THERE is no shortage of quality music festivals this summer, but few are as quirky as this weekend’s Supernormal.

Held at Braziers Park, near Wallingford – the same spot as Wood Festival – this three-day gathering is the antidote to the grasping commercial enterprises that so many festies have become.

Organisers claim their event “blurs the boundaries between art and music, performer and audience”, making it “the most multifarious outdoor UK festival experience of the season”.

The creative free-for-all, now in its third year, is not about big-name stars, though there are some impressive, if little-known, acts. They include Liverpool post-punks Clinic, folk artist Michael Chapman, Leeds drone-rockers Hookworms, the brass-heavy Bass Clef, Dan Haywood’s New Hawks and London psych-noise-metal experimenters Terminal Cheesecake.

Then there are the really ‘Supernormal’ acts – things like installation artist Peter Kennard’s collaboration with Kat Phillips; displays from Bethnal Green live art collective LUPA (Lock Up Performance Art); and Kevin Hunt and Sam Venables’s Big Massive Work, a roving project space using the back of a BMW.

There are also group landscape painting sessions led by Brooklyn’s Brenda Zlamany and a fabulous sounding mass participation session formed by the Dream Machine Allstars, who plan to create a Supernormal Orchestra out of willing audience members, culminating in a main stage performance.

A spokesman for the organisers says: “The festival adopts the unspoiled and extraordinary grounds of Braziers Park as a sprawling rural canvas on which to invigorate the festival format from the inside out. “Artists, performers, musicians and DJs of untold disciplines roam wild on and off stage amid a stimulating collage of film screenings, discussions, artist-led workshops, installations, films, kids’ activities and spontaneous woodland happenings.

“The usual carousel of overpriced festival fodder is subsumed by a feeding frenzy of imagination, ideas and the friendliest environment you’ll find in any British field this summer.”

How can we resist?

  • The whole thing gets underway tomorrow, at Braziers Park, Ipsden. Weekend tickets, including camping, cost £75 from supernormalfestival.co.uk