Review: Sub Focus – why I will never understand the point of a mosh pit…

Sub Focus at UEA, picture by Jade Mynott

After a lot of excitement and plenty of waiting impatiently for October 26 to come around, I finally headed to the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, to see Sub Focus perform live for the second time. Now I absolutely LOVE Sub Focus, his music is exactly the type of drum and bass, dubstep and house combination that drives me wild when I hit the dance floor and often separates me from my friends who are not quite so excited by dance music.

Luckily going to Hideout Festival earlier this summer helped introduce me to some new raving buddies, while reinforcing for me how cool my current ones were – when going to gigs like these and planning to rave all night it is VERY important to choose pals that can keep up and will be with you until the very end of the night.

From left, clockwise, DJ Mark Malle, myself, Jade Mynott, Lizzie Russell and Vikki Kinnear

From left, Piers Walton, my boyfriend and his housemate Mark Wolverson, and myself – the three best Lil’s

I was partying with my number one raving buddy and boyfriend, Mark Wolverson, his housemate, Piers Walton, DJ Mark Malle and Vikki Kinnear – The original Hideout Festival crew, and two new additions in Jade Mynott and Lizzie Russell. All of us are big music-lovers and most of us prefer dance music and often attend nights like these whether at Fabric in London, Warehouse Project in Manchester, or anywhere else we can find – in fact some of us are currently making plans to go to Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium next summer.

I have to be honest and say that although a huge Sub Focus fan, I was not as impressed with the release of Torus, preferring the massive banger tunes like Tidal Wave, Out the Blue and Could This Be Real which feature strong vocals to an incredible beat – all three are powerful songs in their own way and the reaction from the crowd when they were played said it all in terms of popularity.

I think that Torus is a bit of a grower, all of the songs sounded so much better live than they did when playing in my car, but still not up to the high quality I expected – I wonder if perhaps this is a sign that Nick Douwma is changing his sound with the times and is perhaps losing some of the qualities that I preferred about his music. I actually spoke to a couple of people later in the night who had been at the gig and they said a similar thing, that they were really impressed with the gig generally but that the quality of the music was not as they expected.

Despite this slight disappointment at the change in sound for Sub Focus, I have to say that I still have my favourite songs on the new album and amongst these are the obvious Out the Blue and Tidal Wave, but of the newer releases I also quite like Turn Back Time and You Make it Better – they certainly got me, and the rest of the crowd, dancing.

Jade Mynott, myself and Lizzie Russell at the gig

Despite my slight disappointment at some of the songs, I was very excited by the huge crowd that had turned out to see the gig and the incredible show delivered by Sub Focus. You could tell that the last time I saw him it was very early in his career compared to his success now – money had been poured into the performance which even featured a bit of a light show that dazzled and amazed the ravers as the twinkling spirals revolved – see top pic.

It was very impressive and the show led on very well from support act, Fred V & Grafix, who I managed to catch the last 20 minutes of – they were great and another pair of awesome DJs to add to my list of people I’ve seen. I love their remixes and often realise after that a great version of a song was actually mixed by them.

Overall it was a great gig in a fantastic venue with a really good crowd – everyone was really friendly and genuinely just looking to have a good time. I didn’t see any real trouble and everyone left with a big smile on their face. But, as usual, there were the small group of people who felt the need to try and start a mosh pit in the centre of the dance floor and star shoving people about. I don’t mind people having fun, but I will never understand where the fun is in a mosh pit – especially after seeing a girl get her face split open at V Festival and continuing to smash about while she bled copiously.

It is a very immature and sad way to spend a gig – especially for those who then boast about it later on via Twitter and Facebook about how they elbowed someone in the face, used it as an excuse to punch someone for fun or lost their shoes. What is the point? Fair enough at a gig you are bound to get pushed about in a busy crowd, but why does this mean you have to shove back and cause trouble? I actually broke up a potential fight in the crowd that night and am glad I managed to or me and my friends could have been caught in the crossfire. Luckily most people around us could hold their own in terms of being pushed about and we all worked together to keep enough space to breathe and have a dance.

Despite this is was an amazing gig and I can’t wait for the next one – Major Lazer in two weeks time! After the gig we headed to my favourite Norwich club, Hideout, where the great music continued thanks to  Joshua Roberts, Dunny of Toolroom Records and Pete Graham for Sadiqi: Our 1st Birthday – a top event and we couldn’t stop dancing until the club closed and we were forced to leave. An amazing night with amazing friends at great venues.

Me and Mark in Hideout

Zombie Apocalypse – What would you do?

From left, clockwise, myself, Mark Malle, Lizzie Russell, Jade Mynott and Mark Wolverson, with our prey in the centre, picture by Vikki Kinnear

The world has been infected by a deadly virus. It’s finally happened, the zombie apocalypse has happened. Everyone you know and love is dead, or has been turned into one of these undead, bloodthirsty creatures. The question is, when it’s your turn, do you run or do you turn?

On Saturday I headed to Norwich’s University of East Anglia to join in the second annual Zombie Fun Run, organised by student fundraising association RAG (Raise and Give). I was joined by the boyfriend and a group of friends from home as a little warm-up before we headed to the Sub Focus gig later that eve – review posted tomorrow morning.

From left, Mark Malle, Mark Wolverson, myself, Vikki Kinnear, Jade Mynott and Lizzie Russell – looking good!

We were warned to prepare for a scare and sign up as a runner or zombie – of course we wanted to be zombies! Once we were made up in full terrifying make-up by the RAG team, we were sent along the course to hide in the undergrowth of the woods alongside Earlham Park and the university grounds where the aim of the game was tofind devious hiding positions to ambush our prey as the runners made their way around the 2.5k course and tried to keep their lives intact.

We decided our best chance of success of grabbing the red tags worn by the runners was to hide around the whole of the outside of a clearing in the woods so that the runners would not see us until it was too late, and so that we could attack from every angle. I don’t think that any zombies took it as seriously as we did – in fact we even took a guy out and ended up scaring him to the floor before he limped off – oops.

I like to think that we were really quite terrifying and we had plenty of fun finding hiding positions in the woods, scaring dog walkers and chasing the runners into the woods. One of the funniest moments was when Mark Malle chased one runner deep into the woods until we could no longer see him, then re-emerged slowly, groaning and dragging himself back through the bushes in full character with the band hanging out of his mouth – no sign of the runner. We were a little nervous until the runner came bounding out of the bushes and promptly tripped over a log.

After a while there didn’t seem to be any runners heading our way so we decided to head back along the trail and towards the university square – the promise of a BBQ just too much of a lure for our meat-starved zombies. Along the way we checked our bands and found we had collected a respectable about between us – not sure exactly how many because we had to give some back but I caught at least six zombies myself! Although we did bump into another team that had caught a ridiculous amount of runners – we couldn’t believe how many bands they had but they did have an excellent hiding spot and the runners had no choice but to go straight through them.

Myself and Mark in full zombie make-up

When we finally reached the main field, we did stop to catch a final few runners and entertain ourselves by having pictures of us attempting to eat someone – see top pic which has now become my favourite picture – before heading to the BBQ and back to get changed before the night’s events.

Overall it was a great event – really well organised and so much fun. A perfect Halloween event with just the right amount of blood and gore, and a great way to get us warmed up for the night ahead. I’m looking forward to seeing some more of the pictures and videos that were captured on the day.

The best is yet to come – forgetting my post-festival blues

After a busy summer of travelling around the country, and further afield, to some really amazing festivals – much of which was spent either looking forward to the next event or enjoying the moment at one. I was left feeling pretty bereft when it hit me that there were no more as the season drew to a close. My excitement over my promotion to editor of This Festival Feeling helped to ease my post-festival blues for a short time as the thought of next summer’s festivals sent a thrill down my spine.

But now that too has eased and one must think ahead to the wintery months ahead in which I plan to continue dancing and raving with the same good friends I spent my summer with. It’s funny, during the day I’m the sort of girl that loves vintage clothes, acoustic music and a good book. But at night, I’m the girl who lives in her denim shorts and bum bag, and dances until the sun rises in trainers.

Right now, it is just two weeks until I do just that in Norwich, when I will be seeing one of my favourite DJs, Sub Focus, playing at the University of East Anglia. I downloaded his new album just yesterday and have yet to listen to it, but I think it will definitely spice up my workout and drive to work this week. Here is the video for one of my favourite songs by him, it’s just one that always gets me dancing and singing along.

He headlined the dance stage at Glastonbury this year, and I was gutted he wasn’t at Hideout Festival. I have seen him before at UEA and it was an amazing night, I’m sure it will be even more so this time because we are taking along some amazing friends, and joining in a Zombie Fun Run during the day! There are still tickets available here if anyone else is interested! I’ll be sure to post a review of the night afterwards.