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Rating: This year the miracle happened again.
The miracle of the Ypsigrock Festival, which every summer, for three days, takes place in the splendid setting of the small medieval village nestled between the mountains in the province of Palermo, Castelbuono (or Catelbueno as Crispian Mills would say), featuring the best of the current international music scene. Now in its thirteenth edition, Ypsig, besides being the largest open-air festival in Sicily, has established itself as one of the most interesting events on the national level and beyond for Indie music lovers.
Every year, thousands of indie music enthusiasts from all over Italy and beyond flock to this village that doesn't reach ten thousand inhabitants; thousands of fans who for three days find themselves eating bread and sausage together at the Ypsig camping in an atmosphere of sharing and relaxation that's rarely found elsewhere. The secret of such success lies in featuring the best current proposals of the island's and national indie scene alongside internationally renowned artists, all in an enchanting setting like Piazza Castello, where the concerts take place. Over the years, it has witnessed performances at the foot of the imposing medieval castle from artists like La Crus, Marlene Kuntz, Blonde Redhead, Yuppie Flu, El Guapo, Motorpsycho, Ulan Bator, Mouse On Mars, Architecture In Helsinki, Art Brut, Deus, Apparat, just to name a few.
For someone like me from Catania, the highway towards Castelbuono is a nerve stretched across the wildest and lesser-known Sicily. The island's interior is a succession of mountains and fields with warm colors, without any sign of human life except for some old ruined agricultural farmhouse scattered here and there; timid urban manifestations besieged by the surrounding nature. Then, one skims along the lush Tyrrhenian coast only to climb up the Madonie, the backbone of Sicily, mountains of splendid nature where small villages like Castelbuono perch like artificial flashes on vast green expanses, places where you wouldn't expect to find one of the most important rock festivals in Europe.
This year the lineup was a tribute to British music: the indie-punk of The Rakes (which after 15 minutes got me really bored... Nice but not my cup of tea), the visionary electronics of Jon Hopkins, accompanied for the occasion by Goldfrapp's violinist Davide Rossi (holy smoke what a flash... That would deserve a review too), and the psychedelic Brit-pop of Kula Shaker.
The latter were the awaited guests, the London group that after the debut of K, a breakthrough album that in 1996 was greeted with resounding critical and public success (it sold over two million copies and became the best-selling debut album in the first week of release since "Definitely Maybe" by the Oasis), but they could not withstand the expectations' pressure in 1999 with the subsequent Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts, an album infinitely inferior to the first, to the point of defining the Kula Shaker as "the greatest unfulfilled promise in music history". The epilogue is the band's split, but in 2005 they reunite with a slightly modified lineup and in 2007 release Strangefolk, an album certainly not up to K but decidedly better than the subsequent flop.
Last year the band announced they were back in the studio working on a new album, "Pilgrim's Progress", which is supposed to be released in May 2009. And Ypsig, being the only stop in the beautiful country, is the chosen place to present to the Italian public the works that will be included in this album and to dance along to the rhythm of the great hits that made the four famous. After the Siracusan Albanopower (here's a link where you can download some of their tracks for free), a promising group in the Italian indie-pop scene who had already gained some recognition under the guise of Tellaro, but only now are they succeeding in emerging from the local dimension, "Hey Dude" a classic by the Kula starts. I had read in some reviews that they give their best live, but I wasn't expecting what I found myself in front of: the psychedelic vein of Kula Shaker live is an acid sound wall that overwhelms you; the sounds that reference Grateful Dead, Beatles, Velvet Underground are released in the form of thousands of watts that fill Piazza Castello.
Sitting on the high steps that form a privileged viewpoint, elevated above the square, with my feet dangling over the audience, I felt the stone beneath my backside tremble and beneath me the square went wild to the rhythm of tracks like "Hush". This year’s Ypsig slogan seems very appropriate: You Still Love Rock 'N' Roll; a Kula Shaker concert is like a jump back a few decades, referential to those kinds of British sounds that made rock history, they don't worry about hiding their origins; rather, they make it their strength, it's like a not too contemporary citation, it's as if they are stating "as the Beatles would say..." (Beatles just to name one, but we could put other bands in their place).
The concert goes on, Crispian goes more and more wild (especially after someone at the side of the stage handed him something he swallowed :), a fearsome Frontman, his guitar is seen being thrown into the air several times only to be caught again, he kneels, he jumps, he takes on various rocker poses; this is also part of the show, this is also part of the revival of old British rock. But these aren't the Kula Shaker I want to see... it’s when among the distorted notes I start to hear the intro of "Tattva" that I stop tapping the rhythm on my legs and prepare to let myself be carried away into those typical atmospheres of Indian musical tradition but with the sounds of a very western electric guitar. In my opinion, this is the jewel in the crown of Kula Shaker’s music (as far as I’m concerned the only thing of theirs I love to listen to), and it seems they think so too: the concert's closure is indeed entrusted to "Govinda" which after a noisy and very acid intro full of purple light starts and drags everyone elsewhere... Govinda jaya jaya... Thousands of mouths begin to sing a prayer to a god in whom no one here believes at the feet of a medieval castle that has witnessed many prayers sung over the centuries and obviously not only Christian ones... but never before had it seen a horde of young people at the base invoking Krishna (alias Govinda) with acid rock sound.
Rating: 4 for the concert (great concert but I've seen better), 5 for the festival itself (it’s the second year I've attended without worrying about who the guests are, and it won’t be the last)
...Ypsy&Love...
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