Transmusicales de Rennes

Rennes, Various Venues

6/12/08

As ways to start the day at a festival go, we’ve done considerably worse over the years than sitting in a proper brasserie waiting for much slap-up goodness and discovering that the day’s first group are said to be a cross between Slint and the Pet Shop Boys; the world’s first Chris Lowe-fi band, if you will. Still, as you’ll’ve gathered from the previous days’ reports, such thrills are ten a euro at Transmusicales. In fact, things get marvellous even before we’ve made it to that opening performance as we stumble headlong into a procession opposing the gendarmes’ recent habit of clamping down on spontaneous raves. Protest was never so dazzlingly dayglo.

In fact, it’s such an impressive display of doof-doof-doofery that it’s still audible even in the keeps-getting-better venue Ubu, where the aforementioned band De Portables are already plying their wares. Admittedly, the Shopsome aspect of their work is limited to some corking keyboard runs, but these Belgian boys are outstanding at the sort of clinically-sculpted and exhaustively serrating post-rock that was de rigeur around ten years ago, although, while the imagery onstage might toy with Godspeed…! territory, there’s a wry quality to the lyrics that intrigues throughout (the couplet “We first met at a vegetarian barebcue /

Mission impossible: my quest for meat” in particular springs to mind). Afterwards, what’s, as the Boo Radleys once asked, in the box? Gallic trio GaBle presumably have the answer, since their Adam Buxton-a-likey Mathieu cradles a crate throughout with such attention that it must contain either a newborn puppy or possibly the lyrics. They’re tremendous fun, mind, darkly humorous, frequently on the point of hysteria, and extraordinarily difficult to pin down musically even within individual songs, skittering from Gorkysesque whimsy to early Mercury Rev friedness wonderfully warninglessly. We’re hoping for similar chaos from The Bewitched Hands On The Top Of Our Heads, especially since not only do they look like a vaguely surreal indie supergroup (Sice! A more shaven Jason Lytle! The pronounced-foreheady one in The Killers! etc), but they get off to a hugely iconic start, marrying hippy chic to baggy revivalism. Runs out of steam more than we’d like as they go on, alas, but there’s often an admirable intensity nonetheless.

Still, you know what we could really do with seeing? A sunburnt man with a small spear through his nose applying his interpretative dance skills to Now! That’s What I Call 1930s Eastern European Jazz while a geisha on temazepam does a modest

charleston beside him. No, readers, this review isn’t being brought to you by Really Good Drugs, plc – that actually happens during Rosita Warlock & Mr Djub’s thoroughly bizarre set at Parc Expo. Mind you, it could easily be argued that what happens next is stranger still. Excitingly, this is a rare opportunity to eyeball the Residents, masters of eclecticism and enigma for the best part of 40 years now. What they deliver here is a marginally stripped-down version of their Bunny Boy concept, in which a hooded hillbilly travels the world to try to find his brother who may or may not be a deranged conspiracy theorist that he may or may not have killed, while the band back him dressed as oversized rabbits playing psych-garage nursery rhymes in an awning made of sunshine. Yes, it’s confusing (probably even moreso if, as is the case with many of the audience here, English isn’t your first language), and it’s preposterous even by the lovably high standards of this festival, but since we’ll never see Sparks collaborating with Captain Beefheart this makes for a magnificent estimate as to how that might work out, and, to be honest, leaves us more than a little spent.

We rally sharpish, however, as, frankly, it’d be rude not to do so in the practically regal presence of Ebony Bones!. She got a lot of attention at the start of this year, but, wisely, she’s taken complete control of her career by making out-of-the-way performances like this, and consequently she’s now in a position to steal everyone’s thunder come 2009. Lovers of unadmired soaps might recall her as the fantastic Yasmin in Family Affairs, but since that came to its end she’s obviously strolled off into space and returned as an unfailingly starry cross between M.I.A. and first-album Kelis, genre-jumping, compellingly confrontational, stunningly extravagant (her guitarist’s decked out in a pharaoh’s hat, while her backing singers would look flamboyant at the Notting Hill Carnival, to say nothing of the fact that she’s come as a masked Christmas harlequin), and all-devouringly good-timey. Really, if we were watching the Black Angels after anybody else they’d probably be fine – there’s undoubtedly a fiercely hypnotic air to them, and they certainly mesh with the level of stonedness that the auditorium’s now reached – but, following such a phenomenal display, their drone-rock retro-activism isn’t quite what we’re looking for. Instead, we look to the deft decksmanship of Fabric favourite Switch, since we’ve always believed you should trust anyone who’s got a way with a good whooshy noise, and, indeed, all those nights at Fabric have served him well; it does look as if we’re dancing in an aircraft hangar, but he’s the first performer to conjure up the notion that there’s a take-off going on therein. And, as carnage takes hold, Italy’s remix masters Crookers take to the stage for a set that leaps across pretty much every movement of the last 20 years, displaying a Timbaland-like propensity for unorthodox noises and artful bleepery, and it’s them that give us our magnificent final experience of the weekend: one hour in, foam hands are waving, Santa hats are twinkling outside, and the mighty riff from AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ is careering across a cacklingly caned arena. And just how unarguably great is that? We’d love to say that one day all festivals will be made like Transmusicales, but we’re not sure there’s enough room in the world for that much awesome.

Iain Moffat