- Beacons might be a young festival, but it's certainly picking up traction. A quick glance at the lineup and it's easy to see why: with an adventurous booking policy that leans towards the underground, combined with its location in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, it's filling a significant gap in the market. There aren't that many festivals (certainly camping ones) in the north of England to begin with, let alone any designed for serious music fans. It's this booking approach that's earned Beacons Festival favourable comparisons to Field Day, though in many ways it might even be better than Victoria Park's hipster Mecca.
Music is obviously the main draw for most people at Beacons, but there's a lot more happening around the festival, from film screenings (including one of Shane Meadow's fan-doc The Stone Roses: Made Of Stone, followed by a Q&A with the director) to talks and workshops. For anyone who thinks the best cure to a stinking hangover is a few minutes in the downward-dog pose, there are daily yoga sessions, too. But if there was one such attraction that I could really wax lyrical about, it was a tent curated by Leeds alehouse Whitelocks, with a seriously impressive menu spanning Yorkshire, Lancashire and London. Such was the range of ale on offer that my companion and I failed on our mission to get through the first page of the menu, yet I never drank a disappointing pint. Aside from helping us get drunk, this was a really fun and tasteful local touch.
As for the music, Friday featured a collection of some of the better house selectors around, with Anthony Naples, Move D and John Talabot bringing a seriously heady vibe to the first night, a highlight of which was Naples playing the outrageously groovy DJ Sprinkles remix of The Mole's "Lockdown Party" in the Resident Advisor tent. Over at the outdoor RBMA stage, T. Williams was whipping the crowd into a frenzy with his brand of funky and garage-inflicted 4/4.
Photo credit: Charlotte Patmore
For those that like their party music a little filthier, Saturday's closing pair of Ben UFO and Machinedrum really got things going. Not every DJ can move from Busy Signal to Blawan to Masters At Work without ever breaking flow, but for Ben UFO it's second nature. The frenetic energy definitely didn't ease off with Machinedrum, who kept the tempo above 160 BPM for most of his two-hour set, playing his own mutant juke/jungle creations, generous dashes of spacious drum & bass from Exit Records, and ending with a selection of New York hip-hop tracks, including as Nas's "It Ain't Hard To Tell" and Dead Prez's "Mind Sex." The young crowd lapped up every second of it, and we got a sense of just how much life there is left at the faster end of rave.
After all that the jazzy vibe of Sunday was more than welcome, with Eglo Record's Fatima providing a live PA next to label head Alexander Nut, followed by Floating Points, who more than ably warmed the crowd for what was one of the festival's most exciting draws: a five-hour back-to-back set by Theo Parrish and Andrés, whose inimitable knowledge of deep and jazzy house proved the perfect soundtrack to a bright Sunday evening in Yorkshire. Elsewhere, James Holden was dishing out experimental yet dance floor-ready sounds to a massively receptive crowd, with tracks such as Atoms For Peace's brilliant "Before Your Very Eyes" giving an ethereal ending to an excellent three days.
Photo credit: Giles Smith
One thing that will be an unavoidable bone of contention for some is the early ending times each night—considering the amount of party-friendly electronic music over the weekend, 2 AM does feel like an incredibly early time to be wrapping up. It has an interesting effect, however—as a rule, the wasted hordes that roam most weekend events aren't such a presence, and while I would have thought that I would be fervently against it, I found that this, coupled with the other activities on-site, brought a really pleasant, and dare I say classy atmosphere to proceedings. It wasn't a big crazy party, but what it was a great place to listen to amazing music with top notch sound.