BANG FACE is one of the festival industry’s greatest, but most unlikely success stories.
The yearly event welcomes roughly 5000 ravers who are given a simple mission – have fun, and don’t take yourself too seriously. Pool parties, inflatables and thousands of gallons of UV paint are all par for the course. So, too, are electronic beats played at great speed to crowds of ravers at 7am in the morning. It might not be for everyone, but it’s not designed to be.
It’s a weekender that has never changed its morals. Rather, it’s doubled down on them, especially when the allure of greater capacities and brand sponsors would have been strong.
Simply put, BANG FACE may be the most unique, original, bonkers, mayhem filled weekenders of the year. And the brains behind the whole operation is James St Acid.
BANG FACE has done everything on its own terms since it began in 2003. “The first BANG FACE was a free party in Shoreditch in a disused public toilet under the pavement,” laughs James. These parties existed in 100ish-capacity, somewhat unconventional venues for a few years. They were free entry, word of mouth affairs that relied on a core group of ravers to spread the news. In that, it helped birth an initial, wholly original concept for James. Dance music didn’t have to take itself so seriously, which during the Ibiza boom years was very much the case. It just needed to be fun.
Since those early, somewhat unsanitary days, BANG FACE has grown into a yearly weekender hosted at various holiday parks across the UK. This year’s event will take over the Butlin’s Skegness Resort from 14-17 November.
“It’s been a labour of love for me since I came out of art college,” James explains. “It was never designed to be a promotion. I was a raver as a kid, I went to art college, and the two came together when I left. I was DJing at free parties and warehouse parties, and one day I thought I was going to do everything myself. That’s still the ethos now. If I had to change it, then I just wouldn’t do it.”
“there’s no magic formula to Bang face, other than people seem to have fun when they’re here.”
Over the years, BANG FACE has evolved into nothing short of a cultural icon, albeit one for a relatively small but staunchly devoted audience. “I’ve managed to capture some things in a certain section of society’s imagination,” explains James. “It’s a very small percentage of the population who probably fully understands something like BANG FACE. But we’ve created a safe social club for like-minded people to not act ‘cool’. Social pressure goes away at BANG FACE, and that’s really liberating for people.”
Part of the weekender’s success, says James, is down to a sort of mythos that exists around the weekender itself. This is fuelled by elements such as BANG FACE TV, the weekender’s own dedicated TV station that needs to be seen to be believed, and an engrained silliness that spreads to every corner of the site. “There are so many stories about things that have happened at BANG FACE that you think can’t be true, but 99% of it is,” he says. But it would be naive to say BANG FACE exists on legend alone.
While the festival prides itself on being a respite for passionate ravers, it doesn’t come without hard work, risk and sacrifice. Some challenges have been more unique than others. BANG FACE was one of the last legal UK festival to be green lighted before the UK’s COVID-19 lockdowns hit, managing to sneak through unscathed a few short days before the country shut down. “We didn’t know we could open the gates until the day of the event,” James remembers. The weekender has survived last minute venue closures and countless economical shifts, all while booking artists named DJ Bus Replacement Service.
To say the success of BANG Face is unconventional is an understatement, but it still gets harder yet. BANG FACE may adopt a DIY spirit, but that’s not worth much in the face of real life bills. “The cost of an event has tripled in around five years. It can only sustain itself if people are buying tickets,” James adds. “Every year we think, well, here we go again. Fingers crossed.”
Then, there’s curating the line-up, which James describes as akin to completing a “jigsaw that’s impossible to solve.” Sometimes, James can rely on the reputation he’s created over two decades. “A lot of artists that would normally charge huge money elsewhere will want to play BANG FACE because they get to cut loose and play a banging set to a bunch of people who will appreciate it,” he says.
This includes the likes of Aphex Twin and Chase & Status who have all played there in the past, tempted by the absurdist nature of such a weekender and the crowds it gathers. But there’s still growing pressure to deliver something that’s constantly innovating. “A lot of work goes into the research of the line-up,” says James “We keep an eye on everything that’s coming through, which comes from my own research through to word of mouth.
“But I’ve always been attracted to people who are doing something interesting, and artists who don’t conform to a single genre-standard,” James goes on to say.“We also ask our fans, the ‘hard crew’, who they want. It’s a melting pot.”
“I don’t consider consider myself a promoter. [Bang Face] is not a promotion. It’s a celebration.”
While curating a line-up is never easy, James admits that a cultural shift may be working in BANG FACE’s favour as artists such as Charli XCX showcasing rave music in stadiums. “In the early BANG FACE days, nobody was saying the word ‘rave’, and nobody was saying the word ‘vibes’,” says James. “It drifted out of the cultural consciousness to some extent. In my little contribution to bringing that back, even if it’s that 0.1%, then that’s cool.”
That said, ultimately, James isn’t too concerned about rave returning to the charts. After all, BANG FACE has never been interested in being accepted by the mainstream. It’s more important than that.
“I spend most of my day crying with laughter thinking about new ideas each year,” says James. “The support that I’ve got for the event has enabled me to do that, so I will do everything I can to give that back. It’s not lost on me. I’m very appreciative of the situation that I’m in, and I’ll work as hard as I can to keep that going for as long as possible.”
Tickets for the BANG FACE Weekender 2025 can be found here.
