Month: January 2017

Just an excuse really to post – tickets are on sale for Kozfest for this July. Procuring a handful of returned tickets at the last moment last year proved to be an inspired gamble and indirectly inspired this blog…

Some words I posted up on the What’s Rattlin’ forum after the event last year which sum up my thoughts pretty well:

“Those of you who look at the Planet Gong website might have seen this festival popping up numerous times on their gig listings not just over the years, but multiple times for each festival, due to the number of related bands who play.

 I’d been intrigued for years, but as we’ve run a campsite up here in Hebden Bridge for the last few years, doing summer festivals has been a bit difficult. Then this spring I had a serious illness so we missed out on getting tickets. Luckily a couple of returns turned up on Facebook (this ain’t Glastonbury – you make an enquiry to ‘admin’ on the website, and the festival’s organiser, who also turns out to be the lead singer of one of the acts, the Deviant Amps, points you in the right direction) and so we took ourselves and the kids down to Devon on Thursday to see what it was all about.

 Kozfest is an intimate ‘psychedelic dream’ festival (the Koz is short for Kozmic, as in the host Kozmic Ken) and is a 3 day, 2-stage festival for only 500 punters on a small working farm in the rolling West Country. Between 30-40 bands play, all pretty much spin offs, offshoots or influenced by Gong and to a lesser degree Hawkwind. There’s lots of cross-pollination between bands. Headliners on the 3 nights were Gong, Hawklords and Astralasia, but the line-up overall was like Gong 25 or Uncon revisited (or presumably a Hawkfest).

 The music side of things is really well organised – the two music tents are separated by 100 yards or so, whilst one tent soundchecks/sets-up, the other is in full swing, so you spend your days ambling between a permafest of pounding bass and skysaw guitar with little down time (unless you want it).

 Bands included Sentient (Steffe Sharpstrings, Mike Howlett, Joie from Ozric Tentacles), PsiGong (Mike Howlett’s funky improv outfit), Magick Brothers (Mark Robson/Graham Clark), the Inspiral Trio (three of the current members of Gong), the Glissando Guitar Orchestra, Invisible Opera Company of Tibet – previous lineups have included Steve Hillage (both System 7 and his own guitar band) and Here and Now. But it was so much more than this – I saw so many bands that I want to investigate further (Shom, Deviant Amps, Sendelica) and there are as many musicians milling around as punters, and you’d find yourselves dancing in a tent next to the bass player from a previous band, or memorably being served at the ‘tat’ store by Steffe.

 My 5-year old took it upon herself to point out every ‘Camembert Electrique’ T-shirt she saw, and she had her work cut out – there was a tug on my sleeve every few minutes. Apart from one incident in a tent on the last night, this was a safe, gentle, non-ravey event with a freefest vibe – full of Gong afficionados.

 Highlights (for me) were finally meeting Fabio Golfetti (Violeta de Outono, IOCOT and now Gong) after 20 years of correspondence; Andy Bole’s extraordinary bouzouki set where he looped around stringed rhythms, backed by partner Sally on exquisite electric violin and Mark Robson on Didg; the Glissando Guitar Orchestra – 8 guitarists sawing away in a meditative series of drones, envelopping everyone in the most reflective moment of the festival; Mandragora; IOCOT – a welcome more feminine interpretation of the Gong vibe including stuff from ‘Camembert’ and ‘2032’- then the more ‘known’ stuff – PsiGong with freely improvised Howlett-fuelled funkery; a remarkable performance from Steffe with Sentient – he was ever visible around the festival as a humble, unassuming punter, amazingly transformed into a man possessed on stage – I’ve seen him many times with his head thrown back as a freewheeling Hillage-style soloist, but never in such open-throated vocalist mode as tonight as he reprised the old H&N ’77 number ‘Near and How’. Sentient, like PsiGong are a band who appear to dip in and out of improvised numbers – some of it works, some doesn’t, but when it hits the spot, it’s oh-so-sweet…”

As for this year, not only have tickets just gone on sale here but the line-up, which has been building up over the past few week, has been finalised too – today, the three headliners were confirmed as Here and Now, System 7 and Soft Machine (the legacy band who in the last year have been gigging under the original band name – I think current line-up is John Etheridge, John Marshall, Roy Babbington and Theo Travis). The Softs’ gig will be particularly interesting as the music is probably somewhat out of kilter with the free-festie vibe of your typical Kozfest band roster. Other bands of note for this blog are the Magick Brothers (Mark Robson and Graham Clark), Glissando Guitar Orchestra, Andy Bole, various Ozrics/Here and Now spin offs plus some fantastic bands we saw last year (Shom, Sendelica, Deviant Amps etc.)

Tickets apparently go fast, nice and cheap as these things go (£85 for an adult ticket), decent food, beautiful countryside. Best to  get on to this ASAP and hope to see you there!