I’ve attended various music festivals over the years, and if I reviewed them, they are here.
The title of this section comes from a track on the second album by dEUS, In A Bar, Under The Sea.
I was last at Resistanz in 2014, ending three straight years of attending the festival, with various other life commitments (and Whitby, more often than not) meaning it hadn’t been possible for us to return for some time. But, when certain bands got announced this year, a plan was quickly hatched, and we found ourselves […]
I’ve been attending Infest since 2000, and this was my twenty-fourth edition (including the two mostly-online editions, one of which I DJed at, and I contributed video interviews with bands to both of them). It’s seen a lot of change over time – both as styles of music within the wider alternative/electronic/etc scene have come […]
Cold Waves XI was my fifth trip to Chicago, and over the course of the weekend, it was suggested to me more than once that I’m becoming an honorary Chicagoan, such is the frequency that I’ve made it over across the past decade.
Just four months ago, I was beginning to be resigned to the August Bank Holiday being devoid of one of my favourite events of the year. So when we finally set foot in the new venues, it was very much a feeling of joy that we’d got there at all.
That what started out as a hastily-scheduled event to celebrate the life of Jamie Duffy has turned into a large, multi-day, multi-city festival over the past decade is something of wonder: but what is also great is how it has fostered a wider family of sorts, one of multiple groups that come together from all […]
One of the obvious casualties of COVID since early 2020 was live music, both in the form of gigs, and festivals. For many, both 2020 and 2021 were almost entirely devoid of the kind of communal joy that these events can bring, and parts of my life certainly felt that bit emptier without them – […]
It’s been a long time since I was last at any kind of festival in person. The last one I went to was the all-dayer 10 Ten Years of Chaos in February 2020 (/Memory of a Festival/034), and the last multi-day festival was Infest 2019 (/Memory of a Festival/033) – so with COVID still looming, […]
As I noted recently in my chat with the promoter on /Talk Show Host/058, Chaos Theory Music have reached their tenth anniversary by being a fearlessly uncompromising promoter, doing things in different ways and indeed bringing diverse, interesting music to an increasingly open-minded crowd. Which meant that their tenth-anniversary celebration at The Dome and Boston […]
Somehow, despite the feeling I was just getting started, I’m already home, (mostly) unpacked and finishing this write-up of another great edition of Infest. It has long since become far more than just a music festival that I attend because I want to see a few bands – it’s an extended family.
Back in the mists of time, there used to be a steady stream of all-day “festival” events in the London goth/industrial scene. There was Gotham, there was Black Celebration, and probably a few more that I’ve rather forgotten about. They often had a good mix of bands, to appeal to the widest group possible, and […]
I don’t often go to Goth Festivals for music. There, I said it. Whitby, for me, long since became a social holiday, where I catch up with old friends and play football – I only occasionally see bands there. Most of the rest of the festivals I attend, of course, are broadly industrial or electronic […]
Twenty years of a festival existing is nothing to be sniffed at. Sure, bigger festivals have existed much longer (Reading dates back into the sixties, while Glastonbury is a few years younger), but in the current crowded festival environment, a smaller festival lasting twenty years is an extraordinary achievement. Particularly when the twentieth edition is […]
The last day of the ten day period of All Points East at Victoria Park was also my first ever attendance at one of the festivals in that park. Like my own “home” park Finsbury Park (I live within 100m of it), it is extensively used for live music over the summer period, which probably […]
All it took was arriving in Bradford on Friday, and I knew that I still loved this festival. There was that familiar buzz of anticipation as we stepped off the platform, looking forward to the fun to come, however this year was tinged of course with a bittersweet sadness over what was going to be […]
For the third year running – although it was a bit touch-and-go this year with the wedding and everything else, and my wife chose not to come along this time – the last weekend of September meant a trip 3,960 miles to the west of London. To the city of Chicago, to catch up with […]
Over the weekend of this year’s Infest, there was some discussion over the current state of the industrial (and wider) scene. In many other scenes – or indeed in “mainstream” popular music, there is an air of nostalgia as record labels struggling with new sales, are relying heavily on reissues of the old, particularly on […]
After an epic holiday in Chicago – ostensibly to do Cold Waves and catch up with old friends – last year (review in the box), there wasn’t ever really any question that we wouldn’t make it back to Chicago again – and so a year on, here we were once again, in blazing September sunshine […]
Christ almighty, this year has passed really fucking quickly – we’re already heading back into autumn, which means I’ve enjoyed my fifteenth Infest. While perhaps not a lineup with too many “marquee” names this year, it was certainly one that had some treasures in it, and away from the bands was one of the maddest […]
In the annals of crazy plans by me, this one was up there with Festival Kinetik 4.0 in 2011, where my friend Tim and I headed to Ottawa and then Montreal for a heavy, heavy week of music, drinking and sightseeing. Doing Cold Waves III came up from similar origins – a lineup too good […]
A sign I’m clearly getting old – this was my fourteenth Infest. God, time flies. This year was perhaps a bit special for a number of reasons, though, at least partly down to the fact that this edition very nearly didn’t happen, and in the event it is a damned good thing that it did […]
