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GIVEAWAY: Win Tickets to Supernormal Festival in the UK (Skullflower, Black ABBA, and More)

Posted in Whathaveyou on August 1st, 2011 by JJ Koczan

[PLEASE NOTE: Got a winner for this one, thanks to all who got in touch. I’m going to leave this post up to help spread the word about the fest and for archival purposes, but we’re all good on the winner front.]

I just put a note up on the forum for anyone either British or traveling to the UK, the weekend of Aug. 19-21. The folks behind the Supernormal Festival were kind enough to hit me up with a pair of tickets to giveaway. If you’re around Oxfordshire or willing to get there and want to go, all I need is your name for the guest list.

Doesn’t cost anything to enter, you just have to send me a private message on the forum and say you’d like to go. If you really don’t want to register for the forum, you can hit me up on Thee Facebooks as well. Pretty low key, but it’s a cool fest, so I figure it’s worth making it easy.

There’s a ton of info on Supernormal‘s website about the bands playing, but it’s headlined by the mighty Skullflower, and really, that should be enough for someone out there to hit me up.

Here’s more about the fest from their page:

Supernormal is a surprising new addition to the summer calendar, a spontaneous and experimental artist-led event perfectly located in the magical looking-glass world that is Braziers Park in Oxfordshire.  Supernormal returns to the fundamental spirit of utopianism, imagination and adventure that is all too often lost in the financially-driven, artistically nondescript realm of the twenty-first century festival circuit, as a vibrant spectacle of cult live music, performance, discussion and cutting edge contemporary art.

The first Supernormal in 2010, headlined by Faust, was a heady, refreshing weekend of magic and mayhem, and this year’s event builds on its spirit by welcoming a host of guest curators, including Rocket Recordings, Heidi Heelz (Dice Club), and visual arts curator Matilda Strang, who have assembled a fresh, diverse and sparkling array of cult musical attractions and curiosities, from the legendary psychedelic transgressions of Skullflower, paragons of ethereal experimentation Cindytalk (fresh from Ray Davies’ Meltdown), Black ABBA (members of Moss), glam visionaries David Devant & his Spirit Wife and the last ever show by improv iconoclasts The A Band, to new talent like Gnod, Flats, Toy, Teeth of the Sea, Gum Takes Tooth and Maria and the Mirrors, with surprise headliners and alarming special guests still yet to be announced.

Meanwhile, everything from an Anat-Ben David (Chicks on Speed) collaboration with Dirty Electronics to a Sing-A-Long-A-Wicker-Man event, from a 36-hour continuous musical performance from Hákarl and friends to a performative lecture entitled Post-Colonial Cannibal will be taking place amidst the verdant English countryside.

Supernormal is an intimate event for an exclusive audience of 500, allowing the exploration of the site and out-buildings where a whole range of events will take place. Not run for profit, it is organised and curated by a small network of artists and musicians who share the aims and ethos of this truly alternative event, and takes place on an eco-site with fresh running water, eco toilets and hot outdoor showers with a wooded camping area.

Visit Supernormal’s website for more info.

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Pushing the Limits of Distortion with Skullflower

Posted in Reviews on January 28th, 2010 by JJ Koczan

What starts out as a litmus test for how much drone punishment a listener can handle not so quickly becomes an encompassing ritual nearly religious in its scope. Skullflower’s Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament (Neurot) is a double-disc, 12 track excursion to the outer limits of instrumental noise. There are no songs, no catchy choruses, no pop structures. UK-based guitarist Matthew Bower continues his 20-plus year run of unbridled experimentation, now as the sole creative force within the band.

It is, for most who’d even be brave enough to take it on, completely unlistenable. Bower makes no attempt to meet his audience halfway or do anything that might make his music more accessible. This, for a small but loyal cult segment of the underground, is precisely what has earned him such acclaim these past decades in his various projects, and with Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament, the idea seems not so much to expand the horizons of noise — because Bower’s already done that — but rather to engage in the rites of the unhinged and to make a work that, apart from the already-stretched limits of its instrumentation, is truly without borders.

That said, there can be no doubt that Skullflower’s latest is bound to be more appreciated than heard. The destructive chaos of these tracks is rampant throughout, and makes most bands who talk of their sound as apocalyptic seem even sillier than they did themselves. Take the vocals out of the first two Godflesh records and play them at quarter-speed. Repeat for two hours and enjoy. Or, more likely, don’t. Doesn’t seem to matter to Bower.

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