Bluedot Festival 2016: The Review

Seeing the Lovell Telescope towering above the Cheshire plains as you approach the entrance to Jodrell Bank, it’s hard not to feel a true stirring of the soul. Much like the famous Tor which welcomes festival-goers to Glastonbury, the 250-foot-high dish is a very British icon but one that speaks of the future rather than the past. With recently-returned star man Tim Peake piquing our interest in space this feels like a timely moment for Bluedot festival to make its debut.

As boutique festivals go Bluedot is almost beyond parody with a long list of physicists, scientists and boffins as predominant on the bill as the bands, while the presence of all sorts of extra-curricular fun from yoga to stargazing does make it feel a little like some kind of holiday camp for squares. Even arch-boffin Brian Eno makes an appearance, with his light installation beamed onto the omnipresent telescope. T in the Park this is not.

This being the festival’s first year a few teething troubles are to be expected, and it’s to more than a few punters' chagrin that some of Friday’s entertainment seems to have been programmed at exactly the same time as most people begin to arrive on site post-work. Still, Public Service Broadcasting do make a great soundtrack for putting up a tent (indeed they are probably working on an album doing just that) and not long after Underworld are gracing the main stage with a set that is as joyous and celebratory as anything over the weekend.

While it’s hard to think of the techno veterans as the future these days, there’s still something deeply forward thinking about their new material with opener I Exhale’s PIL-esque vibes sounding powerfully elemental across the venue’s darkening space. As the rain falls for the first and pretty much only time all weekend the likes of Jumbo and Rez incite some glorious hands in the air moments, before the inevitable Born Slippy (introduced by frontman Karl Hyde as a ‘folk song’) rolls back the years.

Saturday brings blue skies and soaring temperatures as many set up in front of the main stage and relax to Lanterns in the Lake’s soothing chamber pop before an afternoon of exploration, whether it be at the real ale tent or the many talks at the mission control marquee.

On the Nebula Stage, teenage duo Let’s Eat Grandma provoke one of the first ‘did you see that?’ moments of the festival when their deeply strange blend of synths, recorders and hand claps ushers in an eerie childlike haze over the packed tent. Clearly enjoying weirding out the audience, the girls provoke as many puzzled faces as enthralled ones, but with songs as hauntingly beautiful as Deep Six Textbook the world could be theirs.

While not on the same level as Let’s Eat Grandma’s strangeness, Beth Orton has made a pleasingly left-field switch back into electronica, as evidenced by her main stage set. Her new material and bashful charm soon winning over a nostalgic audience, happy that she’s now soundtracking their post-lunch comedowns rather than their ecstasy-induced ones. 

With the sunburnt crowd facing an annoying sound clash between Air and DJ Shadow, this reviewer found it hard to resist the two-decade old sounds of La femme d’argent drifting across the field. Dressed all in white, the French duo still exude cool and their space-age bachelor pad tunes still somehow sound like what we’ll be listening to when we move to Mars.

With perhaps the most apt name of the weekend, Moon Duo (actually a trio these days) turn the Orbit Stage into a metronomic pit of head thrugging with their hypnotic Kraut rock. A far more nimble and sexy beast than vocalist Ripley Johnson’s other band Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo set the controls for the heart of the sun. Bernard Lovell himself would have been proud.

By now the crowd has swelled with thousands of middle-aged men with beards and Tangerine Dream t-shirts, meaning it must be time for Bluedot’s one true coup of the weekend in the form of Gallic dance king Jean Michel Jarre. Playing what is virtually a club gig for a man more used to performing to millions, there is the true feeling of an event as the telescope glows and the skies darken.

While it’s hard to escape Jarre’s groovy uncle demeanour, his set of techno cheese can’t help but impress when coupled with some extraordinary visuals and lights. Yes, the music does sound like the kind you might have heard in a ‘techno bar’ in Thailand on your gap year in the 90s but drop your prejudices and you realise you’re watching a man playing an actual laser harp in front of one of the world’s largest telescopes. And if that’s not enough, we don’t know what is.

Sunday’s hangover takes a surreal turn with a live performance from children’s TV stars The Clangers who within minutes have a crowd of grinning mums and dads dancing to Depeche Mode’s I Just Can’t Get Enough as their kids melt with embarrassment. Back on the Orbit Stage, Stealing Sheep put in one of the sets of the weekend as the all-girl trio’s technicolour synth pop glitters and grooves around Emily Lansley’s dexterous bass and those ever-present harmonies. With a fuming stage manager breathing down their necks, the Sheep spill over into injury time but delight the crowd when they fire confetti over their heads as the roadies disassemble their silver balloons.

With the Sheep finally penned, the stage is transformed with a huge projector screen shielding an orchestra ahead of an extraordinary performance by the Be-One project. Immersive and downright trippy, Wolfgang Buttress’ audio-visual experience is based around the sound made by 40,000 bees working, living and dancing in their hive with the resulting drone either exciting or irritating in equal measures. To these ears, it was beautiful.

Also working up the drone to spectacular effect are Carlisle’s The Lucid Dream, whose battle-hardened psych is beginning to make an impact on festival crowds up and down the country. Dedicating a dub-flavoured workout to a reviewer who dared compare them to Oasis, vocalist Mark Emmerson whips up a storm on Loop-esque slabs of distortion-soaked dream pop with the Nebula stage left reeling as a result.

Ex-Beta Band frontman Steve Mason arrives on the Orbit Stage dressed as a Shackleton-esque explorer, complete with braces and blue flannel shirt and this new-found confidence and swagger is a delight to behold especially in those who remember his surly and sarcastic presence in his former band. While there’s nothing quite good enough to compare to the likes of Dry The Rain, the Radio Two-approved shuffle pop of Alright and Planet Sizes sound just fine in the early evening sunshine.

Things reach a climax on Buedot’s second stage with another curious piece of scheduling as Mercury Rev headline the Orbit Stage while Caribou play the closing songs in the main arena. It’s the restlessly experimental US veterans who play to an emptier than usual tent as a result, but those who do stick it out are rewarded with a set so loud and powerful it’s something of an astonishing revelation to those more casual fans. It’s the tracks from Deserter’s Songs, Mercury Rev’s fourth album, which sound like modern classics with frontman Jonathan Donahue conducting both band and audience in a succession of passionate sing-a-longs on the likes of Holes and Goddess on a Highway.

Like many other revellers, we head out to explore Bluedot’s furthest reaches one more time and it seems apt that we wave goodbye to this most strange, surreal and sensory of festivals by dancing to French prog loons Magma – just one of the many choice cuts laid down by snooker legend Steve Davis as he grins his way through a brilliant DJ set. Man may not have returned to the moon since 1972, but given the overwhelming success of this wonderful new festival, Bluedot can expect a re-entry far sooner than that.