Mojo - The Music Magazine

The Horrors and The Slits throw art-rock dweebfest in a forest in Essex. MOJO's Chris Catchpole observes...

SITTING ON THE OUTSKIRTS of Hainault forest, the first thing you realise about Offset Festival is that it's tiny. Like, really, really tiny. In fact, it's so small that the comedy tent is dwarfed by the first aid van. The second thing that grabs the attention is that for the first four hours on Saturday the music on offer is bobbins. While half of Shoreditch appear to have been transplanted a dozen stops eastwards along the Central Line, punters are treated to a gruelling selection of knowingly esoteric and largely indifferent bands with names like Private Trousers, What Would Jesus Drive and Spunk Monkey (ok, we made the last one up).

It's not until Morden's Good Shoes take to the main stage, injecting some bouncy, scruffy haired indie-pop fun that things begin to look up. Shifting over a stage, Teeth Of The Sea celebrate finishing a recent mini-tour of the UK with Oneida by delivering a face-melting set of deep psych. Gut-rumbling bass, dual-drumming, mariachi trumpets, moustache wax and a guitarist who looks like he's been beamed in from an Iron Maiden fan convention (MOJO later spots him sporting a pair of Maiden branded trainers) - if you like a bit of third eye action with your early evening falafel you could do a lot worse.

Now, Offset as a concept purports to "join the dots between new bands and their influences"; however, if that means listening to Cheval Sombre's catatonic strumming while Peter "Sonic Boom" Kember squats next to him making noises that resemble someone quietly doing the washing up then we'll take our dots detached thank you very much. Thankfully, Bombay Bicycle Club and their downbeat and strangely neurotic take on post-Strokes indie make perfect bedfellows for The Futureheads, who for their part are so tune-laden, charismatic and surprisingly muscular in sound everyone is left wondering how on earth they managed to slip away from the limelight.

Headlining Saturday's main stage, it's not entirely obvious when The Slits stop soundchecking and start playing. As Ari Up delivers an alarming monologue about her 'pum pum' whilst pointing suggestively to said anatomical part, they heroically tread the fine line between spot-on dub-punk and an unlistenable shambles, which, let's be honest, is just what you'd hope for. MOJO, however, starts to feel nauseous and has to sit in a corner until a disappointing set from Brighton's Metronomy welcomes in a very, very cold night.

A new day and Wild Palms shuffle on stage looking like they might try to sell you pornography at a bus stop; live, however, they're mesmerising, a fine combination of post-punk angles, literate hollering and sublime washes of guitar noise. Then for those who have to leave before the Horrors' headline slot there's S.C.U.M., featuring Spider Webb's younger brother. They're pleasingly gloomy and resolutely arty, although tellingly their best song is widely rumoured to have been a cast-off from the writing sessions for big bro's latest album Primary Colours.

Following them, Die! Die! Die! like to shout! A lot! Unfortunately they don't really do much else, so when Let's Wrestle go to the trouble of actually playing some songs they're greeted with a collective sigh of relief, followed by a wave of sheer delight afforded their lovingly shambolic slacker rock.

Twenty yards away, The xx are good. Really good, in fact. Admittedly, they look like they should still be loitering behind the school bike sheds. Yet, by placing hushed boy/girl fronted love songs into the cavernous bass-scapes of dubstep they've created one of 2009's most exciting debuts. Meanwhile, and despite a frontman who looks unnervingly like Menswear's Johnny Dean, The Ruling Class are showing the ECC Tent that a mix of Leisure-era Blur, a pinch of early Charlatans and a hefty wash of Ride's first album can still make everybody party like it's 1992. It's a rum warm-up for Clinic, but then it's hard to think of an apt one. Still sporting surgeon's scrubs, the nervy scouse jumble-rockers have essentially made the same album five times now, and frankly we don't care - Do It! is just as good as Internal Wrangler and on the main stage tonight they're still thrilling.

Come 10 o'clock, a sizeable number of people have left. More fool them - because The Horrors are on fine form. Mercifully neglecting to play anything from their cartoonish debut, the order of the day is '09's Primary Colours, in order, from start to finish. While it's fun to play 'spot the influence' (is that the bassline from Come Together? Ten points!) it's still a fantastic record, even more so when rendered live by the big-haired poshos.

If their set cries out for something, it's a little spontaneity, which comes unexpectedly in the rousing finale to A Sea Within A Sea when Tom Cowan's keyboards pack up at just the wrong moment. With spluttering Giorgio Moroder malfunctions splattering themselves over rhythms pilfered from Can's Mother Sky, the Horrors could have played this to their advantage, rolled with the punches and ended on a massive cacophony of techno misfires, thundering motorik and shredding white noise. Unprepared for the unexpected however, they fiddle with some wires, look peeved then sulk off. What a shame.

By Chris Catchpole

The Horrors' Faris Badwan by Dan Dennison