Splashy Fen (part 2)

Varsity started again on Tuesday for me, which explains my apparent lack of interest in continuing my little series on Splashy Fen, but I've got a minute to spare so here comes part two of Bands-I-Thought-Were-Awesome.

The Death Valley Blues Band

Yes, they are as incredible as their name and that photo suggests.

I'd never seen these guys before since they're from Jo'burg, but a friend of mine had been raving about them all day, so I went to see them on Sunday night. They played a kind of fast, dirty, blues and punk influenced rock 'n roll, finishing with a fantastic cover of King of the Swingers from the Jungle book!

The huge, eight piece band barely fit on the small stage, but they had some serious vibe and had the whole tent dancing and tapping their feet!

Go check these guys out! Now!

Splashy Fen (part 1)

Hi Internet.

I just got home from Splashy. It's really good to be home, I'm pretty tired, but feeling totally refreshed and amazing, and now that I've had a shower I'm even better.

This was the festival's 21st year and, despite some pretty disastrous cost-cutting (You thought we wouldn't notice the toilets didn't you?) it was a really great long weekend!

I thought I'd do a short series on some of the bands I watched that really blew me away. There was a huge variety of acts, and I won't mention ALL of them, but in no particular order, these were some of my favourites:

Thomas Krane

That guy in the photo isn't Thomas Krane. Thomas Krane is his band's name. Not sure how important that distinction is, but I thought I should make it anyway.

These guys are really great. I've seen them play a couple of times and was super excited to see them again. If you like your arty hipster double-barrel genres I suppose you could call them anti-folk; they're what happens when you hand a guy with some really outstanding taste in music a guitar a tell him to write you a bunch of songs. Their sound's not easy to pin down, but they play mostly down tempo folk flavoured indie rock with beautifully crafted melodies and intricate atmospheric guitar work.

Looking fittingly detached they delivered a short set that was unfortunately disrupted by power failures. Never the less, they were probably the best part of Sunday afternoon.

They're such nice guys in fact, that you can go along and download there WHOLE first album for free at ReverbNation. Enjoy!