and lacked any kind of fire or soul.

Lawrence Arabia

Speaking to people afterwards, one of the highlights of Camp A Low Hum for a lot of the punters was a set by Lawrence Arabia on the nice stage. In the late afternoon, Lawrence (who is also James, singer of the Reduction Agents) got together with Samuel Flynn Scott, Liam Finn (of course) and at one point Connan Mockasin to play a set of impromptu jams. There was theremin. There was Helter Skelter. There was a miaow through of the Australian National anthem. It really was like watching your mates grab a guitar at a party and do their best to entertain you. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing. As I hadn’t really heard Lawrence Arabia’s own stuff (I had one spin of the record at a party once - and it sounded awesome) I was disappointed not to hear more of his ‘proper’ songs. But I feel stingy begrudging the campers what was for many of them a special moment.

Pic by Petra Jane - www.petrajane.com.

Notable misses

Sadly I didn’t get to see Die! Die! Die!, Trans Am, Ruby Suns, Cut Off Your Hands and So So Modern. If anyone was there and wants to send in a report, email dave@artrocker.com and I’ll update this review.

You can also expect a fine review of the festival on www.cheeseontoast.co.nz

Read about what you missed on the Low Hum website www.campalowhum.com