The Big Chill 2006

United Kingdom | by Dan Davies | 06 August 2006

That said, after pitching the tents in glorious sunshine on the Thursday, it’s a slight shame that it’s an overcast Friday. We walk down to the lake to grab a Mississippi Summer Punch and a Soco Mule and have a little dance to Mr Lip’s early smash up, before reclining to relax and listen to a soothing reggae set by Piers Harrison. We take in our surroundings, those sexy curvy hills down to the lake which has several plastic alligators in order to keep in with the New Orleans theme that the Fat Tuesday tent has cultivated.  

We skip to the main Open Air stage and are pleased to discover that the clouds don’t  stop Jose Gonzales bringing a little sunshine into our lives. The man that made you listen to the lyrical adroitness of Stock Aitken and Waterman has some more cover versions to add to his repertoire, including an excellent version of 'Small Town Boy' by Bronski Beat. I spend the afternoon taking in the rest of the site. This year either my legs are older, the site is bigger or the ‘special’ cakes are stronger - but it takes an age to get round.

Aforementioned cakes do have a nice fuzzy affect for the old American growl of Kurt Wagner and his alt country outfit Lambchop. I can’t make any of the lyrics out but it doesn’t seem to matter, as the sky turns pink it’s still warm, I’m grateful for cloud cover.

Everyone else is in the mood to dance as my aching legs lead me to wander. I hobble past X-press 2, who aren’t  really helping the audience out. 3 DJs 6 Decks loads of effects but all of them manage to bore an entire audience through inaction and what seems like an hour-long version of 'Smoke Machine'.

I find the real party back at the Fat Tuesday tent, hoards now occupy the entire space by the lake with about 10 friendly security guards getting increasingly irate with people pissing in it . No one is as I-beef-a enough to swim and sit on the plastic alligators but it does seem that the Fat Tuesday Tent is having it large. It still doesn’t get my body rockin’ though. I wonder whether I’m on the right Soco.

I walk back past Coldcut’s opening VJ tirade to watch Jamie Lidell, who starts his set with his Joe Cocker soul singer routine, his special three-piece comprising Mocky on drums and Chilli Gonzeles on keys. After being convinced we’re in the company of a great soul outfit, Gonzo and Mocky exit, leaving Lidell alone with a trestle table full of samplers and 303’s. As his beat-boxed loops are cued up and looped into a fifteen minute accumulative electro hip-hop house gospel piece, I realise that the man is a god.

Saturday

In the morning the drizzle descends which is disappointing. It drags me down slightly  and today seems to be a day for catching the last 10 minutes of everything. So I catch the last two songs by Arrested Development. It’s good to their old spiritual vibes master Baba Oje (the old bloke who everyone assumed was that street bum Mr Wendal) in attendance. Especially when he takes centre stage on said song and does a dance, which is a mixture of African dancing and body popping.

It gets me in a sunshine mood and after I’m off to watch the end of Scritti Politti, pulling some youngsters and a giant UFO balloon to the front of the stage with his falsetto toned pop neatness one moment and getting rid of them by hip-hopping a ‘Stick ‘em up mother fucker!’ the next.
 
Actually we do wait around for Sebastian Tellier. He’s doing his best French raconteur Jazz act when everyone knows that there’s no way in this world that him and his white space suited mate with a Stylophone can pull off the majesty of 'La Ritournelle'. Embarrassingly, it comes across like a bar room piano session, backed by one member of an apathetic Air.

We move up to the top level and go to the Sanctuary stage in the Enchanted Garden section of the festival. The small, secluded space is reminiscent of the old festival site. More than any of the other stages it has an intimacy, which suits the mostly organic output. We see the excellent bedroom cat lovers Psapp and hear a few of their saccharine sweet hits with endearing pipe cleaner cat handouts. 

After a day and a half it’s clear that the Big Chill has got bigger. In terms of capacity and more stages, now the amount of walking you do is equivalent to Glasto. It’s beginning to get christened  the Big Hill. To our delight we manage to commandeer a Golf Buggy for the evening.

We whiz round the perimeter to catch a bit of Nightmares On Wax from back stage. They’ve got themselves a pretty large live set up with the two MC’s bringing it all together to give the show a Basement Jaxx feel. We catch the last few tracks of Longrange by Phil Hartnoll but my mind is on the buggy.

It’s another whiz along the perimeter over several impressive roller coaster hills.We poke our heads round the Mix Media tent but there is no chance of getting in. The Blue Man Group are filling their mouths full of paint and flobbing onto some cardboard. We shoot to the dance tent where Quantic is just finishing playing his ever danceable northern soul and new funk set. Q leaves the stage and Mr Scruff gets on the decks, the only difference at this point is Scruff’s doodle visuals. The tent is filling steadily as we leave, I hear later that this ended up being one of the biggest crowds.