Covenanza 2024

 

Writing about Covenanza as soon as one is back home doesn’t happen, nor should it necessarily. Life takes over. The house needs to be cleaned, the dog gets his walk, food is consumed and procrastination ensues. So far, so normal. Also there is work to be done, now and again. So, getting around to saying a few words on the perennial hot topic of that party in Carcassonne is never as automatic as hoped. And I can, as in the past, only comment on events inside the castle on a Friday and Saturday night, still not having the time or the holistic organisational skills to book the Thursday and the Sunday nights. This will happen next year though, I hope. Anyway, arriving at a sort of normal time towards the end of Friday afternoon, we checked into our hotel, the functional Le Couvent, and immediately started thinking about food. We both agreed that we would go to the same two venues as we had last year: Brasserie des Platains and Le Bistrot d’Alice. We’d been to the former the preceding two years and the latter last time. Both were well worth another throw of the dice so we changed the order from last year, opting for the latter on the first night, and the former on Saturday. Fast forward to finishing the meal. The cafe gourmand has been demolished and we’re on our way. Festivals are great and all, but I really dislike being held in the same place for too long and, no matter who is performing, I don’t want to arrive until things are starting to hot up. As we were waiting to get our wristbands outside, David Holmes was rolling a cigarette and being bothered by some French bloke who kept on saying to him “If you do zumsing for me, I do zunsing for you.” Fuck knows what he was on about, and it seemed to be falling largely on deaf ears. We timed it to perfection, arriving just as Shit and Shine was coming on. This was a completely new name to me. Mr Shit and Shine, aka Craig Clouse, is the only constant of “an ever-rotating line-up of musicians.” Sort of, “if it’s me and yer granny on bongoes, . . . (it’s Shit and Shine”). Straddling the divide between noise, experimentation and a symmetrical grinding, beat-led cacophony, he went down quite well with most of the crowd, at least as far as I could tell. Not so much with the small crowd next to me though. Some chap kept on talking to me about “beards”, and how there were “too many of them”, like some sort of faceborne virus. He was inspired to say these things by Mr Shine’s large grey effort. “Give me a few months and I’ll have the same. You can have it if you want”, I said. Then when a particularly discordant chord throbbed through the chateau, one of the girls next to me turned around and said “What the actual fuck!” at me. This was definitely code for, “Get this crap off and let’s start the rave. The drugs I’ve already taken are being wasted”. Anyway, I enjoyed it. The last thing I wanted to hear was some ALFOS lite before the main attraction came on. And once Sean Johnston got going then the party really got started. There was a degree of building and guiding in however, which frustrated my partner in crime as she really wanted the beats to be slammed in from the start. Ah, la jeunesse . . . no patience. Haven’t they heard about the warm up within the warm up? It’s a never-ending spiral. Suffice to say SJ rocked it. The ALFOS Facebook group has been busy since, giving a breakdown of those tracks which were recognised, and I suppose a peak of sorts was reached with the Hardfloor remix of More Kante’s ‘Yeke Yeke’ which, along with ‘Acperience’, is possibly their finest hour. One of those tracks where the ridiculously over-the-top breakdown really works whatever the crowd. An eye of the storm moment that you really had to be there for. Obvously everyhitng was great so, without going to much into what followed, fast forward to the following evening when me and la Mrs went to the Brasserie des Platains, a spot that we had come across two years before and did excellent duck. We both ordered a magret, which were each the size of a small mattress, with chips of course. Big disappointment. Undercooked and also the place itself seemed to be vaguely on its last legs. The prehensile garcon from previous visits wasn’t there, and rather like last year, loads of tables had been reserved, but no one turned up to take them. We’ll be checking out pastures new next time. Propelled by an indecent amount of still being digested meat, we ambled our way back to the chateau again, timing our arrival almost to the first second of Tin Man’s live set. This was excellent. The 303 can be annoying and overwrought in the wrong hands, but not in Mr Tin’s. Reaching transcendental levels, this was a real piece of electronic art that perfectly paved the way for Roman Flugel to tear the house down. I took quite a few videos of all of the performances I witnessed, but the final one was the most memorable. I was filming Flugel and scanning the crowd to try and pack in as many happy faces as possible. While sweeping from left to right I heard someone trying to attract my attention and was met with the irate expression of a woman who told me that the torch on my phone was on. Well, this was obviously a little embarrassing so I stopped filming and switched off my flashlight. Shortly after I was informed that one of the reasons she looked so pissed off was because she was engaged in serving refreshments at the time. So that’s me told I thought. Anyway, the one time Acid Jesus was excellent and again sent the Facebook group into overdrive in the days which followed in order to get some sort of foothold on his selections. Rather like the previous year’s same time set from Ivan Smagghe & Chloe, this was a collection of tracks perfectly selected to fit the time, place and occasion. The breadth of music was wide and dense and was idiosyncratic enough to remain memorable and be far more than the sum of its parts. I shall delve deep into the realms of cyberspace over the next few days and post as many tracks as I can track down. So for now, that’s it: except to say that it’s impossible to find a chocolatine in Carcassonne on a Sunday morning, and that even though the cafes on the Place Carnot are an obvious meeting place and central to the hors chateau experience, one can predictably have a cheaper, and also better, dining experience in the surrounding streets. Next year it’s going to have to be Thursday to Sunday night.