September 12th, 2009 by ollspin

What an awesome weekend Aeon festival 2009 was!  Although the festival has grown from last year it has still kept the magical charm and lovely chilled vibe that makes it such a beautiful event.  The dance tent was a big improvement on last year, up-scaling from a small marquee to a proper big top style festival tent, with fantastic decor and a stomping bass heavy soundsystem.

Highlights of the weekend for me were DJ sets from Ben & Lex, Elite Force, Break, Dicey, DJ Chamber and Full Melt DJs.  Was good to randomly catch the Thujones again this year whilst wandering past the live stage.  Saturday was loads of fun, starting the day with a Swedish massage, followed by finding classic Fighting Fantasy book Forest of Doom from the Book-Cycle free bookshop, then dressing up like a NASA space cadet and raving like a crazy monkey all night long.  I slept pretty much all day on Sunday and felt refreshed and invigorated all through the following week, which was a nice change from the usual festival comedown.

Watch this space for download of my set from the Jam the Channel dance tent coming in the next week or so.  Also I’ll also be sifting through some photos taken by various mates and uploading a selection of the best.

Massive respects going out to Gilly and crew for sorting the dance tent, plus of course Niki the main organiser and everyone else involved.

Roll on Aeon 2010!

October 23rd, 2008 by ollspin

I have recently been sorting through some old boxes and game across a load of press cuttings going all the way back to 2002.  I found all sorts of old previews, reviews and interviews.  Events include Frustrated Disco Machine, Influenza, Techno vs Breaks, outofthevoid.co.uk, World DJ Fund and Critical Breaks.  Publications include The Edge (Southampton University student paper), Southern Daily Echo (Hampshire daily paper), DV8 (Southampton style magazine), Venue (Bristol listings magazine) and County Press (Isle of Wight daily paper).  Click here to check out the press cuttings archive.

September 5th, 2008 by ollspin

What a party!  I think I have just about recovered enough to post a blog entry about it.

Bubaking played very possibly the best set I have ever seen them play.  A full on mash up of breaks, drum&bass, hiphop and lots lots more.  Ben & Lex and Hoffman & Model101 risned it good and proper as usual.  Jinx In Dub’s opening set of bass heavy dubwise breakbeats was a perfect start to the main room.  All accompanied by top quality visuals from VJ Air.

The party went on long into the night and well into the next day.  Big thanks to everyone who was involved and everyone who came down for the rave.  Hope you all had fun!

For those that missed it and want to know how it went, we took some photos which you can view at the Void Gallery and all main room sets were recorded available for download from the FDM website.

The Croft were over the moon with the numbers through the door and the rather large amount spent over the bar.  Apparently it was their bussiest night for months.  Quite an achievement, considering it was the first time we have thrown a party at The Croft and we clashed with local festival Recydrate The West.

Expect Frustrated Disco Machine to be returning to The Croft for more top quality parties in 2009.

August 27th, 2008 by ollspin

What a fantastic weekend at the lovely Aeon Festival! It would be impossible to sum up everything that happened but here’s a mini review and my thoughts on the weekend.

The festival and camping sites were really beautiful as you can see in these photos hosted by outofthevoid.co.uk.  The vibe across the entire site was happy and smiling with a good mixture of all sorts of ages, from young families with small children, 20 or 30 something ravers, ageing hippies and everything inbetween.  The smell of BBQ’s and camp fire frying bacon filled the air most mornings and evenings.  The central fire on the campsite was a busy social meeting point each night.  Toilets were really clean all weekend, with plenty of loo roll and soap.  Civilised camping at its best!

Down at the start of the main festival site there was a cafe run by Avant Rural (with vegan and vegetarian options) and local chainsaw wood sculptures.  There was also a Alice in Wonderland (fancy dress theme for the weekend) stall for kids, with plenty of crazy clothes to try on and fun things such as face painting.  Over the other side of the site a local crew setup a graffiti workshop and created some artwork over the weekend.  Other highlights included a children’s workshop tent and a cinema tent showing local artists short films, animations and documentaries.

The main attractions were a dance tent, a live stage in a natural amphitheatre and a poetry/acoustic/funk tent.  We spent most of our time either dancing to funk whilst drinking Otter ale and Rattler cider in the Cabaret Voltaire tent or raving in the Jam The Channel dance tent.  Highlights from the dance tent included some excellent dubstep and stomping breaks/house during the day on Saturday, leading onto dubwise and tearout breaks in the afternoon.  Some relentless techno followed, which isn’t really my cup of tea to be honest, but the night finished off with some well received dark drum&bass from the Exeter Rinseout crew.  Highlight on the live stage was without a doubt The Thujones on Sunday night, trip hop beats accompanied by warm bass and powerful vocals, a perfect wind down at the end of the day.

Overall it was a truly awesome weekend and in my opinion the best festival of the season!

I was playing in the Jam The Channel tent at 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon.  Big thanks to everyone who was dancing and chilling outside the tent in the sunshine listening to my set.  For those that want to know, my setlist went something like this (if my memory serves me correctly).

Stabilizer ft MC Chickaboo - Bounce (Si’s Super Ska bootleg) - Plastic Raygun
DJ Buzz - Focus 76 - Sunshine
Real Estate Agents - Super Evil Me - African Dope
Jellybass ft MC Abdominal - Transatlantic - LoHz
Old Harry Rox ft Lully - Make the Most - Ready and Waiting
Afterdark - Cosa Nostra - 3.5
Deep Vein - Summer Breeze - unsigned
Mattafix - Things Have Changed (Moody Boyz remix) - EMI
Jazzsteppa - Jakin - Hot Flush
Ben & Lex ft MC Spee - Le Chunk (VIP vocal mix) - unsigned
Gary Gecko & Pigbwoy ft Feral - Dskasting (Dogtown Clash remix) - Gecko
Angel Farringdon, Sly & Robbie, Charjan - Fool Up The People - Bermuda Triangle
Aphex Twin - Donkey Rhubarb - Warp
Peo de Pitte & Yota - Forget About You (Peo de Pitte Baltimore remix) - FlatOut

Roll on next year!