Fertilizer Festival

By Shakila Rajendra

This summer has been a satiating season for aural junkies, which is why, in the wake of summer, the depravity of not having decent music festivals starts settling in fast. As we dried our wellies, hung up our raincoats, washed our hair and bought expensive gig tickets to satisfy the desire to be in the company of good alternative sound, we found ourselves pleasantly confronted by the East London underground musical treat that was The Fertilizer Festival 2005.



Make no mistake that this is purely an outlet for music not overtly played on the radio waves. This is good shit we’re talking about. Over four comprehensive days (20-23 October 2005) we were in the presence of music that subverted and strayed from the mainstream.

As if to drum in that point, each year Fertilizer focuses on seeking out the most distinctive and creative sounds one country has to offer, with past festivals having concentrated on the music from Norway and our own Britain. The festival gives us a chance to sample the foreign scene from the comfort of local London clubs.
This year, the highest quality ‘shit’ has been imported from a country which is finally waking up and moving quickly away from the embarrassment of David Hasselhoff worship to boast one of Europe’s fasters growing underground music scenes. Fertilizer Festival 2005 dedicated itself to Good Shit from Germany.
Venues in Shoreditch such as Cargo, The Spitz, Big Chill Bar, Herbal and

Plastic People played host to the best to come out of Germany since the wiener-schnitzel and featured among them, the sounds of German electronica, hip hop, jazz, reggae, new wave punk and klezmer. Sticking to their rule of acting as a platform to non-mainstream artists Fertilizer presented close to a hundred German bands. Among these were:

SeeeD the 11-piece reggae band complete with their own booty shaking chorus girls played their UK debut at Glastonbury and made their mark as a live phenomenon. At Fertilizer, they stormed the stage in their apple-green suits to open the festival.

Mocky the self-producing, slipper-wearing, Canadian-born, Berlin-based songwriter has had an impressive track record. Mocky has co-written underground anthems and has played on stage with the likes of Peaches and Talvin Singh. His funky raps and melodies are making him a commodity to be reckoned with. He left the audiences screeching.

17 Hippies a band set on reviving and reclaiming klezmer then fusing it with rock and roll, the array of instruments (spanning from the bouzoki and ukulele to slide guitar and saxophone) used by the band alone guaranteed a bouncy night at The Spitz. They continued playing in the crowd after two encores and the set was ‘technically’ over.

Chicks on Speed Germany’s feisty answer to the call of the girl band started out ironically as a fake band. Members Kiki Moorse, Melissa Logan and Alex Murray-Leslie now produce their own brand of rule defying art-rock that has developed a cult following all over Europe and caused yet more mayhem. Their latest release is ‘99 Cents’(disko B).

Plus Kevin Blechdom and Planningtorock, man’sbestfriend, Fauna Flash, BUS, Phon.O and B. Fleischmann, Bernadette La Hengst, Eddy Temple-Morris, Jazzanova, Von Spar, Munk, Fiona Talkington and a host of other artists delivered their sounds that had us in a 4 day tizz.

Fertilizer Festival 2005 was the antidote that had us rocking and grooving those festival withdrawal symptoms away. Now it’s just going to have to be another year before the shit cures us again.