This past weekend we were lucky enough to be able to attend Supersonic Festival in Birmingham. Supersonic is my favourite of all the festivals. These are my top five reasons why:
1. Interesting music, both old favourites and new things I’d never heard of before. The music at Supersonic I think you could generally descibe as experimental and leans towards the heavier end of things. This year the highlights of the bands I got to see were: Necro Deathmort, Devil Man, Tweak Bird, Hallogallo 2010, Melt Banana, Mugstar, and Cave.
2. Nice people. This black-wearing beardy crowd are in general a very nice bunch of people. There isn’t the pushing and shoving and idiocy that can be tedious at more generic music festivals. The security are also not too aggressive, perhaps because they are dealing with a nicer crowd.
3. No annoying camera rules. As more venues and festivals get taken over by big business there seems to be an upswing in banning any camera that “looks professional”. Here there was no problem. I am not actually that into taking pictures of bands, and other people do it already so well. However I usually have my camera in my bag to take pictures of all the other surrounding things and it’s so refreshing not to have to worry about if I can take it in or not.
4. The other events. There are all sorts of other events running alongside the music. In the theatre we saw part of a film on Saharawi music Palace Of The Winds, then went to a panel discussion on the fear of experimental music, and the next day to a talk with Michael Rother (he of Neu!, Harmonia, and Hallogallo 2010, etc).
5. Location. Firstly Birmingham is pretty brilliant. There’s this seemingly wild mish mash of new buildings, old buildings, the new shops, the old industry. Secondly the Custard Factory where the festival is held is a great location with a series of different building and stages.
Market Place and Tea Room where you could buy cake and browse records. There was also a knitting workshop held here on one day.
Napalm Death. On the whole not my kind of thing but it was really interesting to see them. I had a good view of the mosh pit.
Supersonic isn’t one of those festivals where you stay there all day. It was something like Friday 9pm-2am, Saturday 4pm-1am, and Sunday 4pm-12am so this left us plenty of time in the day to explore Birmingham. We’d booked to stay in a little apartment and I hadn’t realised until we got there that it was right in the heart of Birmingham’s Chinatown, we were so pleased. This cafe was downstairs, they did really good bubble tea which you could sip while sat on white Versailles-esque chairs. They also did those dainty Asian patisserie type cakes, things like green tea mousse decorated beautifully.
This Chinese bakery was opposite. I don’t know if it was related to the cafe? They had lots of really nice looking things too.
We had dim sum here at the Chung Ying Garden, there was such a choice of places to go but I’m glad we went here as it was good.
The other thing we tried (we were there for four days) was a proper Birmingham balti, being from the South where balti is not very common I’d never had one. The curry is cooked individually in these metal balti dishes and you get bread on the side to dip into it. We went to Al Frash which seemed to be a popular choice in the ‘Balti Triangle’.
Canalside Cafe. This was just what we needed after having been out so late the night before, we had a sandwich, and it’s snug and cosy inside.
This floating cafe was moored along from the cafe (towards Ikon) and seemed like a good alternative. Maybe next time.
Of course the festival did food too, we actually didn’t spend much time here as we’d have our main meal of the day out in Birmingham (see above!).
We paid a visit to the Ikon Gallery. Next time I’d also like to check out the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, we didn’t have time on this trip. We also looked in at the Rag Market and had a wander around the main shopping area.
Simon grew up not too far away from Birmingham and so as a kid/teenager would travel in to visit the comic shops and record shops. It seems that so much of Birmingham has changed in the past years. I don’t think any of the record shops remain but there is still this comic shop. Simon said he would save up his pocket money and spend three hours deciding what to buy. We did some reenacting of him flipping through comics :) He says it has changed a bit inside though, now they sell many more of the figures and toys, I guess it’s changing times isn’t it.
So all in all we had a brilliant time! I really hope that we can go back to the festival in future years, we’ve been going every year since 2007. These are the things in Birmingham I’m bookmarking for us to visit again:
Caffe Chino: Arcadian Centre, Hurst St, Birmingham B5 4TD
Canalside Cafe: 35 Gas St, Birmingham B1 2JU
Chung Ying Garden: 17 Thorp Street, Birmingham B5 4AT
Ikon Gallery: 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham B1 2HS
Nostalgia & Comics: 14-16 Smallbrook Queensway, Birmingham B5 4EN
Wah Kee Bakery: Arcadian Centre, Hurst St, Birmingham B5 4TD
