Crash-site report: The Meteor @ Glade Festival 2012 Review

Morbidly Obese Midget reports back from the smoking crater...

 

  

When I arrive at Glade Festival on Friday morning, The Meteor is already the talk of the festival. I hear tales of a smoke-filled pit, strafing lazers, blinding strobes and leg-quaking levels of bass. The Thursday night Jump Music showcase was apparently off-the-scale. "I couldn't take it" one of the organisers tells me. "I was completely sober, but it felt like I was high just being there". Sounds promising.

The Meteor is a new feature for Glade Festival 2012 - a DJ booth styled like a flying saucer, built into the side of a hollow, above a wood-paneled dance floor stuffed with bass woofers. It's been built by the team behind of one London's most recent bass music nights, Uppercut, who have been developing their idea from an area called The Drop at The Secret Garden Party in 2011.

Launched in 2004 as an annual outing for the UKs alternative dance music tribes, Glade itself has been on a journey in the last few years, hitting a rough patch after losing its original site in Aldermaston due to council noise restrictions, then taking a year out after one crazy outing at Matterly Bowl. It was rescued by a partnership with Secret Productions, the team behind the UK's most successful festival of recent years. Their mission is to bring the fun back to the festival. They have certainly succeeded this time, on a new site Houghton Hall near St Ives in Norfolk for the second year running.

In a month which has seen flooding around the country, with heavy rain going into the weekend it looked like the festival might become the kind of mud bath that saw punters wading for 20 minutes through waist high waters to reach the Aldermaston site in 2007. The estate team were well prepared though, adding fresh hardcore to access roads which had already been well laid out.

Logistics aside, the success of the weekend lies in the diversity of fun on offer. The music programming is top notch, with Glade favourites such as the Origin, Overkill and Liquid Records alongside Secret Garden Party favorites like the Dance-Off, traditional fairground rides and a new woodland area. There is an evident commitment to aesthetically pleasing stage design and build, combining the creativity of Boom with the ambition of Burning Man as seen in new stages The Pyromid and The Meteor. It was the latter, built by resident Secret Garden Party DJ Andy Ellis or Head of State his Uppercut crew, that really raised the bar though, giving the broad church of glitch hop it's first dedicated showcase at a UK Festival.

But what is 'glitch hop'? My first port of call is nu skool breaks pioneer FreQ Nasty, who's now living in LA and very much involved in the West Coast bass music scene, opening the Glade stage on Friday afternoon.

"I'm really excited by the new stuff coming out of the States, because it doesn't sound like anything else. They've matured their own sound, which started out of the UK in the late '90s and early 2000s and evolved into something else. You could say that the granddaddies of the glitch hop and acid crunk scene are Si Begg and Dave Tipper; but now it's it's own animal, different from it's roots. It's a distinctly West Coast sound, including some artists from Colorado, making stuff that has that Bay Area kinda vibe, that acid crunk kinda feel, that classic west coast hip hop kinda feel, with the influence of the wobble of dubstep; but it's not all whomp. It's got wobble in there, but it's secondary to the vibe. It's as much about the melody and atmosphere as it is about the bass and beats. That's good because it's difficult to get more whompy than stuffs gotten right now. I love that heavy whomp stuff, but I think at some point it becomes more interesting, when everyone is doing that, to shift gears and change into something else. And that's what a lot of these cats have done."

I tell Darren about UK Glitch Hop and The Meteor, so we head into the woods to go in search. 

Following the sounds of mid-tempo bass we descend into a woody glade, sun filtering through, down steps cut into the side. With the smoke from the night before cleared, we see a flying saucer in the bank opposite us, piloted by Skanky Panky Records co-founder William Breakspear who is bombing the bouncing bodies on the wooden dancefloor below with tracks from his debut album, Bardcore. Soulful vocalist Georgina Upton and Liverpool's MC SAS complete the live PA. Like Freq Nasty and many others who have pioneered glitch hop worldwide, as his name suggests Breakspear started out making and playing breaks. It's easy to see the progression that he's followed in the dubwise opening of his set and the party vibe style.

Breakspear is followed by followed by Italian IDM producer and one time Londoner, Memory9, who flits from minimal dubby glitch and downtempo crunk right up to incredible footwork edits of jungle classics. By the time Skanky Panky's other bossman, SixAM, takes the decks, the wooden dancefloor is heaving. A blistering hour of glitch bangers ensues, featuring tracks by producers hailing from San Francisco to Melbourne. His own tune 'Bad Mother' and a massive remix of 'Octopus Lover' by South Africa's Sedge Warbler are definite highlights.

Next on the bill are a live production trio from London, Zen Death Squad, whose triumvirate line up draws instant comparisons with US glitch hop superstars The Glitch Mob, although their music ("we call it lazer crunk metal") couldn't be more diverse. Off the back of their debut EP, Cyber Dojo Lazer Training, they toured to the US West Coast last autumn . So how did it feel to play back in the UK? "It's amazing to come to stage like The Meteor where that whole sound is dominating" says Adam, one of the two ZDS members able to make it to Glade, "You walk in and Mochipet's playing and it's like: I didn't even realise other people listened to that here!" "Yeah, it's like home away from home" chips in fellow ZDS head Mark.

Friday evening on The Meteor is another label takeover, this time from Colony Productions, perhaps the longest running glitch hop label in the UK. Established in 2000 by Mike Wallis and Dave Tipper, it was initially just an output for their Crunch material. At the time, Dave was better known for his drum and bass or breaks productions, while Crunch was developed under the IDM umbrella. Exploring a space between the dancefloor and the chill out room, they made a track way back in 2002 called 'Bit Hop'. "We only recently heard the term; but I like the sound of Glitch Hop" Mike told me recently. When Dave Tipper decided to defect stateside, Sam Ashwell a longtime friend of Mike and Dave's got more involved with running the label as they expanded their roster. Sam, incidentally, is one half of the internationally successful renowned duo VENT and also collaborates with Mike as Abstrakt Knights. 

The Colony showcase is opened by Colony Dj's Mike Wallis and Ben Parker aka Lone Drum who warm up the gathering crowd before a live set by one of the UK's rising stars, Mouldy Soul (aka. Richard Carrigan). 

"Someone came up to me today and told me 'I was looking for future music, and then I found you'," Richard tell me later on. The analogy isn't a bad one - like the pioneering electro hip-hop of the 1980s, this is a sound that revels in lazer beam samples and robotic imagery.

His crisply produced, melodic, mid-tempo bass wobble (or in his own words "wiggling wangling lines of awesomeness") topped the glitch hop charts on Beatport and Addictech for months after his first releases in autumn 2011. 

 

As darkness descends, space ship DJ booth really takes off with some spectacular lighting. The dancefloor bounces energetically to beats by another emerging act, Krossbow, a duo from London who have released through both Colony Productions and US label Simplify Recordings. The pair really ramp up the energy, with dancefloor friendly 110bpm tracks, A.Skillz classics and Limp Bizkit remixes sending the crowd nuts.

Playing as VENT, label boss Sam Ashwell, takes that energy and runs with it, keeping the crowd hooked throughout his set of mostly new material that peaks with the swing-style singalong of Lunatics. Talking to Sam and Mike afterwards, it became apparent quite how significant this moment was. 

"It was definitely in my top five gigs, and I've been DJing for 15 years" said Sam. He takes a moment. "that was almost like a watershed moment for glitch hop in this country. It's not really a big genre in the UK. You know it's huge in Australia and it's huge on the west coast of America especially, but that was a crowd not knowing the tunes... just raving hard. I don't think I've seen that in this country before. It was a huge buzz. I don't think I've ever played a whole hour of glitch hop in this country; a least not while people were still dancing at the end of it. That wasn't a step up, that was an Olympic jump. That was a different scenario to what I'm used to."

Next to take the intergalactic controls is 21 year old bass wizard Culprate. Over the last year or so Culprate  has been one of the most popular acts to begin steering the UK dubstep scene towards a mid-tempo cross-genre bass music evolution. He's joined by Maksim, an MC who over the last 9 months has been rapidly staking his claim to mid-tempo funkstep territory. Rusko is reportedly in the audience, who collectively go berserk.

Another big act to have achieved this crossover in the last year, Koan Sound were billed to play on The Meteor too, but perhaps understandably declined a Glade appearance on the offer of a transatlantic tour. This can only mean good things as they take the sound to new audiences through Skrillex's OSWLA label, alongside the Foreign Beggars.

Glasgow's Akira Kiteshi, treads a similar path, and his affinity for lazer noises and refusal to be restricted to any one tempo has seen him attract much attention both here and in the US. Dramatic shifts and slides between tracks betray his roots as a hip hop DJ, as he hammers out remixes, established classics and tracks from his latest album Industrial Avenue, accompanied by a scratch turntablist.  By this time, the flyer saucer is reaching new dimensions with some mind-blowing 3D animations being projection-mapped on the surface. Problems with the system balance at the start of the set don't phase the dancers. 

"The crowd didn't seem to mind" he tells me afterwards in his good-natured Glaswegian drawl, "they were just properly up for a good dance and a good party. To be honest,I think that was one of the best places we've played in quite a long time. We drove from way up North, down here, for ten hours driving and basically straight on stage, and you know it was just such a great vibe. Wicked atmosphere, an amazing stage and Glade's just a great festival anyway, so it was a privilege to actually play it." 

He was equally excited to be playing alongside VENT and Culprate for the first time. "The thing about the glitch hop scene is that it's like a family, because it's not grown as big as dubstep at the moment. Everyone's aware of everyone, so it is very friendly and it is a great vibe. And the music's good as well."

Kiteshi is followed by US bass music star Ben Samples, who's been ploughing his own sub-frequency furrow in the wake of pioneers such as Bassnectar. One of the headliners on The Meteor, Samples is carrying the flag for the West Coast scene. "I think my DJ sets are a good entry point to glitch hop" he tells me "I play a lot of remixes of well known tunes so it gives the crowd something to recognise and creates a real party vibe. That's what I'm really about, party music". Coming from the US where the style already seems to have matured, I ask him if he feels like the party's already over, just as it looks like it might finally take off in the UK. "Well, I played more of a glitch hop set here than I usually do. It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work, there's more to do as a DJ! Back home I'm actually playing stuff that sounds more like house music. It's all beginning to blend like that. I just make music you know?"

The final set we see is Uppercut resident Your Niece, dropping low end tunes that nod toward swaggering ganster rap and the US roots of crunk - a kind of slowed-down, bass-heavy hip-hop that evolved from Miami Bass and became popular in the US around the same time as dubstep was taking shape in the UK. It's current evolution, trap seems to be that latest flavour du jour.

FreQ Nasty again: "At the moment it feels a little bit like dubstep was in America when it came out of the UK. I used to play dubstep to people in the States and they'd just stand and look at me. 'What are you doing? Shit's so slow!' But kids into hip hop started getting it first because they already had chopped and screwed stuff and the crunk that was getting so low it was starting to getting down to 70bpm. I noticed when I was playing at the Glade stage, there, that when I veered into glitch hop I could see people just going 'Where's the huge drop, the big whomp?' And I understand that... but I still played a  bunch of glitch hop because I wanted people to hear it and to be able to think back next time they hear it and go 'Oh yeah! I remember hearing that stuff. Ok, cool. I'm a little more open to it than I was before.' Probably in three or four years time they'll be going 'Oh I'm right into glitch hop. Glitch hop's awesome. I was into that stuff years ago' but actually the were just standing there staring at me."

The excitement around The Meteor can be gauged by the fact that FreQ Nasty delays his flight out of the country in order to play an unscheduled guest set to a packed woodland on the Saturday night. Leaning heavily towards the swaggering, popping, glitch hop end of his bass arsenal, the level of effort he puts into playing and the enjoyment he gets out of are evident. "Bare headz were there for the mid tempo sound. Mad system too," he tweets afterwards.

*Review by Morbidly Obese Midget*

UK Glitch Hop on Glitch.FM #4: Mouldy Soul interview

With a series of releases on Colony Productions and BroKEn Records in the last few months, Mouldy Soul has already become a producer to watch in 2012. For his UK Glitch Hop debut he's going to be previewing an hour long live set and much, much more. Tune in 10pm-12am Wednesday 14 March or catch up on our archive here: http://soundcloud.com/ukglitchhop

Introduce yourself...

My name is Richard Carrigan and my stage name is Mouldy Soul

How would you describe your particular style of glitch?

The best description I've heard is: "This isn't dubstep; this is Marks and Spencer's dubstep." I'd say it was optimistic wobble funk with the occasional helping of self loathing step! I've also been described as a "Digital Hendrix"... but that was by me, just then.


What first turned you onto glitch hop and mid tempo? Any particular artists or tunes?
Basically the answer is Glade Festival fed me an Omelette and I liked it! A few years ago they had Spoonbill on the line up. Never heard his tunes before, found his myspace and fell in love with his sound almost instantly. I say almost as the first track I listened to was Woodenspoon and I didn't really know how to interpret it at the time, but after listening to a few more tunes like Mangle Boogie Bangle and Bunkerfunk, I quickly became familiar with his releases because everything he touches is gold!

Here's a few tunes that have given me so much joy:



From Spoonbill we found Opiuo and others like the Mollusk, Mr Bill and basically just fell in love with the musical output of Australia from then on! Their music was a breath of fresh air after being so heavily exposed to the dark and sinister sounds coming from the UK at the time.

Your first few releases were all through Colony Productions, the London label run by Crunch and Vent, which has some serious glitch pedigree. How did that come about?

I made Wine and Shine, sent it to a DJ mate (Dave Quextal) who is renowned for horribly criticising tracks, ended up getting some surprisingly nice feedback and he suggested a few labels to send it to. Sent it to a couple of labels, one of them was Colony, got some great feedback from them and they decided to release it.


You were sitting at the top of the Addictech charts for quite a while at the end of last year, how did that feel?
Almost as good as seeing a double rainbow :) I was really happy with the way the Hypersquelch ep went down, it was definitely a confidence booster as I doubted my own abilities way too much, also the feedback I receive from my awesome followers on Soundcloud has given me a great deal of confidence to be able to continue to push myself to achieve ever greater things. So here's a massive thank all of you!

What's the scene like where you are?

Idyllic countryside, sweet pastures and the smell of cow manure.

Where do you like to play the most?

Probably on the swings, or the roundabouts! On a decent sound system, preferably Opus or Funktion One's and definitely outdoors when it's sunny, but I haven't had the combined experience. I've had one of each, but not yet clasped the holy trinity!!!

What's the craziest gig you've ever played?

Latvia, I loved it there so much. It was an experimental mishmash of about twenty audio and visual artists from all over the world from Berlin to Bogota, we got together for a week of drunken partying and pulled off a magical collaborative party at the end. We had a giant thirty foot screen, loads of video projectors and 3D mapping awesomeness and hooked the visuals up to the Xbox kinnect so people could interact in real time with the visuals, that a was pretty wicked party to be a part of. It was crazy because it was the most disorganised chaotic event I've ever been a part of, but some how we managed to pull some order from the chaos and put on a really enjoyable party.

What's your favourite track at the moment?

Probably bubble control or lumpy haggis by Tipper, the guys sound design is out of this world, absolutely love everything he made previous but Bubble Control is next level stuff!

Who's inspiring you at the moment?

Too many to mention them all! Spoonbill, Ott, Opiuo, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Curtis Mayfield, Herbie Hancock, Shpongle, Tipper, Squarepusher, AFX, Hedflux, Bad Tango, Mr Bill, AMB.

Who are you looking out for in 2012?

AMB definitely, this guys production seems to get better every track, and great to hear someone grow into a sound.


Tipper's Puzzle Dust is gonna be awesome, Hedflux's full length album, Opiuo's Butternut Slap series, the glitch hop on Adapted Records; which is now the home of Mr Bill and some really cool newcomers like Mustard tiger, Lucky Hz and Goosebumpz who are all making amazingly cool stuff. Also looking forward to the new Hypnagog album, as his first one Dreaming in pieces was absolutely epic and free so go get it!!!

What new releases have you got in the pipeline?

Too many!! I'm really excited about a few remixes I'm doing for Mr Bill and AMB.


I've also got a few collabos brewing with the likes of Hedflux, Vent and K+Lab. Plus I've got an Ep 'The Harangu' that'll be on Colony, getting some really cool artwork done from this dude: http://ayalien.deviantart.com/

And I've also got a full length album planned called "One point make sense" that I'm pretty excited about, but I don't wanna give away too much just yet!!

Where can we see you playing next and over the summer?

I'm playing in Exeter at the Dark Knights Mega Rave at the end of this month. Headlining the bar area, which is being hosted by Riddim Fruit Records, then getting flown out to Italy, Bass invaders in Southampton, Bristol, and a couple of festivals such as the legendary Glade!

What have you got lined up for your first show on Glitch FM?

Something pretty special, an hour long live Mouldy Soul set, with a jazz guitarist, featuring some exclusive never heard before material, a guest mix from UK artist Eurythmy who makes some wicked Glitch/IDM music, some super hot promos from the UK underground and some fresh squelch from Bran Richards, Mustard Tiger and the elusive Swingesthesia. Should be worth tuning in for :)

 
Catch Mouldy Soul on Glitch.FM from 10pm-12am GMT Wednesday 7 March 2012.

Listen to the first three shows hosted by the Morbidly Obese Midget, Your Niece and William Breakspear at: http://soundcloud.com/ukglitchhop

UK Glitch Hop on Glitch FM #2: Your Niece interview

Ahead of his first radio show for UK Glitch Hop on Glitch.FM, we caught up with bare-knuckle-crunk fighter Your Niece. Tune into Glitch.fm tonight from 10pm-12am GMT (party in the chat room!) or listen again at soundcloud.com/ukglitchhop

Introduce yourself...
My name is Rhys Clarke, better known by my DJ moniker Your Niece.



How would you describe your particular style of glitch hop?
I like the edgy more aggressive crunk influenced stuff. I guess you could say tunes with a bit of swagger. I use a lot of acapellas in my sets to thread different styles like dnb, electro and dubstep together. Before I'd ever heard of glitch-hop I was a sucker for any kind of rapping over dance tracks.

What first turned you onto crunk and glitch hop? Any particular artists or tracks?
In 2007 my friend came back from Burning Man talking about this thing 'glitch-hop'. He mentioned the the names Bassnectar and the Glitch Mob. As soon as I heard West Coast Rocks I knew that was the sound I wanted to play.



What's the scene like where you are?
I've been playing glitch-hop for about 4 years now and I'm really surprised how new it still is to a lot of people in the UK. There are now some really good labels dedicated to the sound and you can definitely hear it's influence bleeding into other styles whether people know it came from glitch-hop or not. We've just started a night called 'Uppercut' which will be one of the first glitch-hop specific nights in London so watch this space.

Where do you like to play the most?
I'd have to say at the Secret Garden Party Festival. I've played there for the past 6 years and I've grown with the festival, each year getting to play to a bigger crowd. The set I got to play before Bassnectar last year was pretty career-defining.

What's the craziest gig you've ever played?
Secret Garden Party put on a big Valentines Ball in this huge swanky venue (a boutique hotel in Brixton). They opened up the whole place including some bedrooms at the back and gave me a huge sound system and the keys to the master bedroom. I'd just started playing glitch-hop out so it was really exciting seeing the look on people's faces when an edIT tune dropped. It got totally out of hand, the 4-poster bed got flattened, the plasma tv smashed and their was an orgy in the hot-tub. Just like a rap music video!

What's your favourite track at the moment?
Probably 'Glass Bong' by Stagga and Monky, two producers from Wales, which, incidentally is where I'm originally from.



Who's inspiring you at the moment?
I'm loving some the stuff that the German label Robox Neotech is putting out. Experimental but still retaining the danceable hip-hop energy.



Who are you looking out for in 2012?
The guy that features in my first show Shamanic Technology has been working like a madman in the studio and has piles of fresh stuff he'll be unleashing which is sure to cause an impact. He's already getting recognition stateside picking up sets at Burning Man this year. Beat3 are another name to watch closely, they've got an imminent release on the Muti label and some exciting sounding collaborations in the pipeline.



Where can we expect to see you playing next and over the summer?
It's always busy with festival bookings over summer. Glade and Secret Garden Party I'm particularly excited about as I'm helping program a new venue that will be tying in with the 'Uppercut' night we've just started in London. I'm headlining Uppercut's Bare Knuckle Bass on 10 March vs. Head of State and alongside Sweet Jesus, Atomic Drop, Beat3 and SixAM.

What have you got lined up for your first show on Glitch FM?
I've got an all-originals guest mix from Shamanic Technology and getting excited about the line-up for Uppercut's area at Glade festival which is utterly ridiculous.

Catch Your Niece on Glitch.FM from 10pm-12am GMT Wednesday 29 February 2012. For an archive of UK Glitch Hop on Glitch.FM go to soundcloud.com/ukglitchhop