Trying to bring together the community and the festival, Le Guess Who? has come up with Le Feast. Le Feast basically means that some people in the city are cooking meals, and you can sign up and you will randomly be assigned a place to call home and have dinner for one evening. So we decided to have a go, ending up at a lovely place with four other people. The dinner was awesome, the companionship interesting and fun, and we as musos heads were the first to go because, well, Destroyer was on the slate at 19:30 already.

Now, Dutch people are early eaters, so the big room in Tivoli Vredenburg was pretty packed to see what one could perhaps dub as the headliner of this year’s festival. Coming off a strong album with Poison Season (of which he plays a sizeable amount), Dan Bejar and band manage to rub shoulders with pop whilst being decidedly not a pop band. The jazz and experimental influences are still paramount, but the rhythm lines make almost all easy to listen to and follow and, yes, even do a little dance to on occasion. The drummer is certainly working hard for his money to have that part in A-Okay condition.

Dan Bejar is a frontman whose introverted presence actually makes the show. Uneasily he croons his heartfelt ruminations on life and the city, and when he isn’t singing he is kneeling down on the stage. When he is singing, he uses a half-sized mic standard to lean on as if the support is needed to keep him from fainting to the floor. In some songs his phrases run delightfully long, which highlights the way he times the words. A song like ‘Poor In Love’, which he plays midway through the set, is a nice example of why he is on top of his game here. At one point the kick drum comes in, Bejar starts a line as long as anything in Oscar Wilde, and the horns can be heard floating airily in the back to juxtapose the drums. Destroyer delivers quality, and shows what a band in strength can do.

After getting a few songs in of Magma and Ringo Deathstarr (which you can read about elsewhere), it is time to get experimental with Keiji Haino. The Japanese artist takes on drums, pots and pans, and after the concert the people next to me are saying how it was a beautiful mixture of contemporary classical music and percussion. Though I’d hesitate to call it beautiful, and I’d hesitate to advise it to anyone who is just in the market to hear some good music, I would say it is interesting to see Haino go at it. With cymbals and a table full of pots he is determined to control the soundwaves. And dear lord, he might just have managed that.

There’s an instrument in the band The Juan MacLean — and people have told me over and over the name but I keep forgetting — which he turns on, and if he puts his hand in front of it, it creates sounds. That always blows my mind, and this is what Haino’s performance reminds me of. Hit a thing, then move your hand over it, push the soundwaves away, to the side, or up, or whatever, and it alters the sound we, as the audience hear. Hit the cymbal, move the cymbal (in a sort of contemporary dance way), and we hear a different kind of sound than if you would’ve kept it stagnant. Beautiful, no, is it interesting if you find the question “how does sound work?” interesting, yes, quite, I reckon.

Shabazz Palaces are playing up, up and up in Cloud Nine, where they are showing off their hip-hop skills with some flair for show. Hand percussion, glitter and rapping all combine for a performance that manages to work. The great thing is that I see some people dancing on the quick hitting hip-hop sounds, but others on the lush, more soul-like sounds that run underneath it. The live percussion and the enthusiastic rapping give it an interesting live aspect as well, and the extremely diverse public out there all seem to be able to find something to enjoy that makes them stay until the end. Definitely worth checking out next time they’re in town.

Kamasi Washington is ready to take over as the night turns to midnight with his jazz & funk outfit. They get the old school going with the two drums, the upright bass, the keys, the horns (including, obviously, Kamasi himself), and the female vocalist who, when not singing, is being seemingly enthralled by what the rest are playing 24/7 and dancing and looking like those ladies did in those bands back then (as if on a high, musically, of course). So the band definitely has the looks spot on, just oozing out that they are going to funk the place up as soon as the green light says go and they can get it all going down.

And what ensues is just that. Tight, making sure they look the part, and they make sure the word of Jazz gets out there. It is like being transported to an old Jazz cafe way back when with some people who are there and just get up to have some fun. Apparently they have quite the live reputation, and certainly that is well deserved, giving everyone there (and the crowd did come in for this one) a good look at a more funk side of Jazz with loads of rhythm next to the experimental sounds and the expert saxophone playing of Kamasi himself. Certainly one heck of a way to close out the big room at Tivoli for the Saturday night.

Things start early at Le Guess Who? on the final day so I find myself part of a respectable sized crowd (bigger than normal he reckons, if you can believe that) to see Kelley Stoltz in Ekko at 4pm. As a definite fan of the man’s work I’m obviously biased but I’m happy to name this as the best gig of the weekend. Not only do he and the band play songs from across his career (new material such as ‘Litter Love’ and ‘You’re Not Ice’ slotting in fine with the superb Double Exposure material and earlier tunes) we’re treated to ‘Hot Igloo’ and ‘Don’t Let Your Dreams Die’ from his Willie Weird alter ego, a minor Leonard Cohen/Pink Floyd mash-up and some amusing banter, anecdotes & philosophising. If he could actually have remained on stage for the three hours he joked about I’m sure everyone would have stayed put for the duration, such was the level of inclusion and entertainment on offer.

Jacco Gardner was curating the programme in Pandora today so a look in at the chiming charms of Eerie Wanda was possible. Crowd sizes generally were on a par with Thursday & Friday today so the hall wasn’t packed out but there was a good level of appreciation for the band’s whimsical and mildly psychedelic output. Fans of a poppier take on the psychedelic side of things could head to the Ronda where Byron Bay's The Babe Rainbow (looking and sounding a tad out of place beside the rest of the weekend’s bill) were dressed to impress and giving it their all. Pandora would though probably have been a better setting for them to do it in.

What festival goers there were on the day clearly knew who they wanted to see so public areas were far less congested but bottlenecks did develop due to the smaller number of performances on the slate. As such it was impossible for me to see Follakzoid once I got back to Ekko. There was queue out of the gig space into the bar so, making it a point never to queue, I turned tail back to the Tivoli to pass the time before the second of the shows I was personally most eager to see – Mikal Cronin (with added horns & strings).

As part of his chat Kelley Stoltz had referred to Cronin and himself sharing a resemblance and having seen them both in the space of a few hours I’ll admit to there being a bit of a “separated at birth” thing going on. Cronin has far less chat but then as it’s the first time he and his band have been augmented by violins & brass there’s probably more to concentrate on than usual. In all there a dozen players on stage and the Ronda hall does full justice to the fuller sound produced. Final song ‘Change’ was the one I was expecting to really resound with the extra instruments as it’s exciting in recorded form for that very reason but throughout the set you were constantly being reminded of how expansive Cronin’s creations actually are. Great garage rock it may be but his talents for arranging and incorporating more traditional instruments cannot be underestimated. A further great show raising today to the top of the weekend pile.

Jacco Gardner naturally caused one of the regular Pandora access issues but we were lucky enough to have had five minutes or so to steal a march on the latecomers. As mentioned in an earlier piece the hall was prone to tech issues over the four days and so after the first song of the set there came a bit of a gap as pedals were plugged into each other in a different order so as to nullify a persistent buzzing. After that delay though the set progressed as you’d expect and there was a greater sense of band/crowd interaction than when I’d previously seen the show at the Liverpool Psych Fest. For all his falsetto and supposedly fey attributes the live setting fully allows for the darker elements of his work to shine, in keeping with the Giallo imagery associated with the Hypnophobia album.

More tech issues mean the start of the Ariel Pink show was delayed back downstairs in the Ronda. Some people were getting very stroppy about not being able to hear either their own or other folk’s vocals. That finally dealt with the first song upon returning to the stage contained the word goodbye a lot so, coupled with the trashy rear projection, the surrealistic nature of what was in store was readily confirmed. Dancing was certainly possible as the underlying funkiness of the bulk of the songs was very to the fore but, possibly due the theatrical element referenced by that projection, there was an air of the band going through the motions with its leader in his little baffle pillbox conducting proceedings and occasionally playing his duck whistle. A fun performance but one lacking warmth. 

Jacco Gardner’s Cabinet Of Curiosities contained as it’s crowning glory Os Mutantes. Re-discovered in the Nineties after decades of cult (if any) following outside of their native Brazil they put in a performance that at one and the same time managed to give the impression that they had all the time in the world, whilst that they were also keen to make up for lost time. An impressive feat and one that causes you to wonder whether those acts witnessed who’re supposedly in their prime will have the desire (or even the fan base) to manage the same. Yet another good addition to the list of older bands Le Guess Who? has scheduled over the years. 

The festival returns for its tenth year on the second weekend of November 2016 with Wilco confirmed as the first headliner. Early bird tickets are available for just 92.50 euros here so do yourselves a favour and plan ahead.