Jez's posterous

• The QP (MySpace) — eclectic, fresh and funky folk rock;
• Hoven Droven (MySpace) — Swedish folk rock;
• Tom Kitching & Gren Bartley (MySpace) — fiddle & guitar/voice duo, great mixture of traditional & original material;
• Belshazzar's Feast — incredibly talented musicians, and hilarious live;
  
• Spooky Men's Chorale — male voice choir from the Blue Mountains in Australia, again, worth seeing live;
  
• Dhol Foundation — traditional Indian drumming fused with a modern dance sound.
  

We've just listened to an hour of hauntingly beautiful Swedish fiddle music from Malmabygdens Spelmän, who are basically a village band from somewhere near Stockholm, which happens to include Chopper from the Oysterband.
 
Staying for a few numbers from John Jones and the Reluctant Ramblers before we head off home. John is the front-man of the Oysterband so it's got that flavour to it.
 
Anyway, I hope you've found this little experiment interesting and I've been able to introduce you to some music that you might not have otherwise heard. I'll post links to places where you can hear the artists I've mentioned when we get home this evening, and post my thoughts on mobile blogging and Posterous on my main blog (http://erambler.co.uk),

 Spent a fun few hours this evening learning some Swedish dances with Mälmabygdens Spelmän and two great instructors, Åsa and Peo.

 Tonight's main concert was full to capacity for most of the time, so we were content to sit outside on the grass and listen to the Spooky Men's Chorale (a slightly zany but very talented male voice choir from Australia) and veteran folk duo Show of Hands.

 The last act of the day was the awesome Dhol Foundation (pictured) from London, combining traditional Panjabi drumming and singing with modern western dance music. We managed to get in to see them and had a bit of a bop. I've also attached an audio recording, but only really to see if Posterous handles it properly as the recording itself is rubbish.

 Again, I really recommend googling for all there artists and having a listen. If you're too lazy, I'll try to dig up links for them all when we get back to civilisation.

Recording (14).amr

(download)

Click here to download:

Recording (14).amr (25 KB)

...make sure your subject is well lit.
 
A nice laid back day followed by another evening of top-quality music. In an intimate bar we saw the Matt Nelson Trio, a new offering from an old friend, and Tom Kitching & Gren Bartley (pictured, albeit badly), who just keep getting better and better.
 
Back on the main festival site we caught to hilarious Belshazzar's Feast - apparently they're touring in October so we'll be hoping to see them again. They manage to combine razor-sharp wit with incredible musicality.
 
Time for bed now - hoping to get to get to a singing workshop in the morning.

More experimentation, this time in the form of a sketch. The campsite filled up quickly yesterday - this is the same viewpoint towards the main concert marquee as the photo i posted yesterday lunchtime.

It's the first time I've made food in advance for a camping trip, but this roast vegetable sauce seems to have worked well, particularly when garnished with extra grass.
 
I'd not heard the QP before but they were brilliant and I strongly encourage you all to check out their MySpace PCHE (assuming they have one).

Well, we've arrived and got the tent up just in time for the first rain shower and now we're sitting eating Heinz big soup and planning the rest of the day. There's nothing much on til 5 when some friends of ours are playing (folk-rock band The QP). We're mostly looking forward to tonight's big act, Hoven Droven, a folk-metal band from Sweden.
 
Wow, it's really chucking it down now, so I'm glad we got the tent up when we did!

 Elly and I are at Shrewsbury Folk Festival this weekend, so expect some thoughts, photos and maybe music and videos too! And probably a few predictive-text induced typos along the way. We're on our way now, and my geek side is already enjoying the fact that I can blog while in the car (fear not, I'm not behind the wheel!) Anyway, enough for now - more updates later. Do leave me comments or tweet me (@jezcope) to let me know what works and what doesn't.