Doune The Rabbit Hole
Cardross Estate, Stirlingshire
Four Stars
Nicola Meighan
As Lewis Carroll almost wrote, you'd have to be half-mad to dream up Doune the Rabbit Hole. Since 2010, the family-friendly Stirlingshire festival has appeared to shirk any nod to corporate sponsorship or commercialism, in favour of a home-grown hillside hoopla.
This year's idyllic, day-glo charms included fairy-lit tree-dens, unicyclists, healing crystals, belly dancers, puppet workshops, salted ice-cream (never again), and a canvas-housed Victorian sauna and tepidarium which was open till dawn. The festival continues to thrive in its relatively new home of Cardross Estate (it originally ran in the grounds of Doune Castle, hence the name).
Their music programme, too, played out like a fever dream, from Honey And The Herbs' exotic barbershop prog to Trash Kit's kamikaze femme-punk; from Insect Heroes' dystopian, Ghostbusters pop to The John Langhan Band's Balkan-ceilidh wig-outs. Yes, there was dancing.
There were glow-sticks. There was falling over.
As usual, the weekend's kaleidoscopic bill offered the chance to see far-flung, global trailblazers – like Dutch jazz-punk livewires The Ex, US art-punk mavericks Deerfhoof and the Bhundu Boys' Rise Kagona – in a genuinely intimate and unusual setting. And it offered a platform for brilliant local talent like urban-pop livewire Be Charlotte, electro-noir alchemist Zyna Hel, and techno-chanson duo Happy Meals.
Some acts feel like old Doune The Rabbit Hole friends now – glorious psych-folk diabolists Trembling Bells and poetic unplugged bass-punk Howie Reeve have played several times, and each return announcement feels more welcome and triumphant – even if Reeve did stave off any sense of celebration by quipping that his jazz-folk psalms were “too dark for a party”, during a spellbinding, deadpan set on Saturday afternoon. And then he sang a song about a mushroom cloud in Syria.
Noise-pop insurgents PAWS, too, returned to a tent they last ravaged in 2014, and several other Scottish indie outfits played blinders:
slow-core harmonists eagleowl eased us into Saturday afternoon, and kraut-folk conjurers The Phantom Band invoked dark and unknowable wonder in the twilight.
The Jabberwocky Stage – part retro sci-fi rig-up, part patchwork-quilt – was a fitting backdrop for The Phantoms' skewed electro divinations, which are futuristic and archaic, extra-terrestrial and earthy. Two toddlers dressed as ladybirds danced along to The Wind That Cried The World, while a silhouetted arm raised a bottle saying DRINK ME (or maybe just Buckfast) at the moon, and Doune The Rabbit Hole, it seems, gets curiouser and curiouser, indeed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here