While The Vaccines performed some friendly tunes for friendly people on Liverpool Sound City’s main stage, we were watching Swans with the rest of the masochists and strangeheads. Headlining the festival’s Baltic Stage – a decayed and temporarily non-abandoned warehouse – Michael Gira and co. produced a two and a half hour wall of skeletal system-shattering noise in an apparent attempt to summon a nameless and primordial spider God. How we escaped without contracting terminal tinnitus still eludes me. I hadn’t experienced a crowd like it before; one individual wandered in with a pained expression, hands sheltering ears, and stayed…
Author: Michael Baker
On August 30 1970 – the Isle of Wight Festival’s second ever Sunday – a teenage John Giddings witnessed the untimely demise of an event that mirrored the hippie movement, not only in timing and spirit, but with the unfettered intensity of its rise and fall. During scenes of unrest in which French Maoists began tearing down the site’s temporary borders, the festival’s promoter Rikki Farr came onstage to tell its attendees in no uncertain terms to ‘go to Hell’. You might have heard the polemic – delivered amidst a sleep-deprived, intoxicant-fuelled delirium – sampled in that Oasis song about…
Established in 2002, Void Acoustics has traditionally set its sights on conquest of the international installed and live-sound markets, covering the entire spectrum of styles and spaces. In recent years it has moved further into festival territory, this year providing systems for Glasgow’s Electric Frog and Pressure Riverside festivals. Festival Insights spoke with Mike Newman – Senior Sales Manager at Void – about the relative importance of quality systems versus skilled engineers, whether Void systems are better equipped for certain genres, and what sets their products apart from the competition. Festival Insights: We recently covered Sónar Reykjavik, and in speaking…
Originally modelled on the template set by South By South West, Liverpool Sound City quickly received the pithy but now reductive moniker ‘Scouse By Scouse West’. It was perhaps accurate on the festival’s inception – with Sound City utilising unorthodox but nonetheless unrelated Liverpool venues to host its musical and industry-cognisant conference programmes. However over the past eight years – as one would hope – Sound City has evolved into a truly singular event, this year further distinguishing itself with a permanent relocation to the Liverpool Docklands, and an expansion of its contentious and participatory panels. Festival Insights spoke with…
Birthed as a one-night event to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, The Festival Previously Known as Lytham Proms has this year expanded into a seven-day series of festivities, including but not limited to music, literature and comedy. Whereas many festivals focus on programming cutting-edge underground music and align themselves with an atavistic and often purely superficial hippie ethos, Lytham Festival aims to be as inclusive and family-friendly as possible in its individually ticketed events, offering decidedly exclusive ‘Platinum Packages’ for those willing to splash out on a more VIP experience. Festival Insights spoke with Peter Taylor…
If it weren’t for security services, festivals would be the perfect microcosm for demonstrating exactly why Anarchist utopias wouldn’t work. Taking thousands of try-hard teenagers away from the panopticon of parental supervision and placing them in a field with abundant alcohol and ambiguous narcotics often brings out the fledgling festivalgoers’ propensity for the destruction of the self, property and occasionally others. In addition – the ubiquity of legal highs (whose dangers often exceed their legal counterparts) coupled with organised crime and general intoxicant-fuelled debauchery necessitates responsive, well-trained and professional security personnel. The problem, predictably, is cost. However, whereas a total…
Since 2006, Latitude has been an exemplar of the boutique festival movement. Whereas a myriad of other festivals have hosted all manner of non-musical mediums on their rosters, none have shared the spotlight between them in the way Latitude has, giving literary iconoclasts the same reverence as rockstars. Its focus on quieter, more cerebral offerings engenders mellower vibes than those of your average adolescent blowout. Complemented by a serene woodland backdrop, numerous pop-up performances and an exploratory, at-your-own-pace atmosphere, the laidback ethos appeals to a very loyal following that have carried the festival into its 10th year. Festival Insights spoke…
Traditionally, festivals out in the field have been synonymous with poor sleeping conditions. Many consider it to be a part of the fun, or at the very least a necessary and tolerable level of discomfort, but I for one have the opposite of an affinity for tents. Firstly they’re a pain to set up – or so I’ve been told by my friends as I’m watching them do it for us. Secondly, their reliance on decent weather, smooth terrain, and a bunch of other factors in order to be mildly comfortable makes them less than ideal. These issues can largely…
If you live in Nottingham and enjoy such things as leaving the house at night and having fun then chances are you’ll have set foot in at least one DHP Family establishment. Rock City, Stealth, Rescue Rooms, Black Cherry Lounge and Bodega are all iconic venues of theirs, regularly hosting all manner of mainstream and soon-to-be mainstream acts. Similarly eclectic and forward-thinking is their array of festivals, including the multi-city, multi-venue Dot to Dot, the relatively young No Tomorrow, and Nottingham mainstay Splendour. Across the diverse roster of events, equal credence is given to emerging talent, underground legends and mainstream…
Glastonbury has upset thousands of middle-aged, middle-class Britons with the announcement that Kanye West will headline its Pyramid Stage on Saturday June 27. Desperate to make their displeasure and ignorance known, many ‘fans’ of the historical festival have begun slinging comments into the Great Void that is Facebook. The blog ‘white people angry about kanye’ has posted a nice cross-section of them, for those interested. The source of this backlash stems largely from the fact that the somewhat controversial West – whose eclectic, massively influential and critically acclaimed discography has amassed 21 Grammys – is not considered a ‘real artist’…