Stephen Dalton is currently at the Athens Film Festival, where he's serving on the jury. Here's his first report...
Greetings from the strangely wonderful parallel universe of the Athens Film Festival, where your Uncut reporter is serving on the jury of the Music & Film section. A very bizarre experience, being on the other side of the fence for once, doing press conferences and interviews instead of asking the questions.
A while back, someone at Uncut pointed out to me that one of the words I overused when writing about music was “feral”. He was right, too: I’d got into a habit of using the term whenever the psychedelia and crypto-primitive folk jams that I listen to so much got a little wilder and smellier, became a bit more instinctual, or at least convincingly pretended to be instinctual.
With the Bimble Inn tent's balladeer crown going to Emmy The Great last year, it's deservedly up to multi-instrumental troubadours Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit to nab it in her absence this time round.
One of the strongest members of the alt-folk scene in London at the moment, Flynn's country-tinged songs showed off the band's versatility, with Flynn alone rapidly switching between ukelele, banjo, guitar and violin during the course of an excellent set.
We didn't realise quite how popular Robyn Hitchcock, the bard of all things surreal, is. The Big Top Tent at End Of The Road Festival was literally packed this evening.
Or could the hordes have been there to see his sidekick, a meek man by the name of John Paul Jones? He's from some band called Led something. Anyway, this dude's hot, you should check him out sometime. Let's hope Robyn keeps him for more than one gig.