blooooooc!

first day back at work after Bloc, and don't actually feel too bad!

Friday, we arrived at the Pontins around 8pm, just before the buses arrived with droves of revellers, so we managed to get checked in quite quickly; Thanks to Derek and Lisa, from the Wire, who i was rooming with, we got a pretty decent vip room - when i say decent, i only mean comparitively so!

Already the crowds of people were looking pretty mashed up and messy, which was pretty much how they were for the whole weekend! Musically, on friday night, the only thing i got really into were the Skull Disco DJ sets from Appleblim and Peverelist, but it was a long fun night anyhow.

Saturday, on a little sleep, we somehow made it out of the chalet for 3pm to see Christ playing, which turned out to be excellent, the sound system totally did his music justice and even so early on the day, there was a good turnout. Rustie was also on pretty early, around 5pm i think - he was fscking awesome again. The saturday evening definitely had the best lineup, and I caught a few really good shows - Monolake (with no sign of T++!) played an amazing set, which may well have been one of my highlights; the other highlights for me personally were Kode 9's set, Skream DJ set, and The Bug's live show, and then.. wow.. Juan Atkins was stunning. The second track he dropped was by Redshape, to which i went a bit nuts, but yeah, fully plus8 banging techno and soo good!

Sunday checked out some of Boxcutter, which was better than i was expected, but the decision was made to drive back on sunday eve and have a whole day off on monday rather than travel home on monday.

A great fun weekend, all in all, but on reflection, i think the festival itself was quite lacking - there didn't seem to be much effort put into making it an overall good experience, even down to the festival program being really cheaply designed, and compared to the small collectible packs you get from ATP, didn't seem worth holding onto, just a badly designed four page A5 booklet with adverts. With the abundance of festivals these days, I feel if you want to make something special, you have to make a good deal of effort and think about the details, rather than just a good lineup and bringing 2500 people to a kinda skanky holiday park. still - quite fun!

Labels: bloc, festival, rant, reviews