Life Festival 2012

Pace2008

Lineup for the main tents is out:



Martyn, Planetary Assault Systems, Jamie Jones, Sykro...can't comment on the quality of D'N'B as I'm not well up on it, but I think it's a pretty tasty lineup. Far from a knacker magnet as well.

Radiosurfer

I think it's a bit odd that they haven't put the address on the poster. Excuse my ignorance but I had to check the website to find out where it's on. Anybody been before? Must admit I'm completely ignorant of this festival. With a name like Life I thought it might be related to the rave in knock. That word always sets off my Christian alarm.

Pace2008

It's probably the best-known EDM festival in Ireland and it's been going years. I was there the past two, first was unreal, the second was great though brought down a little by poor weather and a slight unsavoury element in the crowd. The latter may have been due to some of the acts on the bill like Vitalic and John Digweed - whereas previously it had all been techno, drum 'n' bass and the same psytrance song all weekend - or perhaps scumbags just got wind of the fact that there's a mashfest of an event in a field where they play thump all weekend.

old gregg

I went once as a customer, played the next 2, wasn't keen on how artists were treated, never bothered again. The whole love and peace and boom shankar **** wears thin. Much better 'psychedelic' and EDM festivals to be found elsewhere in Europe where the love and peace stuff rings a little truer for customers and artists.

Executive Steve

Yeah, lineup has definitely improved.

Nice to see that Emalkay and myself have been the only victims of their legendary spelling this year.

"Ex Steve" sounds like I sat on a hedgeclippers.

neutronyx

Latest addition to the Life festival Lineup:
It's an opportunity that comes for the first time to Ireland. Marcel Dettmann & Ben Klock arrive in Belvedere House for a 3 hours back 2 back dj set at LIFE FESTIVAL 2012.

electrogrimey

Zascar

ROTFL!

pyramuid man

Would love to see dj Marky. Lineup looks great I must say.

crustyjuggler

One week from now . I guess the weather could change .

carnie

I'm still going to bring my wellies.. The weather is just to unpredictable in this country..

bodhrandude

My review of Life Festival 2012 from two weeks ago, enjoy.
http://niallmcquaid.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/life-festival-2012-mullingar-ireland-25th-27th-may-2/

Executive Steve

Here's my review:


I had a great time there, despite getting covered in sunburn, losing my earplugs and my glasses, my mate having her car robbed, my other mate being attacked by scaldies who were trying to rob his car, my other mate being harrassed by Nazis, and nearly getting stranded down there.

The main problem with it was the fact they were letting people into the carpark without tickets, and sometimes without cars. One friend of mine went out to the carpark to sleep in her van, took one look at the place and quickly figured out that if she stayed the night out there she'd have been raped before sunrise. They'll really need to either move it to a new location or else really tighten up security in a big way because that **** with the car thefts and the carpark being full of packs of rampaging shams is just not a winner.

On a positive note - the layout inside the festival is far and away the best they've had so far, everything made perfect sense, there was little sonic overspill between tents, security was well judged, most people were lovely, the weather was incredible and a lot of effort had clearly gone in to making it a great festival. Attendance-wise I think Forbidden Fruit and, lets face it, emigration were the only real problems that the festival faced, I'm sure there will be lots of handwringing about the lineup not having enough ****ty names but the real problem was that since they had to schedule it the week before the Bank Holiday weekend a lot of people chose to go to Forbidden Fruit instead and attendance was dominated by a very Mullingar demographic - it was striking to see how large of a proportion of the trouble makers (who were still only a tiny minority of the whole festival!) were actually known by name to the security guards and the Gardai.

The lineup was great, one of the best festival lineups Life has ever put together, all the soundsystems (Hertz-U rig especially!!!) were all amazing (shame the volume had to come down so dramatically after the first night though because of complaints from locals, it's only one weekend in the year FFS, suck it up, I guarantee you the noise of the traffic outside my window at 5am is louder than a bit of a bassline echoing over a lake four miles away, don't see me on me balcony hurling abuse at the binmen).

Synkro and Martyn and the few minutes of Cosmin TRG I saw all delivered in spades, although the rig on that Emergence stage was far too quiet and small for the lineup that was playing on it.

Klock and Dettman I had been really really looking forward to based on the sheer amount of love they seem to get online but I thought it was pretty poor, Dettman's haircut was more interesting than any of the records either of them played, and it all sort of petered out into real Fine Gael techno. I mean, after years of reading about these mythical Germans who play marathon sets of dark pounding ****ed up techno in a dark cave with no lights and load of Germans fisting each other with merry abandon you sort of get an idea in your head of what that sounds like, and then when you actually hear those records and it's just vaguely tasteful mid-paced plod it's a massive disappointment. Fran or Sunil would have done a better job.

Kryptic Minds were great, really cavernous malevolent snarly ****, Loxy was the set of the weekend by miles for me even though I thought he could have done a lot more with the last twenty minutes, although he did definitely play the most memorable tunes of the weekend in the mid section of his set; Fracture "Get Busy", "Marka VIP" that new remix of "Hide The Tears", "Thin Ice" etc etc etc, proper things. Only caught a few chunks of Randall's oldschool set because I'd long since taken leave of my senses, good to finally hear "Tudor Rose" on a rig big enough for it though. Kasra was pretty cool too, apparently I tried very hard to get "Get Busy" rewound...

On a local level I thought this wee 19 year old kid from Belfast played a whopper set on the Sunday afternoon, young lad by the name of Fizzik, really deep interesting soundscapey stuff. Matik was solid too, nice clubby bangers, Sho played about seven notches deeper and twenty bpm slower than I'd been expecting, was almost pure ambient at one stage, lovely ****. Major Grave's set was incredible, all his own productions, some amazing tunes on a Grime instrumental tip. Komplex Therapy did a great job on the Sunday as well.

bodhrandude

Some nice audio streams from Life Festival 2012 http://www.rte.ie/digitalradio/pulse/life_festival.html

g5fd6ow0hseima

anyone get to catch planetary assault systems?

EvolutionNights

Yep. It was an amazing show. The sound could have been better but the visuals were stunning. All round a top festival.

bodhrandude

Executive Steve wrote: »

Here's my review:


I had a great time there, despite getting covered in sunburn, losing my earplugs and my glasses, my mate having her car robbed, my other mate being attacked by scaldies who were trying to rob his car, my other mate being harrassed by Nazis, and nearly getting stranded down there.

The main problem with it was the fact they were letting people into the carpark without tickets, and sometimes without cars. One friend of mine went out to the carpark to sleep in her van, took one look at the place and quickly figured out that if she stayed the night out there she'd have been raped before sunrise. They'll really need to either move it to a new location or else really tighten up security in a big way because that **** with the car thefts and the carpark being full of packs of rampaging shams is just not a winner.

On a positive note - the layout inside the festival is far and away the best they've had so far, everything made perfect sense, there was little sonic overspill between tents, security was well judged, most people were lovely, the weather was incredible and a lot of effort had clearly gone in to making it a great festival. Attendance-wise I think Forbidden Fruit and, lets face it, emigration were the only real problems that the festival faced, I'm sure there will be lots of handwringing about the lineup not having enough ****ty names but the real problem was that since they had to schedule it the week before the Bank Holiday weekend a lot of people chose to go to Forbidden Fruit instead and attendance was dominated by a very Mullingar demographic - it was striking to see how large of a proportion of the trouble makers (who were still only a tiny minority of the whole festival!) were actually known by name to the security guards and the Gardai.

The lineup was great, one of the best festival lineups Life has ever put together, all the soundsystems (Hertz-U rig especially!!!) were all amazing (shame the volume had to come down so dramatically after the first night though because of complaints from locals, it's only one weekend in the year FFS, suck it up, I guarantee you the noise of the traffic outside my window at 5am is louder than a bit of a bassline echoing over a lake four miles away, don't see me on me balcony hurling abuse at the binmen).

Synkro and Martyn and the few minutes of Cosmin TRG I saw all delivered in spades, although the rig on that Emergence stage was far too quiet and small for the lineup that was playing on it.

Klock and Dettman I had been really really looking forward to based on the sheer amount of love they seem to get online but I thought it was pretty poor, Dettman's haircut was more interesting than any of the records either of them played, and it all sort of petered out into real Fine Gael techno. I mean, after years of reading about these mythical Germans who play marathon sets of dark pounding ****ed up techno in a dark cave with no lights and load of Germans fisting each other with merry abandon you sort of get an idea in your head of what that sounds like, and then when you actually hear those records and it's just vaguely tasteful mid-paced plod it's a massive disappointment. Fran or Sunil would have done a better job.

Kryptic Minds were great, really cavernous malevolent snarly ****, Loxy was the set of the weekend by miles for me even though I thought he could have done a lot more with the last twenty minutes, although he did definitely play the most memorable tunes of the weekend in the mid section of his set; Fracture "Get Busy", "Marka VIP" that new remix of "Hide The Tears", "Thin Ice" etc etc etc, proper things. Only caught a few chunks of Randall's oldschool set because I'd long since taken leave of my senses, good to finally hear "Tudor Rose" on a rig big enough for it though. Kasra was pretty cool too, apparently I tried very hard to get "Get Busy" rewound...

On a local level I thought this wee 19 year old kid from Belfast played a whopper set on the Sunday afternoon, young lad by the name of Fizzik, really deep interesting soundscapey stuff. Matik was solid too, nice clubby bangers, Sho played about seven notches deeper and twenty bpm slower than I'd been expecting, was almost pure ambient at one stage, lovely ****. Major Grave's set was incredible, all his own productions, some amazing tunes on a Grime instrumental tip. Komplex Therapy did a great job on the Sunday as well.

The problem there is that the box office or accreditation area is after the car park, so they would have to move the box office area to the starting of the car park. Also Life festival has never sold out as yet so they have to sell tickets. Some of the lads I was working with for the pre-fest (volunteers) had worked more or less a week on site so they also get paid by tickets, which meant they have to hang about the car park and festival production area to sell their extra tickets. The simple fact is you dont require a ticket or wristband to park your car, you just pay to park the car, hence, why some folk had booming sound systems in the car park. All you can do really is go onto the Life festival website and email them with your suggestion.

djgarvey123

EvolutionNights wrote: »

Yep. It was an amazing show. The sound could have been better but the visuals were stunning. All round a top festival.

I'll second that.

Executive Steve

bodhrandude wrote: »

Some nice audio streams from Life Festival 2012 http://www.rte.ie/digitalradio/pulse/life_festival.html

They just added a few more, and our set is up there now. Here's the tracklisting:

DJ G - Hydrate - Warm Communications
Overlook - Actress - Alignment
Loxy & Resound - Black Hole - Exit ****
Instra:mental - Rogue - Darkestral
Loxy & Resound - League of Shadows - Samurai
Dub Phizix ft. Fox - Never Been (They Wanna be a Goose!) - Critical
Alix Perez - I'm Free - Shogun
Amit - Swastika - Commercial Suicide
Current Value - Polar Position - Subsistenz ****
Breakage - Untitled Jungle - Bassbin
Gridlok - Enemy of the State - CS:Limited
Loxy & Ink - Headz Roll - Metalheadz
Hybris - Shattered - Dispatch
Blocks & Escher- Shadowplay - digital Soundboy
Doc Scott - 9507 -31
Mason - Zerosum Breakout - Freak
NCQL - Framed Dreams of LoKi - Subtle Audio
Ricky Force & Mecca - You'll Never Know (Dub)
Blue - Subversive (Sensor Records)
Amit - Focus Puller (Commercial Suicide)
Amit - You Look Better Dead (feat. Rani) (Exit Records)
Mecca - Leviathan (Subtle Audio)
Antidote - The Mantra ( Original Mix ) (Dub)
Morphy - Supply Reel (Temper D Productions)