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The reason the truly excellent Campfires & Battlefields took over all things Toad this weekend is that I was away with Mrs. Toad, and he very kindly volunteered to keep things ticking over in our absence. You will surely all join me in thanking him for his excellent job, and I guess you may be at least slightly curious as to what exactly we were up to.

Well a large number of people in the Fence Collective have known each other since childhood and, despite gathering many other folk along the way, are still very firmly rooted in the Fife town of Anstruther where many of the original members grew up. So, despite the increasing prominence of the Collective’s musical endeavours, with the success of King Creosote, Found and James Yorkston, they all still like to get back together once a year for a weekend, get completely cabbaged and play lots and lot of music.

Mrs. Toad and I have been to the last three of these and we both love them, but for different reasons. She likes going to a seaside town for a weekend, where she can go to one or two gigs, but basically abandon me to my musical enthusiasms and read the FT from cover to cover. I like going to a festival where half the bands are mental, half are inspired, half are awful, half are beautiful and you genuinely have no idea what you’re going to see from one gig to the next. I don’t think I know anyone other than the Fence lot who take even a fraction as many chances with music, or who are anything like so confident to put on something completely left field and bizarre, safe in the knowledge that it will get a fair listen and genuine appreciation from their audience.

One of the things about being married of course is that I was not just travelling up to Anstruther as a music fanatic, I was also going there as a (briefly) dutiful husband. Mrs. Toad and I have gone for a meal at the absolutely fucking wonderful Cellar Restaurant every one of the three years we’ve been to Homegame, and so we did again. It’s expensive, but it’s a ritual and a treat and we love it. You have a seat with a G&T, browse the menu and the wine list, and eventually wander through to the dining room and spend all night over one of the best meals you will eat. They don’t turn the tables, so generally we’ve been the last out. This year we went along early though, and after a lovely few hours where things were a little more Mr. Creosote than King Creosote, Mrs. Toad returned to the cottage and, for me, the festival commenced.

I’d rather disappointingly missed Art Pedro unfortunately, whose set coincided with our esculent* escapades, but that was a sacrifice which had to be made. I am determined to see him play at some point however, but this was not to be the time.

Art Pedro – Girl From School

I did make it for Down the Tiny Steps, fortunately. You should all know how highly I rate these lads by now, so I won’t go into it too much, save to say that their lineup is even more slimline now than it was the last time I saw them. The hole in the lineup left no corresponding hole in the music however, which is a sort of bizarre Scot-hop folktronica. Sort of. It’s superb for late in a day of drinking and listening basically, because it’s eminently danceable and gorgeously wistful at the same time. Ideal for that reserved indie sway, which is about as close to dancing as I get most of the time. Fortunately for the Tinies, others were not so shy.

Down the Tiny Steps – Revenge

After the Tinies and before we repaired to the Pink House – for a party where I ended up swilling whisky from a hip flask out of one hand and red wine from the bottle with the other and presumably talking monumental amounts of garbage throughout – there was time for a show-closer from Jon Hopkins. I doubt many of you know of Mr. Hopkins, and neither do I, particularly. I know he is a very steeply rising star in the world of production and has been faithfully described as being a thoroughly down to earth and friendly chap despite this. I also know he has done a number of superlative remixes of Fence songs, in particular King Creosote’s Circle My Demise for a De-Fence release last year. I am not massively into laptop music most of the time, but at that stage of the night, drunk and giddy, I really enjoyed his set.

The rest of the evening, as you can imagine, was a bit of a blur.

Jon Hopkins – Circle My Demise

* I have to confess that I dug this one up in the thesaurus. What an excellent word, though, don’t you think?