The end of September is always going to be a risky time of year to put on a festival, and the dodgy weather in the week leading up to Mischief, coupled with some local villager disapproval, briefly made it seem as if this year’s festival might be a no-show.
But if there’s one thing worth remembering when it comes to hardened festival-goers, it’s that it takes a hell of a lot to stop them having a good time.
Luckily the weather held out for this year’s shenanigans near Petworth, West Sussex. What followed was a visually pleasing and frequently weird grassroots festival with plenty of hardcore techno, live hip hop, reggae vibes, amen breaks and gypsy influences.
On arrival we were met by a group of people walking round the campsite in leotards with carrots swinging from their heads by makeshift fishing rods. A lot of the charm of Mischief Festival comes from the confusingly blurred line that separates the performance artists from the people that have just turned up in a crazy costume and decided to walk around doing something bizarre all weekend.
This continues throughout the event with people dressed as monkeys chasing inflatable bananas, a guy with about thirty cups attached to his head, a giant furry love heart giving out hugs and what can only be described as a trio of creepy cat people scuttling around the site. We still have no idea whether any of these people were actually booked to do these things.
With the Tat Palace arena closed until Saturday, our attention was diverted to the Pirate Ship hosted by IRD where we caught the brilliant Headcleaner’s analog acid set using entirely modular synths – flicking switches and twiddling knobs to create a unique techno performance without a laptop in sight.
Saturday’s highlights included hardcore from former Brighton resident Dolphin, a reggae band on the main stage that we never found out the name of, dark drum’n’bass and crossbreed from Bulgaria’s Cooh and possibly the tastiest lamb burger we’ve ever eaten.
It’s worth bigging-up the food at this point as the selection was actually pretty good. Rather than your usual festival slop and grease there was a café selling homemade cakes, a pizzeria with a wood-fired oven, a waffle and ice cream van and a burger stall with all sorts of interesting variations.
When you weren’t avoiding the wasps or the faux-gypsy hardtek sound that the Brighton scene has become annoyingly saturated with, there were plenty of places to sit and relax, a pool table, oversized chess set, live graffiti and loads of space hoppers.
Sunday morning came and heading over to the main stage we catch a perfect festival moment – a small group of older festival-goers clutching crumpled bottles of cider and wine-bags, rolling in the mud and running around to the soundtrack of ‘Fiesta’ by The Pogues.
Later we are treated to banging acid techno from Stay Up Forever co-founder Chris Liberator, a paint fight, the king of the breaks Technical Itch and a headline set from Hellfish, the pioneer of UK hardcore techno, scratching his way through 200bpm gabba with old-school hip hop samples and even causing a bit of unexpected crowd-surfing.
Some might say Mischief is like a shrunken Boomtown Fair, perhaps with a touch of Bestival dress-up fun. Either way, it’s a great little festival with a really friendly atmosphere, plenty to look at and plenty to have a laugh about.
Mischief Festival, 20th-23rd September 2013
Words by Chris Biggs
Photos by Esme Yules
