Antiworld Festival

On paper, the line-up looked fantastic for this new festival, brought about by Antiworld, as established name on the Psytrance scene - 9 stages with some of the biggest names in electronic dance across most genres. But in the week running up to the festival, there is some confusion for us as we're told that it's been cut down to 5 stages and that we might have to do a DJ set since firstly the equipment wasn't available for us to play live and secondly, we were going to get paid very little.
After some rather distressing internal band conversations, we eventually found out that the facilities to play live were available so we did it. Which is how I escaped having to learn how to DJ in 48 hours.



Having the sun out for a festival was a strange phenomenon, as was a semi-deserted festival site. True that we were playing relatively early and people might be due to arrive soon, but the fact was that only 3000 of the 10 000 tickets had been sold and the vibe wasn't quite right. Artists and DJs had been told upfront that it was likely that we would not be paid and we could choose not to play. With the majority of punters having paid £100 to get in, you feel semi-obliged to do it for their sake. As for Subsource, we weren't too bothered since it was just down the road and the sun was out and we felt like a bit of a dance.



A couple of days later, it emerged that the festival got shut down on the Sunday. Their official line was that the people responsible for cleaning the portaloos dumped a load of sewage down the nearest manhole cover, which overflooded and a whole load of shit started coming up backstage causing the environmental health officers to shut the place down. Rumours are abound on the Internet that this is a cover for the main organiser wanting to shut it down themselves to cut their losses. After all, let's face it, the guy chronically fucked up by overstretching himself massively on his first festival. Personally I think if he attempts another festival next year, he deserves my respect for managing to bounce back again, but somehow I doubt he'll manage to win back the respect of thousands of punters who spent their money but ended up getting shafted with barely half the acts performing.