Life Festival

Photojoe

jimi_t wrote: »

They pulled out.

They were running radio ads up till Friday with FSOL music and mentioning them as headline acts.

jimi_t

Photojoe wrote: »

They were running radio ads up till Friday with FSOL music and mentioning them as headline acts.

Yes, yes they were. Going to be some fairly pissed people after the weekend I reckon.

jonny68

jimi_t wrote: »

They pulled out.

really :eek: any reason as to why?

That is shambolic and indeed there certainly will be some very pi*sed off people alright, how the hell can FSOL "pull out" when they are not even performing live?

Zascar

I'm just back. It was a good laugh but there was a few unfortunate things that ruined it for me (Mainly we bought duds which ruined the buzz for the first night) anyway still had a great weekend.

Venue was cool, nice and small and intimate. Instead of being out in bare fields it was all around the house and the courtyard and the walled gardens. Thinking of EP would just put me of now its so vast. With LIFE if you ran out of beer or needed a jumper, you could run back to the tent and be back in 10-15 mins - and you bumped into people all over the place - I much prefer it like that.

Saw Carl Craig Friday night - he played some good tunes and I enjoyed it, but the guy barely cracked a smile al night. He just seemed bored and could not give a sh!t. Then on came Green Velvet - coolest MF I've ever seen - just stood up there with a massive smile, bouncing around and really got the place going. I only saw the first while of his set but it was savage, his first 5 tunes or so were really cool, very unique. After that I ended up floating about but I heard a lot of good tunes I recognised - pissed I missed the whole thing...

On Saturday we spent most of the time in the walled garden chilling in the sun etc. Our own [CM]Tyrranny aka Executive Steve played in the tent there - I'm not into DnB but I have to say it was brilliant - everyone loved it we stayed there all night and had great craic - well done Steve! There was some guy in there earlier in the night playing some very nice tech house and minimal - but fuk sake the guy was just far too fond of sh!tty spinbacks and his mixing & beatmatching was all over the place at times.

Not sure who else we say just spent a lot of time floating around the place talking to people.

Weather was savage. I absolutely toasted myself in the sun all Saturday. Just sat in the sun drinking beer and smoking weed it was perfect. Got very very cold when the sun went down though.

I don't think any of us got any sleep whatsoever over the whole weekend - we 'thought' we'd got a nice are in the campsite at the back, had a chat to the neighbours and they were sound etc - until a bunch of complete scumbags set up near us - they had a radio and played nothing but nasty psyche trance all day and night - ****in horrible - but that's a topic for another thread.

Great fun overall though, nice event, would definitely go back.

As someone said above if anyone comes across any recordings etc of any of the music there please let us know - I'd really love to hear Green Velvet and Carl Craig sets again

Thomas_S_Hunterson

jonny68 wrote: »

really :eek: any reason as to why?

That is shambolic and indeed there certainly will be some very pi*sed off people alright, how the hell can FSOL "pull out" when they are not even performing live?

The press release said something stupid about not being able to get an ISDN line set up to the venue which sounds like a hissy fit on the part of the FSOL.

ISDN is ancient tech.

jonny68

Sean_K wrote: »

The press release said something stupid about not being able to get an ISDN line set up to the venue which sounds like a hissy fit on the part of the FSOL.

ISDN is ancient tech.

Indeed sounds very lame on their behalf

jonny68

Zascar wrote: »

I'm just back. It was a good laugh but there was a few unfortunate things that ruined it for me (Mainly we bought duds which ruined the buzz for the first night) anyway still had a great weekend.

Venue was cool, nice and small and intimate. Instead of being out in bare fields it was all around the house and the courtyard and the walled gardens. Thinking of EP would just put me of now its so vast. With LIFE if you ran out of beer or needed a jumper, you could run back to the tent and be back in 10-15 mins - and you bumped into people all over the place - I much prefer it like that.

Saw Carl Craig Friday night - he played some good tunes and I enjoyed it, but the guy barely cracked a smile al night. He just seemed bored and could not give a sh!t. Then on came Green Velvet - coolest MF I've ever seen - just stood up there with a massive smile, bouncing around and really got the place going. I only saw the first while of his set but it was savage, his first 5 tunes or so were really cool, very unique. After that I ended up floating about but I heard a lot of good tunes I recognised - pissed I missed the whole thing...

On Saturday we spent most of the time in the walled garden chilling in the sun etc. Our own [CM]Tyrranny aka Executive Steve played in the tent there - I'm not into DnB but I have to say it was brilliant - everyone loved it we stayed there all night and had great craic - well done Steve! There was some guy in there earlier in the night playing some very nice tech house and minimal - but fuk sake the guy was just far too fond of sh!tty spinbacks and his mixing & beatmatching was all over the place at times.

Not sure who else we say just spent a lot of time floating around the place talking to people.

Weather was savage. I absolutely toasted myself in the sun all Saturday. Just sat in the sun drinking beer and smoking weed it was perfect. Got very very cold when the sun went down though.

I don't think any of us got any sleep whatsoever over the whole weekend - we 'thought' we'd got a nice are in the campsite at the back, had a chat to the neighbours and they were sound etc - until a bunch of complete scumbags set up near us - they had a radio and played nothing but nasty psyche trance all day and night - ****in horrible - but that's a topic for another thread.

Great fun overall though, nice event, would definitely go back.

As someone said above if anyone comes across any recordings etc of any of the music there please let us know - I'd really love to hear Green Velvet and Carl Craig sets again

I'm surprised you got dud yokes @ Life out of all the festivals,you'd expect that at ****** but not Life,im also amazed that there was scumbags there,last year we didn't see any,im even more amazed to hear they were playing psy trance,this music certainly wouldn't usually attract the scumbag element like your normal cheesy euro trance.

Was there many at the festival?My mate texted me to say he was pi*sed off FSOL didn't show up but was enjoying Altern-8 and that it was good weather.

Anyway asides from those unfortunate things you mentioned it sounds good although id be very pi**ed off if id have gone and FSOL didn't perform.

JC 2K3

I LOVED the layout. It was awesome, like being in a medieval psychedelic village.

For whatever reason, however, I was shattered by 2am on the Friday, and proceeded to be very tired all through Saturday. I blame a combination of the heat, alcohol and below average substances. By Saturday night I was grand, but our mate having to leave early because of a family issue put a dampener on the rest of our weekend. We weren't really up for another night, so we headed home yesterday evening.

It was quite different to last year for a number of reasons, I still really enjoyed it though. Carl Craig was really good. Highlight was probably Astrix. The Neutronyx stage was frickin awesome, as usual.

One big disappointment was the lack of a Chillout Zone on the first day, and the fact that it didn't go on all night on the Saturday like last year....

Tents were robbed and Gardaí were everywhere, that wasn't so good either.

All in all, some elements of last year were better, and some elements of this year were better. It was a very enjoyable weekend regardless.

old gregg

I was delayed late getting into Dublin on Friday so stayed there and did not get up to the Life Fest till Saturday morning.

When I'm playing an event I tend to be far more critical of organisation than if it's something I'm there solely to party at. It would therefore be unfair of me to be too critical here of how the Life fest is organised when I'm only just back and have yet to decide whether I care enough to email the organisers about my not too large quibbles. At the same time, from an performer's perspective I prefer festivals where the artists are treated as a valued part of the event and not an afterthought. Enough said on that aspect.

The setting was the best yet, the weather perfect, the vagueness as to when/where some things were happening was a little tedious at times. Instances of scheduled artists not even being included on the programme was shocking.

I sort of tend to gravitate to the chill area at festivals largely 'cos I enjoy the music and pertly 'cos it's where I'll be playing so I'm going to spend loads of time chatting with folks doing similar stuff to myself. Excellent setting though if it had been raining then I'd imagine it would have had to be moved/cancelled.

Anyway, Sunday at noon I played a performance of completely new music based on field recordings from Sydney. The crowd was bigger *gulp* than I'd expected but on a perfect Sunday morning in a natural little amphitheatre with the lake behind where else would you want to be.

Feedback was great after my performance and it was the first time I'd ever had groups of strangers coming up to say how much the music had touched them. No ego thing here, just a real thrill to stand around chatting music with new friends.

So who else did I see? Golly loads of acts almost all of whom I'd never heard of before but almost all of whom were great.

We were staying in the camp site for folks working at the festival so most of the people around us were working on stands or other musicians and stuff. On the one hand it placed us much closer to the music so sleep was not an option but there were no problems with lowlifes playing crappy (deeply subjective statement) sounds all night.

Almost all of the security people I met during the weekend were friendly and courteous which is a joy when we've all been to festivals where you feel like the security folks would rather see you exterminated. Full marks for that aspect of things. Nice also to have a slightly wider range of beverages on offer too.

That's the story from my perspective. Glad I went, delighted to catch up with old and new friends and enjoy some great music. In a few weeks my performance will be aired on Fluid Radio so I'll post a link to the download if that's OK. It's heads down time now cos I have to start writing a new series of works for the Transylvania Calling festival in August. The pain of it all

gsparx

just curious, old gregg, under what name do you perform?

budgemook

jonny68 wrote: »

Indeed sounds very lame on their behalf

I heard something about him being afraid to leave his bedroom?

Did Goldie turn up in the end? I had to go off to bed :-)

Did anyone watch Equinox?

budgemook

Oh and another thing, Was Dave Clarke there?

Spunge

budgemook wrote: »

I heard something about him being afraid to leave his bedroom?

Did Goldie turn up in the end? I had to go off to bed :-)

Did anyone watch Equinox?

Yeah goldie played, i was loving it as was sick of techno at that stage.
Missed equinox myself but everyone said he was savage.

old gregg

gsparx wrote: »

just curious, old gregg, under what name do you perform?

miXile

K_TRICKS

gutted i missed this..............:mad:

K_TRICKS..... 2 hours of funked up minimal tehno
www.playfmdublin.com @midnight every tuesday night

budgemook

Spunge wrote: »

Yeah goldie played, i was loving it as was sick of techno at that stage.
Missed equinox myself but everyone said he was savage.

ah he always is

g5fd6ow0hseima

Well,

To be honest, going there, I was expecting something along the lines of the whole campsite being a bunch of friendly festival heads, but couldnt stop counting knackers all over the place. It pissed me off a good bit seein them dancing away to psytrance, knowing that none of them had any clue about anything going on except all the ****ty cocaine they were shoving up their noses. The sheer amount of them pissed me off...

Away from the hoards of Knackers, the music on the friday was great, Carl Craig was brilliant, one of my personal best gigs ive ever been to, Green Velvet after him was also brilliant, although for some reason or another, I ended up down at the psytrance arena with my mates, gutted I walked away from him....

My friends tent got robbed by knackers, our CD player was taken, plus a good bit of his clothes - t-shirts, jacket - and when we asked our neighbours, a number of them were also done.... Myself and my mate told two bangardai who honestly said to us 'would you bring good clothes to oxegen?' - this shows what esteem the establishment holds the festival in.

I caught the end of Equinox, who was solid, and chatted to him for a bit afterwards, nice fella, was headin off for some badly needed sleep he told us

So,

I cant fault the music, but for anyone thinking of going next year, there's a loada tinkers at it, and when they start going to festivals, the numbers of them only rise. Im really considering not going at all, because I go to small festivals to get away from the image of dirty good for nothing ***** in dublin jerseys shouting woop woop woop at acts....

Knackers (hoards) / Tents Robbed / Music over at 12am on a bank holiday sunday....

all my bad points

good points,

Music / Atmosphere / Layout / No hassle from security

jonny68

Fu*k that's awful about the amount of knackers that turned up, last year i didn't see any of them at all and this would make me think twice about going again:eek:

mango1888

honestly half the lads you see in tracksuits and sun hats aren't that much knackery (is that a word)

it seemed the bad behaviour was from every kinda group. its depending on the person.

if someone doesn't know what the **** psy-trance is and still dance to it happy days, to be honest i hate musical snobbery.
i get more pissed off to nu rave kids in their ****in kanye sunglasses canvas shoes and dayglo cardies shouting old skool!!! and havin it large! while mstrkrft is on the the decks or something. thats just ignorance to me, not lack of knowledge.

budgemook

Have to say I did notice a good few Knackers and being from Mullingar I do know a knacker when I see one. Maybe its a case of judging a book by its cover but no, I certainly did see some Knackers and wouldn't have left anything in my tent. I thought everything was fine other than that. Good buzz, lots of nice people, drink and food wasn't to extortionate. Good times. Someone did rob my camping chairs (twice) though but i've come to expect that at festivals. Those things are almost like lighters, they just disappear yet you always seem to have one.

mango1888

we went with one chair and went through twelve or fourteen, to be hoest yours gets knicked .... rob another. its a hassle brining them home anyway after festivals. we were surrounded by nordies doing special k and a HEAP of dundalkers who were just lookin for trouble.. tbh if ye get to know who's surroundin ye and invite them over for a can and have achat with them 99% of them will leave your **** alone cause they know your cool

budgemook

ah yeah, i dont care about the chairs, same thing with lighters like i said. You put 2 into the system and you have a seat all weekend whether its yours or not. I'm sure the Knackers are fine and all I just dont like hanging around with them or having them nearby. They're not called knackers for no reason. I've no problem with people taking as much drugs as they like either - I just hate Knackers. Anyways, I wouldn't have called it a knackery festival, i was just agreeing that i saw a few knocking around. I'll certainly go back all the same. Most people there were the type of people from other events i go to and i had a great time.

mango1888

mango1888 wrote: »

we went with one chair and went through twelve or fourteen, to be hoest yours gets knicked .... rob another.

Yes. Two wrongs don't make a right, but I think 12 or 14 does...

g5fd6ow0hseima

mango1888 wrote: »

i get more pissed off to nu rave kids in their ****in kanye sunglasses canvas shoes and dayglo cardies shouting old skool!!! and havin it large! while mstrkrft is on the the decks or something. thats just ignorance to me, not lack of knowledge.

Well I didnt see much of them there to be honest, electric picnic would be more of an attraction for that type of crew....

Zascar

I did not really see that many nackers to be honest (apart from the ones camped beside us) but lots of my mates complained about it being way more nackery than they expected. There was a lot of people off their face on Ketamine though - so obvious - very funny actually laughing at the state of them.

That psyche trance arena as imo absolutely horriffic - everywhere else was good but any time I wandered down there, I did not get more than a few feet past the entrance and I just had to turn around and leave - it was like my ears were getting raped!

g5fd6ow0hseima

Zascar wrote: »

I did not really see that many nackers to be honest (apart from the ones camped beside us) but lots of my mates complained about it being way more nackery than they expected. There was a lot of people off their face on Ketamine though - so obvious - very funny actually laughing at the state of them.

That psyche trance arena as imo absolutely horriffic - everywhere else was good but any time I wandered down there, I did not get more than a few feet past the entrance and I just had to turn around and leave - it was like my ears were getting raped!

Perhaps I overreacted by saying 'hoards' of knackers, but I honestly expected that, being a festival of just a few thousand, it would be surprising to find a handful of them, but the numbers of them were far more than expected, percentage wise, they would have been more plentiful at Life than EP.

There were plenty of people on Ketamine alright, seen one hilarious case!

Mouth

I missed life this year... due to lack of funds.... dissaster! but any way when is mantua on does anyone know or after life fest....

Cheers

g5fd6ow0hseima

Mouth wrote: »

I missed life this year... due to lack of funds.... dissaster! but any way when is mantua on does anyone know or after life fest....

Cheers

Mantua isnt on this year. Im gutted as I thought life was going to be this summer's mantua for me, but it turned out to be far different to be honest.

No reasons were given on their myspace for cancelling Mantua this summer, and they let their lease on the web domain expire recently. The festival itself wasnt really making much money over the past number of years from what different people have told me. However, it seems that it will be back in 2010.

The only other festival that would interest me would be knockanstockan, which seems to be mantua #2, but unfortunetly, im not much of a punk / rock head to relish it. There's no electronic on the bill at all....

Mouth

Siena Jolly Switch-hitter wrote: »

Mantua isnt on this year. Im gutted as I thought life was going to be this summer's mantua for me, but it turned out to be far different to be honest.

No reasons were given on their myspace for cancelling Mantua this summer, and they let their lease on the web domain expire recently. The festival itself wasnt really making much money over the past number of years from what different people have told me. However, it seems that it will be back in 2010.

The only other festival that would interest me would be knockanstockan, which seems to be mantua #2, but unfortunetly, im not much of a punk / rock head to relish it. There's no electronic on the bill at all....

Ya il be giving that a skip too id say... **** it just going to have to go outside Ireland for something good... let the search begin...

JC 2K3

Zascar wrote: »

That psyche trance arena as imo absolutely horriffic - everywhere else was good but any time I wandered down there, I did not get more than a few feet past the entrance and I just had to turn around and leave - it was like my ears were getting raped!

It is predominantly a psytrance festival. Fair enough if you don't like it, but that's no reason to knock it.

It had the best visuals, lights, vibe and music of the whole festival IMO.