THE DARK MILLS FESTIVAL Merton Abbey Mills, London, UK 5th September 2009

It is still early days and only the future will tell whether this first festival will turn into a cult event or be a one-off. The idea of providing London with an alternative festival featuring free live music as well as art, theatre and cabaret is an incredibly ambitious one that was not going to be very easy to pull-off. Despite quite a few hiccups, I hope the organisers will find the strength and the will to be resilient enough to give us a second edition next year …
Merton Abbey Mills is a delicious little oasis of historical buildings and arts and crafts in the midst of suburban retail hell … An original location for a festival!
(infos: www.mertonabbeymills.org.uk)

Having arrived a little after 3 pm, I actually missed quite a few bands. Here is the list of the bands who appeared earlier in the day. Feel free to go and check them out! In The Black (Myspace) Six Toes (Myspace); Kommand+Kontrol (Myspace); Dr Jones (drjonesmusic.co.uk); Psideralica (Myspace).

Earlier performances suffered from the effect of a council noise restriction order after complaints from a killjoy neighbour.

Fronted by Brazilian showman Luciano and featuring among others a be-wigged guitarist and two corseted backing singers, Calatrilloz mixes catchy rock tunes with jazzy/psychedelic flavours and a good helping of theatrics. Unfortunately, the sound restriction prevented us from appreciating their set fully. That’s a date, then. (Myspace / Official Website)

Imprint’s ethereal set was also affected by the lack of volume. Masked front woman Sin retained her mysterious quality though, her ethereal vocals floating over the electro soundscapes created by a very concentrated Martin Bowes (incidentally, Sin and Martin happen to also form the current line-up of the well-respected electronic band Attrition). Both sound and voice were too low for us to take in the haunting beauty of Imprint’s music.
(Official Website)

Enters redhead Jensara Swann, the sexiest of all the Femme metal singers – who is actually French, not that you would have known from her (stage) name nor her mastery of the English language. The Veil are the first band today to benefit from the end of the noise restriction order, and the volume goes up significantly, even though we are still far from the satisfactory ear-splitting level a proper venue would have given to The Veil’s solid metal-industrial. Jensara’s clear, confident voice and her impossibly seductive presence play in the favour of the band. Definitely one to watch.
(Myspace)

Now was time for Muse … Oops, sorry. Until I Wake. I cannot deny that they played a hell of an energetic set, duly encouraged by their bunch of mates all lined-up in front of the stage. The Londoners do stadium rock as well as their elders, and they get some alternative kudos …
(Myspace)

Miss Simona Martini looks simply arresting, effortlessly taking possession of the band stand, all expertly messed-up hair, studied sexy-dishevelled-doll appearance, milky white skin and leopard-print vertiginous fetish-inspired boots. Everyone rallied around to observe Maleficent’s strange and chaotic performance. Miss Martini didn’t even go near her usual ballet movements, preferring to stick to strutting around the stage looking at the same time ravishing and about to eat us alive. I personally don’t really know how to interpret Maleficent: on paper an attractive proposition, the fusion of art, ballet, and industrial-metal pulling together opposites that definitely attract, yet never fully delivering musically on stage. Sometimes, the whole setting rings a little fake, and it is a question of too little of something (attention to the music) and too much of another (image). Yet, their recorded tracks are not bad at all, so hang on there and let the band mature a little. On this occasion though, male singer Mortimer Cain, whose voice has never been the greatest asset, was simply completely inaudible, which is a bit of a bother if you cover the Nick Cave/Kylie Minogue duet Where the Wild Roses Grow. Still, they will probably rank high on the top band of the day poll for most people and punters will remember them for sure. That’s not entirely negligible.
(Myspace)

As Global Citizen took to the stage, we were already way beyond schedule and genuinely starting to worry about the already too short headline slot…
The trio deals in dark, moody electro dominated by generous lashings of synths and bondage imagery. If singer Rich looked like a cross between a traditional Japanese warrior and a Jedi – he is wearing a pretty cool black robe – he also definitely sounded like his hero, Gary Numan. The band even covered Numan’s track Metal, but by then I had been hypnotized into a lethargic state and been distracted by the organizers’ desperate attempts to attract the attention of the band and make them shorten their set. Time was then running out and this called for desperate measures.
The Satanic Sluts were called to the front of the stage and performed their unconvincing five minutes of fire eating while Global Citizen finished their set.
(Myspace)

And then we got more and more behind schedule…
The two members of the Berlin-based electro-rock outfit Noblesse Oblige were finally allowed to bring their instruments on stage. Sebastian and Valérie are two very talented and driven artists deeply involved in theatre, film, performance and music. After years in London, where they had been busy performing and running their own successful club night, they re-located to Germany five years ago. With the vitality of the Berlin cultural scene as strong as ever, they probably have found their rightful home. The duo played a fantastic set. The dichotomy of personalities of the two multi-instrumentalists makes for an explosive result: Sebastian – the tall, aristocratic, soft-voiced crooner who has never been as creepy as when singing the controversial track Daddy (Don’t Touch Me There) and Valérie, a veritable human powerhouse with an impressively expressive face and versatile vocals. You can see these two are real pros: perfect timing and rhythm, fluid communication, confident performance … The set is a mish-mash of genres, from French chanson and electro clash to guitar-led indie and even African tinged percussions. You definitely wouldn’t dream of crossing Valérie after her rendition of Jalouse and Bitch. But all good things have to come to a (in this case, premature) end and unfortunately, the pair’s set is cut short despite the exhilaration of the crowd.
Too late, though, because headliners The Eden House had now run out of time.
(Offcial Website / Myspace)

I really do hope that by now, the organisers of the festival have found the time to offer their apologies to The Eden House. The band had made the effort to turn up with a pretty complete line-up to play for free (Which apparently was the case for all the bands appearing on that day) at the first edition of a festival put together by people who had never put this kind of event together before. The risks were too great, but they had been gracious enough to accept the invitation. Moreover, I suspect that quite a few people in the audience (myself included) had been attending the festival primarily because of The Eden House.
I had seen the band play at the Scala back in July and it had been a memorable, magical night. Tonight though, it was worried faces all around as the band members could just see that, with a council curfew of 10pm, there was not a lot of time left. All the musicians from the Scala gig had turned up, (Simon Rippin, Stephen Carey, Tony Pettitt, Andy Jackson, Evi Vine and Amandine Ferrari) bar the excellent violinist Bob Loveday, whose jovial presence and violin had been great assets to the Scala gig. The Eden House has time for only four songs (if my memory doesn’t fail me, and it might do, not in order: God’s Pride, Iron in the Soul and The Dark Half) and, despite appearing visibly upset, managed to close the night with their brilliant cover of Björk’s Play Dead.
I guarantee you that I will be in the front row at The Eden House’s next London gig with a proper photographer and will write the live review they so deserve!
(Myspace)

© All Photos: Fabienne T

The Dark Mills festival website: www.darkmillsfestival.com

Version française du reportage