What a magical few days that was!
I have attended many festivals, and I don’t think I’ve come back from any quite as buzzed as I was after this year’s Houghton.
By 2022, there had been more Noughtons than Houghtons, and the festival had become a bit like the jam that they are always going to have tomorrow at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. I had many conversations where I reassured friends that it surely would happen this year, but I was a little scared myself that maybe it wouldn’t. When we had the last heatwave, we joked about how awful it would be if Houghton was cancelled this year because it was too hot… So to actually be there, dancing in the woods, with some of the best DJs in the world providing the soundtrack – the only thing I can compare it with was being in a club after the restrictions were lifted. If anything, this felt better, because there was a little bit of guilt that went along with that, whereas this was just 100% positivity.
Until I was actually there, at the Pavillion stage, I couldn’t quite believe it.
It took ages to get there, which was sound, because long journeys are never so bad when you’re on your way to something good. We travelled from Leeds via Nottingham (where we collected our mate) in a convoy of three cars. There was some kind of hold up as well, so Google sent us a mad way between Nottingham and Leeds, on B roads for most of it, and at one point we had to stop for ten minutes to let a wide vehicle gain access to a quarry. Obviously, by then, we were all itching to be at the festival.
“Well, at least we all got to see a big thing go past” my mate Carl said.
I did actually take a photo of the ‘big thing go past’, as I found it all quite funny. That was one of the few pictures I took the entire time.
***
Finally, we got there, and I have never been so impressed with the getting into a festival part anywhere. Last time, we were queueing for ages, and even the first year, when my mate Chris and I had VIP, we still queued for longer than we did at this one. The process was swift and well managed. It also ended up being hilarious, as just as we got to the bit where they check your bags, a can of beer that my friend had in his bag exploded in the security guy’s face (and all over us). The poor fella was very sound about it. The security were incredibly sound in general in fact, as far as my experience went. Which makes a huge difference at any event. At no point did I feel uncomfortable or harassed, but it also didn’t feel like people weren’t safe. That kind of thing makes a massive difference to the vibe, and it was totally on point at Houghton.
I guess at some point I should start actually talking about the music. I am a fan of long intros, but that tends to be in tunes rather than reviews. So…
After we’d got our tents pitched, we headed in, got some food and drinks, and made our way to the Pavilion, where Dyed Soundorom treated us to our first beats of the festival. He was followed by Jane Fitz, who played quite a hard set – which worked perfectly for the night time, and completely contrasted the next set I heard her play, on the Sunday afternoon – Goan trance and softer, more melodic vibes, perfect again for the moment, with the sunbeams shining through the trees.
One of the many awesome things about Houghton is that the music is 24 hours. We’d set up camp with a ‘Sleeping Yurt’ and a ‘Seshing Yurt’, but you don’t actually need to spend a whole lot of time on the campsite because there are always DJs on, and there are plenty of places to sit down and chill in the festival itself. Thursday night (or early hours Friday rather) is the only time the music actually stops, and this is well thought out, because after getting yourself there and setting up, you’re likely to feel a bit tired. I had a tactical sleep on the first night, and woke up feeling brilliant early on Friday morning.
One of the highlights of the festival for me was The Ghost on the Earthling stage on Friday afternoon. I think that was the point at which I first started to really feel like I was in the midst of it all. I was a little too tired on the Thursday night, but the next day, listening to some of my favourite DJs, with the sun glittering through the leaves, and all my friends there – that was beautiful.
Also, I was witness to something really nice… There were two older ladies sat at the edge of the crowd, just near the bar, and they looked wonderfully incongruous: they didn’t look like the kind of people of their generation who would be at a festival, but they did look like they were having an excellent time, and at one point they were chatting away to a group of girls. I did at one point consider asking them what their connection to the festival was, but I also felt like they probably didn’t want to be continually bothered or made to feel like they were in a zoo. Anyway, a day later I was told that they were one of The Ghost’s grandmas and her mate. How ace is that? Playing a killer set at Houghton and your grandma’s come along to watch. I love it!
There was a lot of dust because it had been so dry for so long, but it was a great thing to have dry weather and sunshine through the entire festival, and lovely to look up and around and see the sunbeams. I tried to capture this, and the only three photos I took are the first one and the two below:
All the other photos I’ve included are courtesy of my mate, who I’ve credited at the end of this piece.
***
I started this with an Alice in Wonderland reference, which felt quite apt, because the whole festival is quite wonderfully down the rabbit hole and into another world. One of my favourite things about Houghton is that your phone doesn’t work there at all. I really hate the whole people on phones things at events, and I loved that not really happening. After the first year, our group all took walkie talkies, which were helpful with us being able to find each other, and also provided much hilarity. As soon as we’d got into the main arena on the first night, we’d run into other Leeds folks, and as we had many, we provided them with one of our walkie talkies, which enabled us to successfully keep in touch. We took care not to use the same channel as security, and this time opted for channel 14 as we figured it wouldn’t be too busy. We decided our call out would be ‘Six-Four-Snail-Eight’ (it had been the name of a WhatsApp group we used for snail jokes – long story, probably not funny if you weren’t there). Anyway, we were not alone on our channel – it was also occupied by another band of revellers who called themselves the Seagulls. They jokingly warned us snails to get off their channel, and threatened to put salt on us. Ouch!
One thing none of us accounted for was that there wouldn’t be printed programmes at this festival. There had been last time, so we just assumed that would be the case again. I can fully understand why the organisers didn’t bother with that as I guess it’s pretty costly, especially after three years of postponement, and as the times were released in advance, people could print them out. We didn’t do that, and gradually each of us ran out of battery life on our phones, so I had to rely on what I’d kept in my head. I did consider getting my phone charged, but it seemed like an unnecessary expense with just the one day left. My portable charger is currently residing in the depths of a storage unit. But I digress…
The best and worst thing about Houghton is that it’s most likely that it will be impossible to get to see everyone you want to, as you’re so spoilt for choice. Which is a lovely problem to have. On the Friday night, I caught the first hour of Ivan Smagghe’s set and then headed to the Quarry for Del Garda. You have to queue for the Quarry, which a couple of people behind us were whinging about, but it’s really not a big deal to have to queue for a few minutes on a warm night with your mates. I actually wish I’d stayed for the whole of Smagghe, because I enjoyed Del Garda’s Quarry set, but I felt like it was a festival set, and the real killer one was when he played at Terminus at 9am.
I love the whole Terminus thing at Houghton. It’s another stage, separate from the rest of the festival, on the other side of the campsite, and you don’t get any set times. I’d had a heads up that Del Garda would be on at nine in the morning, and made a note to head up there for that.
It was a really nice morning. Everyone else I was with had gone to get their heads down for a few hours, and I went for a bit of a wander, got some food and coffee (the choice of food is great), and then had a few peaceful minutes sat on my own outside our tents, basking in the morning sun.
One of my favourite things, when I go anywhere, is being on my own there for a bit. I think that’s the point at which I usually feel fully immersed in whatever or wherever I am. This tends not to last for too long, especially at festivals, as sooner or later someone will talk to me. Also there was quite a big Leeds contingent at Houghton, so I was constantly running into someone I know. I really like that part too. I was greeted by a hug from my pal Borley pretty much as soon as I walked into the Terminus.
Francesco del Garda that morning was absolute fire – probably one of the high points of the festival for me. In fact, the whole of Saturday day was one high point after another, and as I was faced by the lovely problem of not being able to split myself into two and catch more than one set at the same time, I didn’t stay till the end of his set. Hamish and Toby were playing at 12, and I figured my lot would be getting up, so I headed back to the tents to meet up with them.
If I believed in Heaven, or considered it likely I might end up there, that Saturday at Houghton would probably be a bit like what I’d hope it would be. A Del Garda set, followed by Hamish and Toby for four hours, then Gene on Earth, and then Tristan da Cunha is pretty high on my list of ‘The Best Ways I Could Spend a Saturday’. Add to that, you’re dancing with your best friends, looking at a beautiful lake on a sunny day, and I don’t think it can get much better.
If you’re reading this, and you think I’m getting a bit too sickly for you, I’m not going to apologise, because it really was that good, but I will throw in that I did briefly, have a couple of west out moments, which I had to pull myself back from. At one point, one of my mates kept going on about whether or not I thought they should speak to one of the DJs, and I had to stop myself from saying a lot of quite angry things. Then and there, in the beautiful moment of the festival, was not the time and place. I tried to avoid the conversation altogether by saying ‘I don’t know’ and feigning being really wavy. I am usually quite brutally direct before I even have a chance to think about not being, so this was a marvel of self control. What I wanted to say was ‘Absolutely not! I mean, for one thing said DJ is in the middle of playing their set – it’s not even like you’ve just run into them at the mac and cheese van, secondly, how can you even be thinking about that at a time like this, instead of just basking in all the wonder and enjoying the music, and thirdly, do you not think people are probably wanting to meet this DJ all the time, and they might prefer to just not have to do that right now? Also – I really do not want to be dragged into a debate about whether or not you should be doing this. It’s not my shit, it’s boring, and I fucking hate people trying to have conversations with me on dancefloors!’ Anyway, I didn’t say any of that, and thankfully the moment passed. As I said, it wasn’t the time and place to address the issue, and my friend is a sound person, and didn’t mean any harm – I just don’t like it when people do that. Another mate had brought loads of copies of his label’s latest EP, Do or Die – Metatron, and went around handing it out to various DJs. This approach – I couldn’t quite put into words why – but I feel differently about it, and I actually quite like that he did that.
I’d been looking forward to Do Or Die’s live set, but unfortunately he had to cancel. He would have been playing before Craig Richards and Nicolas Lutz b2b in Outburst, which was another treat. Also, the stage was ace. Shipping containers and slot machine lights, and I kept forgetting that I wasn’t actually inside somewhere, like in an actual club. At some point that night, on another stage, Felix Dickinson was on, and I didn’t catch his set, but I wish I had, because all weekend, different people kept telling me how good it was.
In 2018, as our coach departed on the Monday, someone shouted out
“Noooo! We’re leaving the festival!”
“Yes, but we’re going back to the endless festival that is Leeds” I shouted back.
Of course, at that moment, we were a year and a half away from covid lockdowns, and took for granted that the party would never stop. In the time that’s passed since everything resumed, I’ve grown accustomed to things being as they were again, and now I find that I rarely reflect on the darker times. It all seems like a strange dream, and the time before seems closer and more real than the time of restrictions. Back in 2020, I predicted that I would at first be overwhelmed and thankful to be able to do all the things that the pandemic had prevented, but that I would quickly forget. This is pretty much what has happened. Occasionally, though, something reminds me, and I do stop and think ‘wow’. Sunday morning at Houghton was one of those moments.
During the winter lockdown, I lived in a house share with one of the pals I was at the festival with. As we were walking through the campsite, towards the festival, he mentioned that dark time, and specifically, one of our mates saying ‘I’m really glad we’ve got your house to session in’ which now I can laugh at, but at the time, that statement was like a kick in the face when you’re already bruised and beaten.
Like many people, we observed the restrictions to an extent where we felt we were being responsible, but we didn’t observe them fully, and we had three mates who used to come to ours all the time, and it became like a kind of open house to them. Unfortunately for me, while they were free to have the best time they possibly could, given the circumstances, I was in the middle of one of the darkest times of my adult life. I’d actually quite enjoyed the spring part of the lockdowns, but the winter was a different story.
Picture this… It’s the depths of the winter lockdown. Before all this, music was the most important thing in your life. Now you’ve taken on the hardest web dev job that most developers wouldn’t even touch because you need to earn some money to maintain a creative project you might never get to complete. Remember Fatima who was supposed to be thankful that her next job could be in cyber? Well yeah exactly, fuck right off. All I saw was the same four walls, and occasionally I went to Sainsbury’s. I hadn’t even had a mix for nearly three months, and even if I had the time to make music or paint, my once endless moments of inspiration had vanished, and I didn’t even feel like I could. So when your mate says to you ‘I’m really glad we’ve got your house to session in’, a million things come into your mind at once, because you’ve been constantly hearing the sound of people having a sesh through your wall, while you’re sat in your room working all hours day after day on this dry as fuck impossible thing that you couldn’t give two fucks about anyway, just so that you can keep paying the lease payments on a half-finished creative space and venue that you might not ever even get to use, and there’s no end in sight, and you’re wondering what actually the point is of even carrying on, and you nearly say ‘Thanks mate, yeah it’s great, isn’t it? I mean, firstly, it’s supposed to be a lockdown, and also, how come we can’t session in your house sometime instead? And – in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not even AT most of your sessions. I’m in here, going completely insane.’
…but you don’t, because at that moment right there, you completely understand what west is, and the last thing you want to do is west somebody out when they intend no harm, so instead you just say ‘Glad you’re having a good time mate’, and then retreat back into your cave.
And now, here you are. It’s eighteen months later, and you’re walking into a festival on a sunny day, with a big group of friends. You’ve caught up with people from all over the country, and spent the weekend dancing in the woods with thousands of blissful strangers to your favourite DJs, who’ve come from all over the world to be here. I’m not a great thinker, and I could probably be a lot more appreciative than I am about a lot of things, but just then, that was probably one of the deepest moments of reflection I’ve ever had, and I really felt thankful for everything that I was able to do right there and then.
I’m not generally a daydreamer, but all of that sent me off into a bit of a blissful haze, and I was brought back to earth quite entertainingly by Bill Brewster. We’d booked Bill to play in Leeds, earlier this year (rescheduled from March 2019, in fact), and I was buzzed to see him on the Houghton line up. Anyway, he caught sight of me as I was stood near the food stands on the Sunday morning, and came over and said hello, and for a second I was completely baffled, having briefly forgotten that human interaction was even a thing. After we’d exchanged hellos and hugs, Bill asked if we were there till tomorrow, and I was like ‘Er.. tomorrow… So it’s Saturday, no – Sunday’ and he said:
“You don’t know what day it is, do you?”
“I don’t! I’m clearly having a good time” I replied, laughing.
Later on that day, the rich sounds of Bill’s record collection would add to the good time I was having, as I hopped about between the stages in the trees.
Another treat that afternoon was Fumiya Tanaka at the Pavillion. I know of him as a producer, but had never heard one of his DJ sets, and it was absolute fire, and also not what I expected. I would have assumed I’d hear a largely minimal set – which I would have enjoyed, but he played a wonderful genre span that weaved together perfectly. I do really like to hear techno, garage and undefinable oddness all in the same set. That can be done badly, in a way that is quite jarring, or it can be done in a smooth and artful way, and this was done excellently.
A nice thing that has happened to me at all Houghtons is running into people you know-but-don’t-know: friends of friends, people whose mixes you listen to, but have never met, or people you’ve interacted with online but never spoken with in person. One name that’s been popping up frequently in recent times is Zuku – a Liverpool based party and mix series – and it turned out the guy my mate was chatting away to, as we sat off briefly at the side, was one of their residents.
As I’ve said, it’s impossible to catch every set you’d like to, and I messed up a bit by not printing a copy of the line up, and two sets I’m particularly sorry I missed were Vladimir Ikovic and Sonja Moonear. It happens though, and I have no regrets, because pretty much the whole time, I was having the best time ever. If I’d realised Sonja Moonear was on after Zip, I’d possibly have stayed at the Pavillion, and ended the festival there, but we’d all made the incorrect assumption that the Terminus would be open a bit later than everywhere else, and also figured there’d be a queue, so we made our way there. Having said that, it was a nice place to be when the music stopped – Edward was the last set of the day (I discovered this eventually, after we all asked various people who was playing) – trippy, good west, and melodic, and the Terminus was a lovely place to be.
Of course, none of us wanted it to be over, and it was good to be able to head back to our mates’ camper van for an afters. Another nice thing that happened, was that amongst the people who came over separately from our group from Leeds, I got to spend a lot of time with some excellent peeps that I knew to say hi to from parties, but hadn’t known that well before.
I didn’t sleep that night. I ended up doing a througher with one of our lot, and then getting straight on with the clear up. One of the few negative things I have to say about the whole weekend is the amount of rubbish that was left behind. This is no reflection on the organisers, who provided ample rubbish bags, and clearly marked recycling and general waste areas. One observation I’d made about Houghton previously, was that everyone was really respectful, and that the majority cleared up after themselves. That was less of the case this time, and quite disappointing. I’d previously thought that most of my generation, and certainly the majority of people in the scene I’m in, are aware and on the case when it comes to recycling, respecting your surroundings and other people, and not leaving a footprint. Recently, I’ve started to think that perhaps I was in a bit of a bubble. This said, more people looked to have been conscientious than not, but not as many as I would have expected. There was a group camping near us, who didn’t seem like the kind of people I’d want to know (which is rare for Houghton). They’d apparently stolen something from some other folks camped close by, and they left absolutely everything – tents, empty cans, even underwear. I was appalled. Even more appalling, I returned from a trip to my mate’s car, and was told that amongst their leavings, someone had found a baby hedgehog wrapped up in a towel. This made us all really angry. It’s abuse of an animal, and I don’t know how, but if anything can be done to prevent anybody from ever doing anything like that at a festival again, it needs to be.
I asked what had happened to the hedgehog, and apparently someone had given it some water and taken it over to some trees, away from the campsite. I hope it was ok. Not sound at all.
I don’t want to end this with negativity, nor do I need to, because it was an overwhelmingly positive experience, and I’ve come away from it feeling buzzed and inspired.
We got back Monday evening, and I slept all day Tuesday, and got up early on Wednesday to find a record I’d had on pre-order for a long time had arrived, which made a nice start to not being at the festival any more.
I’ve written this in four chunks over the past week and two days. Now it’s all two weeks ago. I’ve done loads, and I feel like the magic of those few days at Houghton has given me the extra bit of drive I’ve been feeling since I got back. I can’t wait for next year…
♥ ♥ ♥
Photos: First three and last are by me, the rest are courtesy of my pal who asked to be credited as MKSnail 🙂