AllTogetherNow Festival 2018

El Director wrote: »

Interesting, I’ll look into that. The heat killed me. Cheers.

Yeah no bother. Was my first time using it in the heat, was very surprised at how cool it was.

That was class! Already planning for next year already

Great weekend , lots and lots if sound people . Better sign posts on the roads needed . The lads in charge of parking up caravans and campers hadn't a clue what they were at . Roll on next year !!!!

Just back after great festival. Camped in family camping where it was kept spotless and got to know all the lovely neighbours. It was way too loud there at night though, as too close to stage near main house. Earplugs not an option either with younger children. Toilets fairly bad too at times which just isn't on for children. No shop near the family, boutique and campervan area was very strange, if just for milk and juice etc. Site itself was great but weather a major factor. Just going by roughness of ground in places it wouldn't hold up in wet weather and having the main stage at bottom of hill could have been a disaster. The kids together area was a nice idea but ground was very rough there, and no toilets there... obviously whoever planned that doesn't have kids! I agree with a poster earlier that maybe a 9pm curfew on kids in main area needed. Trolleys with kids asleep in the dark is a bit mad alright. I don't know how tight the profit is in a venture like this but it would be great to iron out the few faults and make this a really top class festival.

What a weekend!!!

Was in general camping with my other half for the weekend and we just had the best time. We managed to find a sweet camping spot higher up the hill overlooking the arena, which was really great for chilling out with a few cans, soaking the sun in our camping chairs (sunburn anyone?!). The bathrooms closest to our tent were in pretty good shape throughout the weekend which is always a nice bonus.

The setting was absolutely unreal, the estate itself is worth a visit and I loved the attention put in to all the details, stages, lightshows. Absolute feast for the eyes and soul.

The abundance of food was another great plus. This little stall in the campsite doing proper stonefired pizzas... so so good, and eating lobster while chilling out on the grass watching Saul Williams is a once in a lifetime experience.

The entire festival and organisation felt well thought out and pretty impressive for a first edition. All of the staff and security were pure sound, another first!

Didn't manage to see all the acts I wanted to see, but the flow of the weekend was just spot on so I don't even mind. Musical highlights for me were New Power Generation, Yassiin Bey, Saul Williams, Booka Shade and Ghost Poet. Was also fairly impressed with HAAi closing last night on the Arcadia stage. Talk about primal bass lines..

Best of all (aside for how blessed we were by the weather gods) was the crowd of punters. Wether we made friends for 5 minutes, or with our camping neighbours for the duration of the festival, these friendly faces stole the show for me.

Would love to come back next year with a couple of tweaks.

I hope they will try and keep the attendance as close to what it is now as possible and / or expand the site around the Something Kind of Wonderful stage. It felt a bit crammed with those 3 stages so close together and it tended to be a bottleneck.

Second, kids. I know the festival was marketed to families, but I personally handed 2 children under 6yo over to security because the parents were nowhere to be seen, after midnight. A lot of the kids about the place were having the times of their lives. But there were also children I felt sorry for, holding their hands to their heads watching Underworld for example. I would agree with the suggestion made earlier of some kind of curfew for kids. The mix of drunk/loose/otherwise floaty adults and slightly flighty children is one that made me a tad uncomfortable.

Lastly, the water. I hate to bring it up because I really applaud the idea of plastic free and a festival that tried to be eco friendly. I don't know about you guys, but I had an awful time finding water. The bars never had any to sell when I asked, the Londis and food places kept running out and the taps were few and far between (That s if you managed to hold on to something to actually drink the water out of. I resorted to buying a bottle of yazoo just to be able to get a drink of water).

All in all, one of the most positive festival experiences I've had! And unless the number of attendees is drastically increased for next year, I'll be back with bells and whistles (and more water).

Side question, how did the campervan people get on with the gas / no gas situation?

Great weekend - lovely setting - spectacular really. Great efforts made to create plenty of small chill out areas and art installations. Main house area worked well and projector illuminations onto house was excellent. Music mix here worked well too.

Age profile was spot on - all the talk about too many children - well the parents paid in and mean it was a success for numbers, there clearly is a demand for this type of festival (always room to improve and look at curfews etc but overall given the weather it seemed to go well and didn't put in on other peoples enjoyment).
Would wonder about the site in less favourable weather - some of the terrain and access routes would not hold up in wet conditions, so many steep inclines - may even be impassable in places (the area coming up to the stag in particular, the front of the main stage area, two steep steps on route from house to main stage). Not sure they got disabled access right - saw one scooter topple over going onto a steep ramp.

A few tweaks - (not all criticism but feedback)
There seemed to be several long gaps between acts and stages - sometimes down time on the 3 main stages at the same time.
Took in some of the spoken word and Bandstand stage (and several Dungarvan Beers and The wine bar). Really good mix and very enjoyable. The area was rocking on Sunday and most traders seemed to sell out (speaking to a few of them they were worried friday and saturday - the drinks rule was obviously impacting but the food outlets had low enough numbers too apparently).


Campervan area was disorganised and had to go into an overflow area that lead to many being hemmed in (dangerous) and meant delays leaving today - all the good words on security was not mirrored here as the guy I asked did sweet FA. They need to work the camper areas out for next year - like EP you pay extra for very little and apparently little cost to organisers as there is nothing provided here that camping areas have (not expecting anything but opening a gate and letting everyone to their own devices for and extra 67 euro!).

Toilets, toilets, toilets - more needed and more regular cleaning. Jesus the area near the comedy tent was some mess Sunday evening. None near enough the Bandstand area. Camping areas also too few and no lights. Too few showers.

The Sunday tickets swelled the crowd - it was fine but does indicate what the capacity is for this - keep pushing it up and it will overwhelm the current set up.

And yes - did enjoy the music - the is always a personal preference so no need to list - plenty to entertain and open up to new sounds.

Here's to next year. Last EP coming up me thinks.

Weepsie wrote: »

Can people not just have a refillable bottle with them. It's not that hard. There were taps near the main stage and something kind of wonderful and in the campsite.

Sure, we each have our opinions.

But to be quite honest, no. Organisers have a responsibility to provide punters with ample access to water. In my experience that wasn't the case. I brought several bottles to the festival and they got lost / squashed / picked up by a litter person / missing it's cap. I'm not saying they should sell plastoc bottles instead, but if I ask the bar person to give me a cup they shouldn't refuse me. Access to water should be easier, especially with the heat we had.

Had a superb weekend, but I'm not sure how much of that was to do with the festival itself as much as the fact that I was with a great group of mates and the weather was excellent.

The Great Stuff:

• The Setting. Really lovely, probably the most naturally stunning space I've been to at an Irish festival (though I've never been to Knockanstockan which seems like it would rival it).
• The Food. Excellent food selection
• The Crowd. Mostly friendly and sound, didn't see a hint of trouble and not too many wipeouts either. I think discouraging under 21s really helps here and I hope they stick to it, and enforce it more in future. Glad there were lots of families too, a big fúck you to anyone saying otherwise. I left my wife and toddler at home this weekend, but I can see how the place would have been really great for young ones.

The Meh Stuff:

• The Lineup. It looked good on paper, but I wasn't really blown away by anything other than a couple of early-day bands on the main stage (This is The Kit and First Aid Kit). Underworld were excellent, but nothing new. Fleet Foxes were lovely, but more on that later. There was just a certain lack of depth to the line-up, it was all a bit doof-doof (and I love the oul doof doof mind you, but it was too much) and somewhat backward looking.
• The Site. Something about the way things were organised was really unbalanced. You either spent the whole day up at the top of the hill (and more on *that* later) or where they had crammed in 4 or 5 (if you count Samsung Home) really loud and banging stages. Then down around The House was basically just the one bandstand (and the quiet acoustic tent), and that felt like a different festival entirely, almost just like an open day at a stately home? Then the One Love and All My Friends stages were left out of the natural flow of the crowds completely, and quite hard to find. Why was there no passage from the field with the Something Kind of Wonderful stage to the All My Friends one, for example?
• The Night Time. We spent all 3 post-midnight times back at the campsite. Maybe it was just us, but the main arena felt a little dead after about 2am? The Body and Soul area at EP brings so much night-time spirit to that place, and I missed little bits and pieces from there like the Hurly Burly/Tea Tent cafés, or the weird tiny stages that you stumble across.
• The Teething Problems. Running out of water in most stalls was a bit of a disaster, because it can only be the fault of the festival organisers themselves. At most other festivals the stalls are just bringing their own bottled water, selling it as needed, and I'm sure when supplies are running low they can ship more in quickly enough. But with the cardboard cartons, they were clearly distributed centrally by the organisers, and they obviously underplanned that whole thing. Poor enough signage was a problem too.

The Negatives:

• The Setting. Yeah, I know I'm contradicting myself here, but **** me, I was absolutely ruined by Sunday morning due to all the walking up and down hills, and dancing at stages with weirdly angled ground. The young ones among you will complain about this less, but I can normally get around B&S fine, EP a little less so, but still manage both of them until late Sunday, with the ruination arriving on Monday. I don't really know what they could do about this, certainly having to trek from the campervan site to the general campsite was not fun at all, but they've got to split things up somehow, I guess.
• The "Eco" Attitude. Or really, it wasn't at all. A shameful lack of bins meant you were sitting in a sea of cans and plastic glasses for most of the weekend when you plonked down outside an arena. In the campsites, I was really disappointed by the lack of attention to this by some punters, after seeing the Body and Soul crowd which is always much more likely to clean up after themselves.
• The Chatting. Not everywhere, of course, but at gigs. I was about 3 or 4 rows back from the front at Fleet Foxes and all around were a tonne of people having their own conversations throughout the entire thing. Seriously annoying. If you've no interest in hearing the music, are you just there to snap a few Instagram shots and then feck off again? Well do me a favour and feck off in the first place. Should be a capital punishment to chat during gigs.
• The Arcadia Stage. Looks amazing, good DJs, but don't put it in the middle of every other stage and then give it carte-blanche to have a louder soundsystem than any other area. Won't miss it if it doesn't come back.
• The Noise Bleed. Related to the above, and hardly unique to this festival, but sort it out already. I was at Fleet Foxes and could hear other stages banging it out (over the sound of people chatting that is), and my mates said Nils Frahm was ruined by some other stages noise too.
• The Ambition. Feck me, you could smell them chasing down EP in the air from minute one. Very, very obvious that they were testing the waters of the scale of the place this year for next, as there was a tonne more space than there were crowds. Have it on very good authority that it'll be 30k capacity next year, and it was very clear that this was always a plan. I think it can probably survive the expansion but it all feels a little bit too calculated and clinical to me. There's a genuineness to Body and Soul that you can sense, like the organisers really put their heart and (pun) into it, and I didn't feel that at all here. Don't get me wrong, I think the people decorating the site and the various stages were really working their hardest and their best, but just not the people up above them, you know? It's not that I think the festival will go the way of EP quickly, I would just feel more confident about it with different people at the helm. I do think EP is going to be massively challenged by this festival, anyone saying that they're competing with Body and Soul or whoever is way off - they're gunning for their old festival big time, and with the way EP has gone, I wouldn't be surprised if they succeed.

MJohnston wrote: »

The Ambition. Feck me, you could smell them chasing down EP in the air from minute one. Very, very obvious that they were testing the waters of the scale of the place this year for next, as there was a tonne more space than there were crowds. Have it on very good authority that it'll be 30k capacity next year, and it was very clear that this was always a plan. I think it can probably survive the expansion but it all feels a little bit too calculated and clinical to me. There's a genuineness to Body and Soul that you can sense, like the organisers really put their heart and (pun) into it, and I didn't feel that at all here. Don't get me wrong, I think the people decorating the site and the various stages were really working their hardest and their best, but just not the people up above them, you know? It's not that I think the festival will go the way of EP quickly, I would just feel more confident about it with different people at the helm. I do think EP is going to be massively challenged by this festival, anyone saying that they're competing with Body and Soul or whoever is way off - they're gunning for their old festival big time, and with the way EP has gone, I wouldn't be surprised if they succeed.

I really hope you are wrong but it sounds plausible. I basically want an End of the Road for Ireland. ATN had a lot of the bits to do that in place. Kid friendly, scenic estate, good food and drink. The lineup and Arcadia made it something slightly different.

I don't know if these two worlds can live together without upsetting each other. Eventually either the session heads get annoyed by too many kids or the families get annoyed by the sessioners. You can see it happen in the thread already. ATN need to pick a side and rip the band aid off and go full in on one.

My hope was they'd copped that the sessioners were well catered for and any elements here to appeal to them were a crutch for year one but if they want to be everything to everyone and basically go down your predicted route they'll have lost their chance to be something different. They'll get a bit of momentum off this one having excellent weather but the first grim one and that'll be the start of the end.

For anyone who did enjoy the calmer vibe and the setup I can't recommend End of the Road in the UK enough. It is expensive and a pain to get to (you get to see sunny Salisbury.. noted for the Magna Carta and Novichok) but the scales are tipped much more towards the twilight years crowd than ATN without becoming completely Wimbledon.

MJohnston wrote: »

Nothing to do with alcohol or drug use, in my experience (those just tend to bring out people's natural characteristics).

I don't think I was pointing the finger at booze and drugs.. or at least I hope I wasn't... I love those guys!

It is about who the festival wants to be for. I've said the two groups are session heads and families but those are just the extremes with a sliding scale in the middle. Seams right now ATN is trying to appeal to the whole spectrum but it is an incredibly difficult balancing act and I feel it can throw weight in to the more chilled side and create a niche but it is possible it'll try have it all to its detriment.

MJohnston wrote: »

I mean EP lasted at least 10 before starting to crack at the seams make money.

fixed that for ya
But seriously, there is a connection.

STOP SAYING HOW BLOODY BRILLIANT IT WAS !!!!
You will ruin it for next year ....... No newbies allowed next year !! Its ours, just for us !!

Toast wrote: »

Any of the larger tipi like tents won't be less than twice the price of the ticket and goes up from there. Did they have pink moon/tangerine fields at this? Usually they are about half that price.

General camping was very messy where we were. People pissing outside tents, mushed food into the ground, rubbish everywhere.. someone pumping out Ibiza classics '96 till 7am in the morning. Had nothing taken from the tent or anything but was in fear of it. Fancy Camping is now being discussed.. I'd rather we didn't have to as I like having a camp with mates rather than being all separated up. Dunno how you stop people being messy feckers. Perhaps have a team of grannys go around and give out to them about the state of the camps.

Anyway keep the capacity as is and ensure it never rains and I reckon we will keep coming back.

It probably wouldn't be possible but I think if your tent was linked to your ticket i.e. you had a tag or barcode that could identify it as your tent it might cut down on some messing.

Great weekend.
Where we stayed in the general campsite was pretty quiet once the Arcadia finished up.
Toilets were reasonably maintained but there was need for a few more dotted around especially down at all the food stands in front of the house.
It very much felt like a festival of two halves though with two very different line ups on the main stage from sat and Sunday. (We didnt make it Friday)
A bit of a mess made of the parking for the general campsite too and having to lug beer for 2 and camping gear from the top of the boutique camping carpark took its toll.

I heard the expansion plans too bit I think it could ruin the event. The increase in crowds due to Sunday day tickets really put pressure on food stalls and toilet facilities.
I will defiantly be watching with interest for next year thou.

BananaR wrote: »

Very impressed with overall festival atmosphere. Only just decided to go last minute and really glad I did. Campervan site was nice and quiet for the most part. Very relaxed vibe entering the festival. The setting was beautiful as many people mentioned already. My main criticism is same as others touched on - the music/line-up needs much improvement. Just too much downtime between acts, rescheduling of acts and not really enough of substance going on. A lot of general wandering was done which is great fun and all, but needed way more must see acts to bulk up the lineup.
I hope they decide to keep the capacity at lower level but if they've signed a 10 year deal ambitions may be stronger. Maybe it has be the trade-off for a better lineup. Wouldnt like to see them compromise too much and most criticisms I have could be easily addressed for next year. It sounds like there was some difference between the general camping area and the campervan/boutique side of festival. Wouldn't have thought there was any campsite messiness going on from where we were situated.
I loved the animal themed sculptures!
Will look forward to next year - fingers crossed they don't ruin it!

I also forgot to say food options for vegetarian were very limited - Body & Soul wins hands down on the veggie food front - no comparison. I found it really difficult to get food come sun evening - pieman sold out, vegan sushi rolls sold out, another vegan place closed up and vegan Queen had a ridiculously slow queue. I ended up paying 15 euro for a piss poor veggie pizza.