" The best live band I have seen all summer " Gideon Coe, B.B.C.6 Music Radio D.J and presenter. 

"Sensational" John Cooper Clarke

From The Brudenell 2016..

Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip are a strange and beautiful beast of a band.

The show is edgy, hilarious and poignant ,with lashings of power chords,funkiness, and chaos.

Mik ponders, chats, makes up songs , throws drinking straws and generally, creates mischief ,

while Benson Walker and Jonny Flockton behave impeccably on bass and guitar.

‘Musician,performance artist,surrealist and fantastic raconteur…Brilliant!’

 Observer Review..

‘Trying to explain the energy and the imagination of the performance in a few words is well nigh impossible.

..the whole irreverent experience has a fantastic feel to it . ‘

BY: EDWIN MCFEE

Leeds native leaves us wanting more.

Fawned over by everyone from the Glastonbury organisers to Johnny Vegas and Iggy Pop, Leeds native Mik Artistik is like the bastard son of John Shuttleworth, John Cooper Clarke and Sleaford Mods, with a sprinkle of our own Jinx Lennon mixed in there too. His band’s economically titled tenth album More sees him deliver, well, more of his trademark accordion and acoustic guitar-based observational odes; however this time around there’s an increased introspective, downbeat vibe threaded through the tracks which really reel the listener into the self declared “old baby”s world.

Comprised of ten new songs and four re-worked numbers from the vaults, as amusing as the likes of ‘I Don’t Need Heroin’ and the George Formby-flavoured ‘Life And Soul Of The Party’ are, it’s the darker efforts which really make you want to take this (ego) Trip again. The rather brilliant ‘Box Sets’ takes a banal passtime and makes it seem quite sweet (in a grim way), while ‘Swiss Family Hutchinson’ is a Bad Seeds-minded, pleasingly murky murder ballad. Best of all is the spoken word ‘Tribute Band’ which is arguably the most absorbing number Artistik has put his name to.

If you switched over to BBC Two‘s recent Glastonbury footage at just the right point after midnight on the Saturday, you’d have seen a cheerful, shaven-headed man in a floppy watermelon hat performing with his band, interspersed with interview clips of him declaring “I live off ideas and cheese and ham sandwiches…People come to me because they’ve had a hard day and they want some chaos, and I’ll bring them chaos…I’m like an old baby”. This is Leeds’ own Mik Artistik, singer, songwriter, artist, former stand-up comic, occasional actor and copper-bottomed Glastonbury legend who has performed more than 200 sets on assorted smaller stages at the festival since 2007, ten this year alone.

While we’re talking numbers, Mik Artistik’s Ego-Trip have just released their tenth album, More. Now, Mik and his band really deserve to be seen live. He’s a born performer and the rapport with his audience brings out the best in him. You get the impression that he’s much more at home on a stage than in a recording studio, and his albums can struggle to bottle that lightning. That said, the Ego-Trip’s songs, vivid, often surreal, often very funny snapshots, stand up on their own and reward being listened to away from a boozy crowd.

Needless to say, More is a strange beast indeed. Despite the eye-opening title, the opener, I Don’t Need Heroin, is all about joie de vivre and how the little things are what it’s really all about. Actually, so too is Signs of Life, which identifies what some of those little things are, including kingfishers, neon, cucumber and Lurpak. There’s something a bit Beefhearty about the echo-laden wallop of Signs of Life and that’s not a bad touchstone for what Mik and his limber band – guitarist Jonny Flockton and new bassist Sam Quintana – are trying to do. Mind you, so is the sheer out-thereness of Vic & Bob (for example, halloumi makes not one but two appearances in the lyrics) or John Cooper Clarke‘s skewed observational poetry. 

Seasoned Mik watchers might note that, despite the sheer lust for life on show, overall this is perhaps his most low-key, reflective album. Tracks like Pavlo Picasso and the two-part Tribute Band are basically spoken-word stories with a musical backing, which have funny moments but are simultaneously rather melancholy, suffused with a soft, daft sadness.

It’s there in I’ll Ring You on the Landline, a crooned lament for the days of actual phone conversations, which you could just about imagine a jump-suited Elvis singing if he were still alive and Las Vegas had been twinned with Leeds. The album highlight, though, is surely Box Sets, a genuinely affecting and gently self-mocking modern love song for the Netflix generation.

The final four tracks are reworkings of older Ego-Trip songs, to be fair a trick they’ve often done before. As a result, they might not all feel of a piece with the rest of the album, though of them all, Castaway actually fits well, being as it is the acoustic tale of a sad, bearded island dweller who is “still a fan of The Smiths / You had your last kiss / in an English bar in Spain in ’85” (it also rejoices in the glorious line “all of your friends are fat and bald / except Carl who’s selling cars / for Renault”).

It’s a mixed bag at times, then, and the absolutely perfect Mik Artistik album is probably still yet to be made. More is a collection of curious, cherishable delights, though, and there’s always something strange and interesting going on with Mik. He’s a fascinating, entertaining geezer, like a pure outsider artist, and if his music is an acquired taste, it’s one well worth acquiring.

By Andy Murray

More by Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip

To read Andy’s interview with Mik Artistik, click here. 

It's tricky to sum up Port Eliot Festival for people who haven't been themselves. On one hand a fully-fledged music festival, a bonafide literature festival on the other and a food festival, lifestyle festival and simple weekend retreat on your remaining three hands, you can't really pigeon-hole it as one type of event. Having been attending the festival since I was about 15 I've pretty much seen everything it's had to offer over the years, and I can honestly say that I've never been anywhere quite like it.

Taking place on a Grade 1 listed site that covers pretty much all the bases when it comes to idyllic festival locations - a river, a centuries-old manor house, mysterious woodland areas and rolling hills in the distance - Port Eliot is the perfect place to be when the sun's shining. The only sign of life on the outside world comes every half-hour or so in the form of a slowly-moving train ambling across the bridge over the river, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the surroundings and forget all about whatever's going on beyond the boundaries of the Port Eliot estate.

Having hosted a huge range of established, local, leftfield and up-and-coming artists over the years, from Frank Turner to Florence and the Machine, Andrew Weatherall to Annie Nightingale and Ibibio Sound Machine to the raucous RSVP Bhangra, the festival offered a familiarly diverse range of music in 2019, inviting the likes of Charlotte Church, The Coral, Lily Allen (playing a DJ set at the fabled Boogie Round stage), The Orielles and a slew of local acts to perform across the weekend.

Charlotte Church bought her Late Night Pop Dungeon show to the festival to a rapturous reception on Friday night, The Coral, known best for hit tracks 'Dreaming of You' and 'In the Morning', couldn't really go wrong in front of a packed-out Main Stage on Saturday evening and the Bristol-based Alfresco Disco crew provided a huge soundtrack to a reimagined Boogie Round stage alongside fellow Bristol DJ Christophe until the early hours of Sunday, but, as is usually the case at Port Eliot, it was the more obscure acts on the lineup that stole the show. 

Mik Artistik's mix of music and comedy as part of his two-man Ego Trip show on a sunny afternoon was a highlight of the festival, combining his mournful acceptance of the life of a parent with songs like 'Dad Muscles' with a sharp wit and eclectic stage presence. His ability to simultaneously terrify the rows of toddlers sat at his feet and send the larger-than-expected crowd into constant fits of laughter for the entirety of his performance can't be understated.

As for the out-and-out best set of the weekend, it would be hard to choose between two of Sunday's acts, coming in at completely opposite ends of the musical spectrum. Hedluv & Passman, an electro-pop duo from Redruth, somehow managed to fit about 6 songs (including a cover of Radiohead's 'Creep'), a botched run through the crowd which appeared to result in semi-permanent spinal damage, a truly euphoric moment that had the whole crowd singing along to their track 'Made In Cornwall' and a huge dance-along to their ode to the sat nav, 'The Future', into their unforgettable half-hour set.  

The other, Ukranian folk outfit Dakhabrakha, perfectly embodied the varied nature of the festival with a set that incorporated elements of musical styles from around the world, pulled together with an eclectic vocal range and ability to ramp up a party atmosphere with nothing more than a doff of their traditional Ukrainian headwear. The group's closing set on the main stage will not only go down as one of the best of 2019, but will surely be regarded by several Port Eliot veterans as one of the best the festival has ever seen.

You could go on and on about the music at Port Eliot, but aside from that there really is - as countless other events claim but can't quite substantiate - something for everyone at the festival. Lily Allen and Russell Brand led engaging talks about her recent book release and his foray into consciousness respectively, Bristol-based animation experts Aardman held a model-making workshop, trailblazing documentarian Bruce Parry discussed our relationship with nature and Tamsin Omond, author and Extinction Rebellion activist, gave a talk alongside sustainable fashion activist Sara Arnold on the current ecological crisis and how we can shape our response to it across a weekend as diverse as any you'll find in the UK.

With so many festivals calling it quits amidst an increasingly difficult environment in which to operate, we're having to say goodbye to some of our favourite events in 2019. However, given its loyal following, forward-thinking ethos and genuinely beautiful setting, the loss of Port Eliot is one of the hardest to take. We sincerely hope that it makes a return in the near future, but for now we can revel in one of the very best weekends the festival has ever hosted.

For more on Port Eliot Festival or to check out all the photos from the 2019 weekend, visit their official website or check out their Facebook page.

Header image: Louise Roberts.