alucidnation DJ / Live
Firegathering Festival, Sussex
16th-18th May 2008.

It was only whilst absently browsing the interweb and stumbling upon the Digitonal website back in February 08 that I found out about this little gem of a festival. I penned a quick mail to the organiser, Russell, who wrote back to me asking me to perform there too.

I was kind of vaguely familiar with the location of the site, as back in the early noughties, Marcus Bailey and myself had organised some great parties in fields adjacent to where the Firegathering was taking place, deep in Sussex countryside. In fact, Firegathering uses land that's owned by Ridge Farm, home to the famous recording facility that was... anyone who's anyone has recorded there in days of yore!

As is becoming the norm these days, Ed Richardson, my VJ turned up at my place in Harrow a couple of days prior to leaving for the festival, so that we could do a bit of 'rehearsal' for the gig. In actual fact, we didn't really do any rehearsing at all, it was more a case of "let's just see what happens when we turn up".

So come the Friday afternoon, we were packed and ready to rock, which we duly did. It took us a while to find the site. Ed had imbibed a joint on the way down, and his map-reading capabilities had been diminished somewhat. After a short amount of time buggering about trying to find the festival, we happened upon it by chance!

To be honest, the whole vibe was very reminiscent of the first Big Chill Gala in the Black Mountains. A group of enthusiastic volunteers manned the main gate waiting to hand out wristbands to the 1000 or so that turned up to indulge in music and merriment for the next three days.

There was no fencing, no security, cars were allowed on site, and the focal point each night was the bonfire, hence the name of the festival. It was a real breath of fresh air... Russell and the rest of the crew made an absolute top job of organising this, so big up yourselves.

The bar was brimming with top-quality local ales and ciders, alongside the more traditional piss such as your Stellas and Strongbows. Needless to say, Ed and I (and Marcus who turned up on the Saturday) possibly over-indulged on the very reasonably priced stock available but it was testiment to the quality of the beer that little or no hangovers were experienced.

As for my performances, well, I opened the main stage on the Saturday lunchtime to an audience of about two, one of which was a sleeping baby. I was due to perform my live gig later that day on the Lizard Stage at about 1am. 1am came and went; it wasn't until about 3.30am that we finally came on to rapturous applause from the ten or so stragglers (OK, thirty) that still had their eyes open!

The lack of a rehearsal paid off though, we both enjoyed ourselves, Ed experimenting with some new VJ software and me just improvising alongside more beat-driven work in my catalogue.

It was good to finally get to bed at about 6am though... Gone are the days of being able to stay up all night!

A damn fine festival; Russell and Co. have definitely honed the recipe for a great party.

Thanks for having me.

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