Devon’s Sea Change Festival takes a new step this weekend as the much loved much-loved independent event makes its debut online. Taking inspiration from its own ‘always different’ motto, Sea Change will run an online edition to celebrate the spirit of discovery that that has fired it from the start. The full schedule will be announced online this Friday with programming running free all weekend here: https://www.seachangefestival.co.uk
Last month, Sea Change was forced to bow to the inevitable and postpone this year’s physical event; while this was no surprise to anybody, it was still a huge disappointment to everybody connected with the festival, as it headed towards into its fifth year. In the time since the postponement, the organisers have set about coordinating a unifying and curious new experience to ease the woes of lockdown.
Among the highlights this weekend:
Exclusive new live performances from Billy Bragg, Bing & Ruth, Nap Eyes, Dry Cleaning, Porridge Radio, Shirley Collins, Other Lives, Gordi, Keel Her, Dallas Acid, Erland Cooper, caroline, Katie Von Schleicher, Yann Tiersen and more to be announced from Heavenly Recordings, Rough Trade Books, Mute, 4AD and Bella Union.
London based avant-garde and experimental electronic label Erased Tapes will have its own virtual stage with exclusives from Rival Consoles, Ben Lukas Boysen, Qasim Naqvi, David Allred and Daniel Thorne.
Tim Burgess, who was due to headline the festival’s main stage this year, will DJ over the weekend, before hosting a very special double-length Sunday edition of his spirit-raising #timstwitterlisteningparty, with a parade of special guests, including:
- The Breeders (Kim Deal, Kelley Deal, Jim MacPherson and Josephine Wiggs) discussing Last Splash; Midlake (Eric Pulido, Eric Nichelson, McKenzie Smith, Paul Alexander and original vocalist Tim Smith) reminiscing on The Trials of Van Occupanther; Joe Mount coming back to Devon to revisit his debut Metronomy album Pip Paine (Pay the £5000 you owe); Gwenno‘s stunning Le Kov and Ren Harvieu‘s excellent new Revel In LP.
Visual artist Sam Wiehl has collaborated with Richard Norris on SX 798627 – an immersive new short film “dedicated to the life and times of Sea Change 2020” that will open the festival and stream exclusively all weekend. Norris will also debut new work from his forthcoming Elements album and the Music For Healing series.
Gordon Burn Prize-winning author (and two-time Sea Change cricket teamster) David Keenan will host Autonomic Tarot online; revered music culture chronicler Jon Savage will trace his Oral History of Joy Division; and writer Rob Chapman will explore A Very Irregular Head, his acclaimed biography of Syd Barrett.
Gene Clark documentary screening: a Sea Change version of The Byrd Who Flew Alone: The Making of No Other, celebrating the still-unsung work of the country and folk rock pioneer, featuring previously unseen interview footage
Curated by Totnes’s award-winning Drift Record Shop, Sea Change has always been about finding something new and, as founder Rupert Morrison explains, this first digital edition will take the intimate festival spirit to a new audience, “It’s fun to think about how many people will tune in across the weekend. I hope that everyone that does finds something new and exciting at Sea Change 2020. The whole weekend is going to be a real antidote to the rather relentless grey rolling news. Just make sure you are following us online, click on the socials and bookmark the website as there is going to be so much going on. We’ll invite online festivalgoers to delight in the cultures that we have spent the last five years celebrating and to experience something of the special atmosphere of Sea Change, We’ll all be together while forced to be apart.”
The real-life, physical version of Sea Change will return in May 2021.
https://www.seachangefestival.co.uk