Caravan Palace are performing at Secret Garden Party

Secret Garden Party is celebrating its 10th year next weekend and there’s no doubt it will be more eclectic, more surreal and more idyllic than ever before.

We caught up with headline act Caravan Palace before they hit the main stage on Sunday (22).

It will be the second time the seven-piece electro-swing band has played at the Huntingdon wonderland festival.

They will be coming straight from the southern France and violinist Hugues assures they will bring a piece of sunshine with them.

“We are touring all summer so it is pretty hectic. We can’t wait for Secret Garden,” he said. “We came two years ago and it was very cool. We were a little bit jet lagged as we had just come back from San Francisco but the place was so crazy we carried on partying.”

The group, who all hail from Paris, have been working together for the last seven years and have just released their second album Panic, which is an energetic whirlwind located somewhere between electronic and swing music.

Hugues and his friend Arnault began the band when they started their studies, except “that didn’t work as expected… me and Arnault had a studio and just made music all day long”.

Arnault’s friend Charles got involved, followed by four more including singer Zoe Colotis, to create a band that included guitar, violin, trombone, clarinet and double bass, along with a dose of electronic music.

The “electroswing” label is a step away from the gypsy jazz trend that is making waves in France, where it is called “jazz manouche”. Instead, Caravan Palace wanted to offer something different, as Hugues explained: “Jazz manouche was very successful in France but it was difficult to pretend to be like them. When we chose the name of our band we were nervous about using the word ‘caravan’ as it is linked to the ideas of jazz manouche. So we put ‘palace’ after it and it sounded good.”

It is relatively early days for Caravan Palace and Secret Garden Party will only be their fifth time performing in the UK, but it’s likely this band will be back for more to come.

Check out Caravan Palace’s new single Crash, out on July 30: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UraJOT2LosQ