Standon Space Cadets

When I heard Standon Calling was being described by Time Out as "this year's best boutique festival", all sorts of fuzzy images of a middle-class Innocent Smoothie folk festival sprung to mind. Stoke Newington's finest traipsing round a little estate out in the Shires nodding along to Snow Patrol's new single with their lentil salads and Cath Kidston wellies. Oh how wrong I was. Standon is a tripped out yawning chasm of electronica, lo-fi slacker rock, experimental theatre and million-pound poets in private tents all housed in someone's (albeit rather massive) back garden in Hertfordshire. It's a house party, which spun out of the control nine years ago and has fashioned such a tight and loyal following, that it feels like the stage lights might be powered solely by the restless kinetic energy of all the London punters, who who have made it their mission to make it their own. I didn't meet many people stretched around the site on the Sunday afternoon who had had more than a couple of hours sleep the entire weekend. There were even fewer people who didn't have an enormous smile stretching from ear to ear. There were between 2000-4000 people here at any given time but by the end of a staggering three days it felt like most of them had become personal friends or at least helped you stay standing in the Barbarella shed at 6.30am on Sunday morning.

Alex Trenchard runs his party with a tight unit of PR's and event crew (mostly family and friends) but still manages to make it feel like a spontaneous happening. There is non of the corporate slickness of the modern festival programme, there is instead an old guy in a minivan at Bishop Stortford train station who claims to be able to do the 25 minute run to the site in 10 minutes and does his best not to disappoint. Friday night was all confusion and catch up drinking with a vague memory of the Crystal Fighters doing rather loud and entertaining things and the Rumble Strips doing rather less loud and less entertaining things. There was shouty poetry in a teepee from from some crazy but gifted 'Book Club Boutique' wordsmiths and a lot of banter. Then a bit of a blackout for at least one of the party.

The real noise arrived on Saturday afternoon with a massively entertaining and pretty scary Pulled Apart by Horses ripping apart the Apollo tent, N.A.S.A. built on that in the rain in front of hundreds of spandex-fitted space monkeys and by the time the Friendly Fires had jumped off their plane from Australia the site was well and truly pulsating with energy and good cheer. Tim Famucci and then Bobby Lost kept it going to around 7am while everyone slid around in the shed out back, and then the day was upon us and we were back out in the field playing 5-a-side football with custom fitted binoculars. The Heritage Arts Company were providing a personal (and perhaps not for the sleep deprived) series of surreal code breaking performances up near the pool (please go see these guys if you are ever in a field in Hertfordshire and see them on the bill), and Craig Taylor was entertaining everyone else with his Million Tiny Plays About Britain (in what turned out to be quite a tiny 4 man tent).

Other highlights for the Sunday included a great but short set from yet another modern synth heroine - Chew Lips. The Casiokids made the sunshine come out  and got everyone on the entire site up to dance (or at least sway) with some glorious but indecipherable Norweigan tunes. Kap Bambino literally did it for the kids and the really outstanding Micachu and the Shapes made what they do look pretty effortless but sounded pretty fucking amazing. Sadly London called out the 9 to 5 brigade and we were dragged away before Femi Kuti & his positive force could close out a classic three days.

It's Wednesday morning now and I'm just starting to feel like some of my brain has returned to me. I hope this is kept at the size it is, and that the crazed reviews I'm sure it will receive once again don't put too much pressure on it to grow into something it's not. I'll be rolling around on Mr Trenchard's lawn next year anyway.