Alex Martin gets deep at Sunrise Celebration 2011.
Sunrise Celebration is big on generosity. It indulges the attendee in that which we each of us crave by virtue of the inherently liberty-seeking nature of the human condition, whether we are conscious of this craving or not: deliverance from the stultifying claustrophobia of modern existence, from the sorry realm Huxley refers to as “the world of selves, of time, of utilitarian consideration, of self-assertion, of cocksuredness, of over-valued words and idolatrously worshipped notions”.
For once, beauty is beauty, pleasure is pleasure, lust is pure, and human relations are wondrously expurgated of the self-consciousness and paranoia that make, for instance, fleeting eye contact with the person sitting opposite you on the tube so very fleeting, so terrifying, de-humanising. Perched at my desk now, back aching to buggery, staring vacantly at an omniscient automaton that damn near controls my entire life in one form or another, Computer Dearest - I can’t help but feel that we were never meant to live like this. The degree of its hedonism makes it unsustainable in all sorts of ways, but I feel like Sunrise strikes upon something akin to the ideal-type civil state. Harmonious, collaborative, interactive, imbued with solidarity and communal spirit, accessable to people of absolutely any age, colour or creed. That’s my kind of party.
Establishing itself somewhere in the nether regions between carnivalistic medieval pageant, pirate sea shanty, early acid house rave and inter-galactic Solarian psy-boomer, if you’ve heard of Sunrise before you are likely to have one of two attitudes towards it: (i) get me there as quickly as possible by any means necessary or (ii) that doesn’t really sound like my polystyrene cup of vended tea. But let me tell you what I found out this year when I went there having exchanged status as wandering cosmic vagrant for that of music journalist: the music is actually mind-blowingly good, in any mind-state in which you are lucky enough to encounter it.
This fact won’t come as any kind of surprise for the fortunate few who go regularly. But even for me as someone who has been regularly, and who spends around 65% of his waking hours researching and listening to leftish-field party music, casting one’s eye upon the line-up involves delving into a mine-field of unfamiliarity; the majority of acts operate well outside the mainstream London-based hype machine. That’s if you can even track down a line-up outside of cyber space. To my reckoning the organisers fly-posted a couple of moth-eared posters in the shadier corners of Camden Lock, stuck up a few more in Stoke’s Croft and left the rest in the back of a converted camper-ambulance to collect dust and get roached. Maybe it’s purposefully kept on the down-low to filter out undesirable elements, in which case I probably shouldn’t be writing this promotional article. Luckily I’m not sure all that many people will be reading this. If you got beyond the first sentential convolution, I salute you heartily.
The first band I’d like to draw your attention to is the ever zealous Zub Zub, who, on the Friday night, proved the perfect act to headline the newly built outdoor stage, resplendent in swirling Gaelic imagery and regal gold paint. I can only describe the experience of seeing these guys illuminate the field around me, the sky smouldering in burnt tangerine as the sun slowly descended, as how I imagine – nay dream - a nano-form, 21st Century incarnation of Hendrix at Woodstock to look and sound. With a bouncy castle trance underlay, Zub Zub’s maddeningly accomplished electric guitarist unleashed a hailstorm of delicious synaesthetic psychadelia, laid down frenetically by the kind of fretwork that gets you high-fiving the people around you so frequently that the sound of palm-on-palm becomes a form of percussion supplementing that underway onstage. Some of their more overtly IDM-influenced stuff is also marvellously on-point and is featured heavily on their typically eclectic new album, Primate, out now on MonkeyFace Records.
Also gracing the outdoor stage that unforgettable evening was the phenomenon of MC Xander, beatboxer extraordinaire and disseminator of positive consciousness. What distinguishes him from other craftsmen of his tranche – uber slick vocal dexterity + expert use of FX box & loop pedal = Houdini-esque marvel of human acrobatics – is the fact that, though central to the quality of his output, the medium he employs is by no means essential to enjoyment of his dubwise sound. I would listen to his music if it was made by a Music Tech student in a bedroom using Logic. But it wasn’t. It was made by a human man’s vox, and it is spectacular on a number of levels.
Moving away from the main stage and into the shadow lands of the Eartheart dance tent, ever heady with the scent of bovine exhalation, my highlight came on the Saturday afternoon in the form of Liquid Records’ mainstay Slackbaba. His music may be chilled like a chillum-smoking chinchilla, but Slacky B combines this joyful repose with a breakbeat so crisp and danceable that it calls to mind a cloud-based sky-borne discothèque. Floaty yeah? Maybe I’ll see you up there some time.
Over in the Chai Wallah things were generally on more of an acoustic flex. I arrived there post-Slackbaba to find a substantial assembly bathing luxuriantly in the sounds of a band I hadn’t heard of before called the Submotion Orchestra. A low end rumble and half-step rhythm got me worried early on – the majority of live dubstep acts I’ve seen in recent times have been a little bit embarrassing. But these guys were a life raft in a sea of mediocrity. Some of the most maternalistic, fathom-deep sub bass I’ve heard since the womb buoyed a smorgasbord of wonderfully eclectic percussion, twinkly winky piano keys and the orgasmic reverberations of an oh-so sensual female vocalist whose opening notes sent me weak at the knees.
5-piece Emerald gypsy jazz maestros Sheelanagig also undoubtedly deserve a mention for the frenzy they whipped up on the same stage. That it is possible to create a dancefloor intensity comparable to that achieved with the assistance of a drum machine and all the other synthetic staples of rave music production using just a fiddle, a flute, a double bass and a good old-fashioned drum kit is testament to the unrivalled futurism of the 16th Century pirate jig. Way ahead of their time be those swashbuckling buccaneers me timbers.
If I hadn’t run out of steam, time, volition, column inches and music journalism clichés I could probably go on describing the acts I saw at Sunrise for some time. But instead I’ll try and leave you with the feeling I was left with when I finally left Bruton on the Monday. The hopes and dreams of the flower children of ‘60s may only live on today in a heavily bastardised fashion heritage and a series of watered-down social and political reforms. But in isolated pockets of the world their spirit does live on in earnest. And that is profoundly heartening.
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