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.
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 […]
A first for me, in attending Bloodstock for the first time, and a first time in fifteen years camping at a festival (I last did so in 1999 for Reading – you know, back when they still booked bands worth seeing). It wasn’t my first festival where the rain was torrential, though, but even so […]
Christ, 2014 is passing by in a flash. With Easter so late this year, it has resulted too in Resistanz and Whitby being on back-to-back weekends, which has left a number of us fearing for our livers during April, never mind an attempt to get any sleep. As I write this, the first of those […]
For the tenth time – I started writing a seemingly ever-expanding review of the annual festival in 2003 – here goes with my coverage of Infest rundown for 2013. As usual this is mainly covering each of the bands in turn from my point-of-view, with a few other opinions as we go, and I’m well […]
This weekend saw me back again to my previous home city, to attend the now annual Resistanz Festival, which joins the much longer-running Infest in now offering two major industrial festivals a year for the UK. Last year was broadly enormous fun, with a good mix of new and old bands, and I was looking […]
My second visit to Antwerp for BIMFest – I first went last year, which was reviewed here – was once again enormous fun, featuring a city I’m now familiar with, friends old and new (and the usual crazy connections close to home), and of course a whole load of music, of which only a few […]
Probably one of the weekends of the year I most look forward to is the August Bank Holiday Weekend.
Last year, the first Resistanz festival in Sheffield was one of the talking points of the “scene” in the Spring, and due to family commitments that we couldn’t miss, we couldn’t make it. So, an early decision was made this time around to ensure that we would make it north this time, and return to […]
