Fieldview Festival
Chippenham, Wiltshire
05-07/08/2011

Officially born in 2007 with just nine bands, 250 people and a slip & slide, this year Fieldview celebrate their fifth birthday with 1500 of the friendliest festival faces around. We love everyone here immediately, from the sheesha hippies to the shockingly lovely security – keen to offer help at any time and at one point provide torchlight for a game of table football.

Arriving on Friday afternoon we opt for the open luxury of the ‘family field’ rather than the cosy conditions of the main area, where happy campers practically sleep on the main stage. Today’s theme is ‘under the sea’ and appropriate costumes including jellyfish, a delightful Prawn Lady (!), three blokes in a sinking Titanic and an excitable huddle of penguins (with instructions to hug-on-sight) can all be spotted leaping around until the early hours.

Fieldview offers three small, but perfectly formed arenas – The Village and Barnacle stages provide warm highlights from Tall Ships, Lamp Fall, London Afrobeat Collective and Dub Mafia, while the Main Stage comes alive properly for the first time with the enchanting vocals of Martha Tilston. We find the sentiment of her songs lovely, but her lyrics a little lazy and obvious, so when main man Ben Howard appears we are more than a tiny bit pleased – and the whole oceanic community rushes to the fore.

Saturday arrives with great weather and even better music. We let off some creative steam and get our faces painted, make a dream catcher and tie-dye our clothes on the way. The Village and Barnacle retain their laid back beauty, with workshops in full swing between soaring summer tracks from Beth Rowley, Pirouettes and Sam Green.

A mere stone’s throw away the main stage is pulsing with a very different vibe. The likes of Kill It Kid and ASM lay a much more energetic path for Fenech Soler, who make the very most of their headlining slot. A very different band take to the stage from the too-cool-too-like kids from early East London gigs. Frontman Ben Duffy throws some very 90’s shapes across the stage that, to our surprise, strikes exactly the right chord in the middle of this Wiltshire wonderland. A foxy fire-eater wields her wares to the right of the stage but it’s hard to take your eyes off the euphoric dance flavours of favourites ‘Lies’ and ‘Stop & Stare’.

Before the set even finishes the bar has been drunk dry and the majority of happy campers head for bed just before the heavens open to put a definite but not untimely end to a truly wonderful weekend.

Roxanne Fisher