Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024) A Review

Of all the various genres of contemporary popular culture the superhero origin story feels like the most played out, with the action-revenge thriller not far behind it. So it seems odd that last weeks release Monkey Man, which is decidedly situated in both and playing the tropes of each fairly straight, might be one of the freshest and most exciting releases of the year.

The film is a passion project from the British-South East Asian actor Dev Patel and marks his directorial debut. Some readers may remember him from his start on the TV series Skins as part of the first gen, or from later more prominent roles in Slumdog Millionaire, C.H.A.P.P.I.E. and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel series, or my favourite, David Lowery’s Art-House fantasy adaption of The Green Knight. He has definitely done some good work over the years and worked with some of the most interesting directors working at the moment. However as a martial artist since childhood, long before he was interested in acting and fan of action cinema he’d always wanted to be in one of those films, preferably as the lead. Problem was though that the film industry doesn’t tend to see him in that sort of role, and his only way to be in that sort of film would be as “the guy who hacks the mainframe or the comedy side-kick”, unless he made the film himself, which is what Monkey Man is.

 

As much inspired by the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu films, post 2000s South Korean revenge thrillers and The Raid series moreso than anything from the various ‘x’-ywoods of the Indian sub-continent, the film nonetheless wears its status as a product of Indian culture on its sleeve. The titular Monkey is based off of Patel hearing the stories from the Ramayana from his Indian grandfather, specifically that of Hanuman, the Monkey King who assists Rama over the course of the epic, mostly by fighting various gods, mortals and demons with his magic club and martial arts abilities (and yes, if that sounds familiar, this is also widely thought by scholars to be a major inspiration for Sun Wukong, the King Monkey from the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West). 

 

As well as the references to Hindu mythology, authentic Hindi dialogue in some places, the Indian trad elements in the score and OST, and the general aesthetic which does a brilliant job of depicting the modern Indian city as a hellish neon-lit cyberpunk dystopia, it also shows its cultural specificity in the social commentary and messaging. It seems that conscious of this being his first directorial feature and possibly his only, Dev Patel threw every single thing he had at the screen and made sure he said everything he could conceivably want to say, and the top of that list was to stick two middle fingers up at the BJP.

The story of the film concerns a nameless protagonist who infiltrates an exclusive club for the ruling class of a fictional Indian city in order to enact revenge on the corrupt head of Police responsible for the destruction of his village when he was a child. Along the way he tries and initially, fails, succeeding after finding community with other among oppressed to fight not just for his own personal vengeance but for all those dispossessed by the ruling Hinduja elite. The club not-for-nothing is called Kings (the icon styled after a European coronet) in a fairly obvious nod to the Raj and India’s postcolonial status and is full of portraits of the co-opted rulers through which the British exercised control over India. It is full of not just the criminal elites and dirty cops, civil servants and politicians but religious figures, one in particular Baba Shakti who over the course of the film becomes emblematic of how the corruption of the Hindu religious traditions by capital plays into everything.

The story behind the scenes seems to have been as interesting as anything we see in the film itself. The shoot took place during the pandemic and was fraught with practical difficulties and setbacks, including Patel injuring himself several times and running out of money in the middle of production. Even after it was completed getting distribution was a whole other saga. Initially meant to be a Netflix release, they seem to have not reckoned with the political themes and shelved it fearing alienating one of their key markets for distribution. It was eventually picked up thanks to Jordan Peele, who one imagines must have seen an affinity between his own work which explores contemporary political and social issues through a populist genre while also being a solid example of that genre on the black (in both senses of the word) horror comedies Get Out, Us and Nope. Both those things work in its favour, the scrappiness of the production is appropriate for a hard as nails action thriller, that getting a cinematic release and not going straight to streaming is very much appropriate to a movie such in incredible visual sensibility. There is an absolutely gorgeous psychedelic sequence right at the heart of the film that would thoroughly satisfy any fan of Jodorowsky, Russell, Noe or Panos Cosmatos that for my money, as one myself, is worth the door tax on its own.

 

So, if you like action films, prefer them with good politics and you can handle a bit of the old ultra-violence (the 18 cert is exclusively for that, some of which to be fair borders on body-horror) this could well be among your more enjoyable cinematic experiences of the year.

Supersonic 2023

Supersonic Festival has been very much on my festival bucket list for some time. I don’t remember the first time exactly that I came across one of the line-ups and thought “damn, this is everything I’m really into, I need to make this happen some year”, I mean like literally I could have been any time between 2012 and the one they were supposed to do in 2020, the weird psycho-temporal-distortion effects of the lockdown now mean many things prior to that point are a mash. But at any rate It was on my radar for some while but being in an unfamiliar city over the water and all the hassle with flying and general interest but not to the point of being arsed doing anything about it of my general friend circle has just led to it getting pushed off on the long finger until this year.

Why now? Could just be consciousness of getting older and knowing I might well not be able to do this forever. It could also have been getting to experience the festival in the odd-parasocial way that I did when they had the lockdown live-stream which if not exactly delivering the festival experience in its fullest was still very enjoyable and was able to deliver the vibe and ethos. I would like to think I would have gone that year anyway if not for the plague. Lankum were on the line up and as already a bit of a fan I was intrigued to see what they would do in a bit less restrained setting than the seated CQAF gig I’d been to before.

So this year when I was looking at stuff to do I put the word out I was if not committed then at least tossing up the possibility of going on my own, but of the people I got in touch with, I did get a bite. My mate John who is not on socials and I see maybe once or twice a year pre pandemic, and since him and his wife Tara had a kid and moved out of Dublin during lockdown, not even as much as tha. But he’s a huge Godflesh fan, really liked the look of the rest of the proceedings and committed to the full weekend with the Mrs joining us for the Saturday.

First hurdle of actually getting there ended up being a wee bit of a melt, airport delays, rail strikes and traffic accidents had me getting into Birmingham a little later than expected, then the process of getting settled meant that I didn’t quite get off to the venue, which was a very short walk from our accommodation until the early evening and I missed a few of the first bands.

Or I should say “Venues” – as in the plural. The festival took place between two buildings, one big space for the main room in the 7SVN with all the bigger acts and The Mill, which had mutiple floors, trader room, outdoor food court (which all looked amazing, smelt unreal and were reasonably priced but I couldn’t engage with personally), second venue and a nice roof top garden with its own sound system and DJs. As with Arc Tangent the crack was one room on, one room off and set up between sets, with Merch tables being manned at the back of each room if you wanted to support the act that were just on. Having timed it to get from the main stage to the first floor of the mill where the other one was it was literally just a couple of minutes but that did involve crossing a live road (with high vis wearing festival security playing the part of lollipop man, without themed Bloody-Teardrop lollipops unfortunately, possibly due to legal reasons) and you had to finish your drink as you weren’t allowed to take alcohol between the two rooms (probably also for legal reasons tbh though it could well have just been ruse to sell more IPAs 😊).

 

That was certainly all a bit odd but the festival does host a series of talks and have referred to the struggle of running a small underground community festival with a genuine radical ethos in a rapidly gentrifying area of a city, venue insecurity and other practical effects, something I know even big commercial festivals here struggle with, so I suppose those wee things are part of the crack and give the whole proceedings a bit of character.

So before getting into the bands and days as stuff, just general impressions of the festival itself are incredibly positive. Everything I could have hoped for a small boutique underground with a range of noise adjacent music from chill meditative ambient to the most ridiculously heavy rock and metal to full on fist-pump Bangface-appropriate rave. Just enough of everything to give it a bit of variety so you really appreciate all the individual pieces in context and that whole through line of noise and general playfulness giving it a consistency too. The crowd was, as with ATG, as with Bangface these days and I’m guessing most spaces where the genuinely cool people who get the crack congregate to be fair, politically radical, alternative, queer, feminist, trans-inclusive, friendly, approachable. The vibe checker app on my smartphone was going crazy all weekend

So, first thing I managed to catch on Friday was the last bit of local post-punk outfit Total Luck. Great start to the proceedings as the heaviness and liveliness where what I needed at that point to dust off  the cobwebs and get myself moving after all that travelling. We missed whatever was on next in favour of a bit of exploring and seeing what the layout of the whole thing was. We did get to see Deerhoof, the Friday headliner and something I was particularly looking forwards to. Lively, eclectic guitar based music, constantly transitioning between styles and tying together with J-Pop vocals tying everything together. A complete blast beginning to end.

After that a bit more mooching about the venue before back to the main room for Hey Colossus, who I wasn’t mad familiar with before but knew where right up my street from the second I heard the deep, menacing, Echo(and the Bunnymen)-y gothic drone of the first tune. After that, back to the mill for live analogue face-melt industrial techno 2-piece Giant Swan. Having been suitably pumped by that we finished on the main stage for Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals brining some sick bass-heavy alt hip-­hop.

Tempted as I we were to continue the night either with the small gaggle of sound folk we’d got chatting with in the smoking area or to book up to a gig being out on by one of the extended Hard Crew fam, all the travelling and festivities was catching up with us and we had to call it quits.

Saturday, John stalled at the flat waiting for his partner, who was also experiencing some of the travel woes I’d been subject to the day before. I had a nice afternoon bate’in about on my own through Digbeth doing a bit of exploring on my way to the other-other venue, an art gallery a couple of streets over from the rest of the stuff that hosted the talks, pub quiz and film showings (which I went to) in the afternoons. Digbeth strikes me as like the local Brum version of Camden or the couple of genuinely cool bits off Royal Avenue here, CQ, Union St. etc. Lots of cool wee spots, a complex with an Arcade Bar next to a Boardgame Café, next to a cinema bar, some small independent art galleries and workshops, loads of absolutely phenomenal graff and street art all over the place. I got to see a showcase of music videos and short video art projects from Ipecac, Mike Patton’s own indie label. 

 
First music I caught was the hardcore punk group Blind Eye in The Mill. As it was early in the day the front of the stage was nice and roomy so I had a lot of space to jump about in, which I definitely made the most of. Black’s Myths was a very different energy, lots of drone-doom goodness with a bit of jazz drumming to give you something to move to, no breaks between songs just a constant roll that you can get yourself into properly. After that I saw Ashenspire, who I’d had the pleasure of seeing do their queer anarchist blackened jazz-metal at ATG a couple of weeks ago and once again enjoyed the hell out of before nipping out a little early to get a good spot for Taqbir.

Taqbir are a riot girl group from Morocco in North Africa who perform with the full face Niqāb - for personal safety moreso that religious observation as their radical feminist and queer-inclusive messaging in their songs puts them in the line of fire of conservative groups back home and in general. Punk at its rawest from a circumstance where its ethos is at its most urgent, it had an edge on it that you just don’t get in hardcore in the occident where the innate revolutionary politics are less urgent. They played a short set, as befitting of the genre, but were a definite highlight of the evening. After that I caught a little bit of writer and Oxbow frontman Eugene S Robinson being interviewed in the dealer room by an old festival friend who I’d had a lovely time catching up with for the first time IRL in near ten years. Between that and having to nip back to the gaff for food I missed the only thing I am in retrospect incredibly gutted at missing all weekend, Divide and Dissolve who apparently wrecked the place with one of the nosiest, loudest and generally memorable performances of the weekend.

By the time I got back John and Tara were on site and despite being a bit worse the wear for all the travelling and whatnot we managed to get in the headliners Godflesh on their loudest and most abrasive form I’ve ever had the pleasure of catching. 

We saw DJ Bus Replacement Service who was less weird and more straight up doof than I was expecting, deviating from the relentless techno for a bit of bassline and a censored cut of DJ Assault’s classic Ass and Titties, all while being supported from the sidelines by her partner Surgeon. That was just like a little slice of Bangface right in the middle of the fest, complete with inflatables going off all over the room and general silly fun vibe.

Then Backxwash finishing the main stage. It was actually the inclusion of Backxwash to the lineup for their UK debut that had made me get my arse in gear about committing to going this year. She’s an artist that I’d fallen in love with over the lockdown when I’d had a bit more time to explore and indulge my passion for musical exploration. Aggressively queer alternative hip hop with elements of industrial noise, black metal and samples of back radical thinkers and cultural figures, X, Davis, Nina Simone etc. and contemporary hip-hop rhythms. A very heady and unique brew, brilliantly executed and clearly loving having the opportunity to get over and do their thing in front of such and appreciative crowd.

The Art

Again, opportunities to party after were there but the excitement of the day and being middle aged AF over here had us all calling discretion the better part of valour and calling it for the night.

The Sunday again has us over at the other-other stage after seeing Tara off I the early afternoon for the Pub Quiz, which we stupidly didn’t think to register for early and had to miss. All good though as that meant more time to see around Digbeth for us, John exploring the culinary pleasures of the area and me getting to actually have a crack at the arcade bar and check out some more of the art. 

Seems like it was a good weekend for exploration in Birmingham. There was a big open air complex next door, the courtyard and stage of which could be seen from the smoking area, had a Reggae festival on that day. I jokingly suggested to one of the security staff that they could turn the speaker in that part of the terrace off to let anyone who had a mind to watch. That suggestion was laughed off politely with a little finger wagging, I was being serious tbh.

First act was Jessica Moss, playing a solo with Violin and Loop pedal / vocal looping effects. Very different, very cool, first time seeing something like that myself since Sonorities last year.

After that I got to see a but of the Supersonic Mass, a quasi-religious ceremony lead by an MC with a bannered parade from the Mill to the 7SVN, with a large one with the names of every act to play the festival in the last 20 years at the head and a ritualistic recitation thereof. That was followed by British folk artists Shovel Dance Collective, Silvermoth, Mark Wagner bringing some ritualistic doom and a quick trip back to the gaff to food-up. Me and John had no big plans for the day up to seeing Lankum later on so just hopped room to room exploring. Yeah and remember what I said earlier about the Reggae festival next door, we got lured into the terrace with some sick beats courtesy of the Tropical Wreck collective and guess what, speaker at far corner disconnected and mostly bar and security staff and one or two punters, shortly to include ourselves, vibing to the ragga dancehall across the road 😊 ‘I toul yiz, didn’ I? 

After that bit of excitement back down to see Jessica Moss, the violinist from earlier in the main room this time with Big Brave playing a very different but equally impressive set.

Moving didn’t bear thinking about because shortly it would be time for Sunday headliners, Irish trad artists Lankum. For those who don’t know, and shame on you if you are in that cohort, Lankum were previously a two piece, “Lynched” after the surname of the brothers Darragh and Ian Lynch who were well known in the underground metal scene in Ireland for being the two lads who liked to play random trad songs while partying after shows. Now after a name change considering the possibility of taking off in places where their band name has certain connotations that they’d rather not be associated with, and being joined by multi instrumentalists Cormac MacDiarmada and Radie Peat, the latter of who adds her own incredibly raw and beautiful Sean Nós vocalisation to the mix, are now Lankum. They have been tearing up the local festival and gig circuit at and near home, and now 3 masterful albums deep into the project are getting genuine international notoriety. I have seen them live before and they’re never anything short of special but in this context being both in England and yet in a place long a centre for Irish immigration, so also basically on home turf it was just mind-blowing. There’s something about what they do that touches something incredibly primal like in general but especially if you’re Irish, with noise-y droned out versions of old standards, eg, The Wild Rover – the absolute pinnacle of a cheesy over played trad tune that everyone and their granda knows like the back of their hand through sheer cultural osmosis yet still given such a squalid and real life by them as to sound brand new and fit neatly alongside their own contemporary murder-suicide ballads about the metal health crisis in modern Ireland and living on the breadline in post-crash Dublin. Myself and my mate both had actual hairs on the back of our necks fully up and tears of national pride and many more complex emotions in our eyes all through it.

Now we’d have thought that after that we’d be too emotionally drained to get another real transcendent moment of musical appreciation out of the last couple of hours of the night, and yet… being tired though not quite done yet we made a bate to the Mill for the last time, to grab my coat from the cloak room and stick our heads around the door if only to check out the last artists on the second stage. ‘Tis as well we did for that turned out to be an absolutely blinding alt hip hop crew Algiers. This was a two piece with the beats having a particularly 80s vintage retro-synthwave tip to them and and MC with a really interesting range including blues-y sing-rapping, Saul Williams-esque lyricism and politically conscious bars. Some of it really banged too, like proper rave breaks.

Re-invigorated we did get down for Avalanche Kaito, lively mathy Afro rock, Zappa-esque compositional weirdness, traditional West-African instrumentation, Griot vocals and a bit of call-response. We were lucky enough to bump into some of the incredibly cool folks we’d got chatting to on the Friday on the dancefloor too and it was a great end to the night and the event.

Overall, as I hope I’ve been able to convey here, I had the absolute time of it. For reasons I’ll not get into, this has been a tough year all round, the general shittyness of the weather over the summer since the start of July being only the least among many things to complain of. So this was a well deserved bit of release and a chance to engage with communities and spaces that are important to me and are part of what helps feed the soul. Glad I got there at last and I hope that this small offering of my efforts can help feed back into it a little. I’d love to get back maybe as a regular part of my yearly cycle of things but time will tell how able I am for that in the future.

I will also note that this weekend was also when the first part of the new Adventure Time spin off dropped and I had been looking forwards to getting into that when I got back, which I did and was all I could have hoped a continuation of one of my absolute favourite things ever with the complexity tuned up just a little and now aimed at a more self consciously adult audience who’d grew up with the series over the last decade could ever be. So I’ve had my mind-hole well fed to the point of being stuffed and satisfied and feel a bit more ready for whatever this increasingly shaky and unpredictable future we all find ourselves in may hold. You can’t ask more from a long weekend than that really, can you?

 

ArcTanGent 2023

 Ok, so to not bury the lead journo-style: main thing is ArcTanGent was great and I can indeed still hack a 3 day Camping festival. This is my first since Life 2014, I have broken both legs and swore off them since then, but when I saw the lineup for this I knew I had to make the effort to get over. So I did.

First thing I'll say that as festivals go, I thought it was fantastically well done. The production, curation, provision of site services and essentials, cleanslyness and usefulness of the bathroom facilties, the pre pitched tent I sprung for, and just the general vibe and atmosphere were all great. I was impressed with the dedication to being enviromentally conscious, it was weird buying tinned water (particularly since the design on the stuff at the bar was very Repo Man esque) but it was good that the place wasn't covered in plastic.

Also for a Metal festival, generally lefty AF, aside apparently a few boneheads who turned up for Heilung who I personally didn't see but heard about from a few people. Hielung themselves are conscsious by the nature of what they do inevitably attract a bit of that sort of thing but have distanced themselves from it publicly to the extent that they can. Other than that, I saw plenty of antifa patches on peoples stuff, lots of leftist, feminist, queer and trans artists and just people about the place in general. 

Pure family vibe too. Like there wasn't a play pen or stuff specifically for kids, but there was a good few babies and actual childer knocking about. Not many but enough that it all felt wierdly wholesome. I saw some folk with their kids (always with ear protectors) up on their shoulders at the main stage. Parenting goals tbf.

I found the way they ran the thing interesting. Everything started really early, first bands on 11ish, and everything runs up to 11pm, after which there is a "Silent Disco" where everyone who wants to can go to a stage and listen to DJ sets being played through headphones. Presumably this is to get around local sound rules and regs that dogged Boomtown the last couple of years I was there. Not the worst way to placate the NIMBYs if that's what you need to do, beats turning the sound down on the main stages after 11pm.

The stages were all pretty close together, had they all been on full time they'd have noise polluted each other out, but with this being basically all bands and stuff that required a set up they staggered the set times so at any given time one stage was on they'd be prepping for the next act on the other stage. I'm guess that's probably relatively normal for that type of festival but I'd personally not seen it before so yeah. Cool. Also made it easy to have a wee snoop about the different stages if you'd a mind to.

What I got up to: Thursday, flight got delayed getting from Belfast to Bristol and the coach into town took a bit longer than I had thought from the (admittedly somewhat rushed) research I had done into the transpot situ so I ended up getting charged dear for some of the camping equiptment I had to get from the last camp shop open in Brizzle by the time I got there (which means I need to do a few more of these things to get the use out of them, oh well....) and I didn't get to do some of the shopping I had planned which meant I had to rely on the then unknown quantity of making do with whatever I could get onsite. It also meant that by the time I got up to the site and got my shit together I had missed practically everything on the first day. No Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs for me unfortunately. If I'm back I reckon I'll need to look into arranging things a bit better with that in mind. It wasn't a complete washout, I did get to see a good bit of Converge who were headlining the mainstage and most of my first big discovery of the weekend Straight Girl who had played the wednesday and was covering for someone who had pulled out, apparently due to getting stuck on the UK border. I had literally just nipped out of Converge to have a quick snoop at the other stages to see what they were like, not intending to really be away for too long when I heard bass, breaks and beats coming from up the hill. Unreal, and short, enough that I caught the latter half of Converge. After that I was wrecked after all the running around so I booked and got my head down. 

Friday I had a pleasant morning catching up with the neighbors (a girl from here and her mate from down South, nice!). Made frieds with a bunch of sound lads from Cardiff, who I'll refer to as 'Jeff's Mates'. I got to see most or all of Joliette, Ashenspire and CLT DRP and really liked them. I saw And So I Watch You From Afar, actually for the first time live, now feel like a bit of a nob for not having done so before. I saw Pet Brick again who I'd had the absolute best time watching at Bangface and gave it absolute stacks, probably the most lively I was all weekend. I didn't get drawn into the mosh pit but I was sorely tempted. Big highlights from the friday tho, not unexpectedly as they were along with Igorrr the big draws for me of the whole thing; Swans and Hielung. Swans was just darkness,vibe and intensity. I got complete full-body frission. It was great. Hielung was just on another level. For those that don't know, they basically do a sort of reimagining of Norse/German pagan shamanic rituals using costumes, instruments etc based on the type of things they have in the historical record or found in Iron Age burial sites from Northern Europe and a good bit beyond (but that's not important and they're not going for full dilligent authenticity). The stage craft is really elaborate too. Off all the stuff I saw, they'd be the only thing that if someone put them on in the Waterfront or something I'd take my parents to see them.

That was the day of the really horrible weather (in the middle of f'ing August, this is what global warming is for the UK btw) and it blew me right into my tent past any feeling towards sociability on my part. And I was just knackered tbh. 

Saturday, having actually just had a really good rest I was intent on making the best of the last day. I caught A Burial At Sea, mathrock group Land Wars (Davitt / Parnell reference? one of the guys is from Cavan so maybe). After that I caught some nice queer, gothy-gazey act called Cultdreams and bumped into my mate Big Mike at the end. He took me to see Gggolddd, cracking dark, moody synth/trip-hop. We split and I had saw Grub Nap for a bit of a change of pace, 2 lads from Leeds doing aggy Sludge-core. Great stuff. Simmilarly the Callous Daoboys were a lot of fun and really heavy, Rolo Tomasi, Health and Loathe were all awesome in different ways and for different reasons. Deafhaven were great, aside from the technical difficulties which I didn't mind so much but I could see people who are more emotionally invested in them getting upset over, especially since they were doing their iconic Sunbather album beginning to end.

Absolute stand out of the day though, again predictably, was Igorrr. I love Igorrr, have been into them since back when he was releasing on NI's own Acroplane and Ad Noiseum. Saw him play a set at Bangface 2016. Seeing him blow up on the metal circuit and bring in more live elements to the shows since then has been an absolute pleasure. This time he had the full band, him on his hardware, his live drummer, guitarist and an opera singer providing vocals going through mostly stuff off the last two albums. he opened with a wee bit of breakcore and finished off again just by himself banging out the glitches, bass and drum breaks. 

I ended up only seeing a wee bit of Devin Townsend, actually bumped into a guy I met in his own house last week after Kneecap, ended up hanging with him, his brother and their mate who I'd been talking to earlier at the start of Igorrr, then finished the weekend hanging with Jeff's mates, and other people who came around, including two lads from Lambeg, one of who recognised me from activist stuff back in the day and grew up in the street opposite my house, and his mate who was at Lagan literally just as I left. This country is a village.

Silly crack was had. It was a good end to a good day and the festival in general. I had a great time, could see myself coming back if they pull out another lineup like this years that just has a lot of stuff on it I really like. Or that could prove to be a fluke, we'll see. Would be good to get a crowd up for it if I do go back.

Species 2015

Well, another month and another festival report. I’ll say straight off the bat that this is not going to be an objective review or anything, Species is now particularly special to me as it marks my first festival appearance DJing`(2nd + 3rd times doing it live in front of an audience). I had tremendous fun preparing the sets and got real buzz performing them. This was the first Species, indeed the first weekend-long festival by and for the Goth / Alternative subculture to be held in Ireland. Whitby, Infest etc. have been running successfully in Britain for some time, WGT is largest and best known of the various festivals of its type to run in Europe but up until now, in spite of small and reasonably active scenes in various parts of the country, nobody has attempted anything like this here. In the past the site has played host to the Alien Vibrations festival as well as various private gigs and parties, which have all run successfully and become fixtures of the scenes this events cater to. The promoters Illiocht and Harriet are both Goths of the old school and wanted to do something for their own subculture this time. Rather than just a straight up gig or rave of the sort the site has seen in the past this was meant to be an Arts Festival that would of course contain music as an important component but also be a showcase for different types of Art work, performance art, dance and poetry. As such I would say that it was a brave effort to do something new for the scene in this part of the world. While not everything went according to plan it was certainly fun to be a part of and observe and I reckon that a good few lessons have been learned for the next one.

Alright, before I get into it I’d like to get the few negatives out of the way first. There’s two types of weather that you get at camping festivals, the type you want and the type you definitely don’t want. The weekend of Species saw two solid days of the sort that you definitely don’t want, in fact it was some of the worst weather that the site had seen since the height of the winter. Rain-storms overnight, drizzle when it wasn’t lashing, high winds that knocked over the graffiti wall that had been erected for the festival and the Marquee that was intended for the Gothic tea-party on the Saturday afternoon. I’ve seen some bad festival weather in my time and this was up there with the worst. I was staying in the performers cabin so I luckily didn’t have to get wet but those camping were not so lucky and a lot of people left after the first night and a good few people who had been intending to come down on the Saturday ended up not coming. To be fair, it did give the extremely beautiful part of the Irish countryside we were in a bleak Wuthring Heights-esque ambience appropriate for a Gothic Arts festival, but picturesque though it was – that’s not what you want at a camping festival.

Aside from that the organises also had a bit of bad luck early on when Facebook’s fascistic algorithms that decide whether people are using their real names or not flagged the account of the co-organiser Harriet and decided that her facebook handle was too flamboyantly Welsh to be that of a real person. So aye, Facebook is essentially racist against the Welsh, either that or it thinks they’re a mythical race like Tolkien’s Eldar or the Riddlers. The upshot of this was that the events page which was in Harriet’s name ended up being shut down on the eve of the event which no doubt cost the organisers a few punters. The equipment on site was put fairly through its paces too. There were a few issues with the decks and some of the other hardware, which led to the schedule slipping a bit on the Saturday night.  That said, Ambrose the sound-tech struggled manfully with the various pieces of kit and kept everything pumping along almost single handedly all weekend and any sound problems that came up got resolved sharpish. So aside from what were essentially teething problems and things well beyond the reasonable control of the organisers it was a pretty good weekend.  The site itself was amazing. We were right up in the mountains in Leitrim and the few times the weather cleared up you could see for miles around you. The Great Hall of Illiocht - the converted barn that serves as the main stage - had a new wooden interior to stop the bass rattling the corrugated metal walls of the hall. Like rest of the site it was kitted out with artwork and served as a showcase for the artwork of the co-organiser Harriet as well as other local artists from amongst their crowd of friends such as Belfast underground art-scene veteran Andy Brown. The rest of the site was bedecked with wall paintings and objet d'art. Artwork was also provided by some of the attendees, aside from Harriet's paintings and Sculpture about the site, walls and surfaces were made available to artists to decorate for the occasion.
There was also a small market place from the Saturday afternoon onward with prints, stickers and books featuring original art by Harriet, cupcakes, and alternative clothing and apparel by Bella Muerte.

The music was a mixture of the various branches of the broad church of musical styles that come under the banner of Alternative. As such it was an eclectic and enjoyable mix. It all started off suitably weird with the first act I saw on the Friday, a Belfast based producer called Monty performing as BendingWrongs. The first thing I clocked as he was setting up was an Aphex Twin logo on the back of the laptop he was performing off, which I immediately took as a good sign. He played a set of industrial-y glitch IDM, all of which he’d producer himself. I found it very enjoyable, I particularly liked the last track which started with the vocals from Energy 106 classic Discoland that descended into chopped breakbeats and acid bleeps.
After him was more original productions, this time from festival organiser illiocht as his dark ambient / horror core musical project Kraven Brainz. That was good fun, all spooky noisey sounds and horror samples (and a few Adventure Time LSP ones in the last arrangement for the crack). The next act I saw were Sugarplum Suicide. Apparently they had a few technical issues at the beginning of their set with their laptop / drum machine. I didn’t catch any of that and what I saw of them was great. 
After was Venus de Vilo, Gothic singer songwriter. It was good fun like Amanda Palmer doing cabaret on a sort of tongue in cheek horror-pops tip. the tunes were quirky and amusing and she was very good at engaging the crowd. Would definitely go see her again if she played Belfast, just sorry didn’t get any better photos. There were a series of DJs playing old school synth classics and some club-industrial the ret of the night. One on the friday I particularly enjoyed was Alex who played a lot of industrial dubstep and a couple of Igorrr tunes. In terms of the DJing that was the highlight of the Friday for me. I didn’t stay up too late to see any of the DJs who were on later as I had some work of my own to do the next day.
Saturday was my day. I had two sets to perform, my 2nd and 3rd public appearance DJing. Prior to the event after being booked I messaged Illiocht through the events artists page on Facebook to ask what time they were thinking of putting me on at, saying I could play a relatively chill / ambient set if I was on early or a harder more rave one if I was on later on. Next thing the first schedule goes up and I have two sets, one on the saturday afternoon and another midnight Saturday night / Sunday morning. Well played.

I was actually in a little bit of a panic when I saw that at first because it was like twice the amount of prep to do. In the event it actually worked out well, I didn’t have time to meticulously plan every track progression and every mix like the last time I’d played out on Halloween. I just about had time to get together a collection of tunes that I wanted to play and I felt sounded good together. Which was good because that's really what you ought to be doing, and along with being able to beat match and read the mood of the room and play accordingly, what the art if DJing actually is. I knew with each set how I wanted to start, some tunes I’ve always wanted to hear through a proper sound system and a notion of how I wanted to finish. I also had a good idea of what to do with some of the harder tracks to mix out of and what would actually just mix well enough with anything else.

The early set at 3pm in the afternoon was a selection of tracks I felt would be appropriate for a civilised mid afternoon goth disco. I started with a little of what I would call Urban Gothic. Urban Gothic isn’t a genre of music that currently exists as such, Its just how I like to characterise a range of the stuff that I like and like to play when given the chance. Its anything fundamentally dark, moody and / or industrial thats also conspicuously based on 4/4 beats. It covers the darker more industrial ends of UK Bass music, some of the slower and more sombre ends of breakcore (i.e. End.users more hip-hop tempo stuff) and the breakbeat-y / Glitch / IDM music coming out of the industrial scene from lables like Hymen, Tympanic Audio etc. So the set started with a little of that (Ambient into industrial hip hop breaks into Gothic vocal-dubstep into a really deep sub-y Scorn remix of Glory Box) and followed into some 4/4 beats and kept it there. I played a few classics from some of the pioneers of the genre, dropped an acid techno-y danceable remix of LFO’s Industrial / EBM track Tied Up as a small personal tribute to the legend that was Mark Bell (sadly taken from us last year), some Gloomcore and some new stuff thats only been out in the last couple of years. This all went down extremely well, the crowd in the Great Hall that I could see were extremely appreciative and as it wasn’t particularly windy at that point the music was carried all over the festival so loads of people who weren’t actually there but did hear my set came up to me after to tell me how much they enjoyed it.

Spurred on by this initial success I was well in the mood for my later set, but that was hours away and I enjoyed catching some of the other stuff that was on in the meantime. Deathness Injection were properly class. They do industrial noise off live hardware while playing out a performance piece that is like a live Tool video. Thats about the closest I can come to describing it, you can check out some of their performances from their youtube but they don’t quite do the live experience justice.

Tragedy Vampires

Also awesome but completely different were the gothic rock outfit Tragedy Vampires. They were great, tight musicians, the lead singer clearly loving being able to smoke on stage. I had a great time bouncing around to their harder punk-y numbers, they were also good crack after, hang out and spoke to me and my mates and give us some of their CDs. They’ll be playing the Distortion Project in Belfast next month along with some Psychobilly and horror-pop bands, if that sounds like your cup of tea it’ll be well worth checking out.


It was at this point that hilarity ensued with the equipment, one of the decks malfunctioning and the proceeding were pushed forwards. Among those were the gorgeous Deby Discosue performing as DiScoSwitch who gave us an LED assisted dance routine to some dark industrial beats, which looked amazing.

Ambrose aka DJ Flesh the sound tech followed with an all vinyl set of old school electronic Post-Punk and New Beat. It was great to have an all to rare opportunity to hear this stuff on a decent rig and he finished on Joy Divisions Disorder which is a long standing personal favourite of mine.

After that it was time for my second set.

So having requested a late set if they wanted me to bring some heaviness and been given one I took that as leave to go for broke with my hardest stuff, which I did. I broke out a lot of powernoise tracks that I’ve personally been busting to hear over a rig since I started getting into that style of music, mixed it in with a lot of Industrial Techno, hardcore and breakcore. As with the last set I had a bit of an idea where I wanted to start but kept it loose enough and only decided the opening track going through the playlist I’d assembled about an hour before I went on. Appropriately enough since I was rocking one of his “Keep Industrial Weird” T Shirts it was a Caustic tune. Of the three times I’ve played live no this one was by far the most fun, I was able to get properly into it and I think that comes across in the recording. The very last track I actually threw in at random, the ending I had envisioned I came to a little ahead of time leaving me enough time for one more and it was just like ‘what do I want to hear, what could I just drop on here that would sound amazing?’

I was buzzing coming off stage, I felt like I’d one well and I got a lot of positive feedback from the people i spoke to after. One girl told me her brother is a hardcore producer and having a familiarity with both that and the industrial scene she had never heard anyone else mixing them together in the same set and really enjoyed it.

It was quite late by the time I was finishing but the nice thing about small festivals in the middle of nowhere is the informality of the proceedings, a lad from Dublin DJ Annatar came on after me and played a set of aggro tech and club industrial, haven’t really been into that stuff for a while but i liked a lot of the tunes he was playing, that Neuroticfish “They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha Ha!” cover is another long standing personal favourite and hearing it actually gave me second wind and enough energy to power through into the next morning.

After that Ambrose had caught second wind and me and the last couple of people that were still knocking about at that time sat up and bopped about to him playing through some of the rest of his extensive vinyl collection into the wee hours.

My lift left early enough on the next morning and the event was only on until the Sunday afternoon so theres not much more to report. All I can say is that i had immense crack playing and enjoying the rest of the fun on offer. Illicit and Harriet have no illusions that this is going to mushroom into a Glastonbury or even much beyond the site capacity of a couple of hundred people but they will be doing it again next May bank holiday. I look forwards to this quite intimate arts festival for the goth community turning into a fixture of the Irish alternative scene and will be interested in seeing some of the plans for this one that had to be put aside due to the weather come to fruition and what it’ll be like after some of the lessons have been learned from this time around and teething issues have been ironed out. I’d recommend next years to anyone else in the scene who is interested in supporting something local and a bit different.  It’s a great opportunity to touch base with the scene on the rest of the island, we have such a diverse alternative scene here with such an array of very talented people who’re a part of it but it’s also so fragmented that it’ll be good to have something to draw it all together and that this has the potential to be just that.

So aye, Species 2015, amazing crack. Will be back next year, watch this space.

(Net stop, Forbidden Fruit)