On The Beach festival is back with six more individually curated days of solid line-ups, right on the edge of the sea. SOURCE snuck on site for the first three-night weekend, swallowing down some of the most memorable names in EDM from drum’n’bass through house to techno on the way.
For those of us old enough to remember the chaos of the first Big Beach Boutiques, organisers Louder deserve credit for the set-up. Crowd management and site staff make light work of the huge numbers attending. There’s a speaker feed in the VIP area, a mini dancefloor halfway down the site and a skilful lack of bottlenecks. These small touches help to make this a slick, steady and safe event to attend.
No doubt though, front and centre is the music. On Friday night the massive stage was all about basslines as Worried About Henry arranged headliners Chase & Status and a special list of support acts including Friction, Kings Of The Rollers, Bao and Hybrid Minds. A bouncing mix of younger ravers and some old-timers who remember the origins rolled and stomped on the stones as day sank into night and the intensity hyped up, which is how it should be on nights like this.
Or on nights like Saturday, which can only be explained as a testament to the loyalty of fans that are ready to go with their old-school house heroes regardless of what the weather throws their way. As Annie Mac finished warming up the wet and soggy crowd, there were a lot of people leaving and a lot that had stayed away. Those that remained stuck their heels into the pebbles, pulled up their North Face hoods, lifted their lagers to the sky and got dancing. Special guests Sasha and Digweed and headliner Carl Cox spent their time wisely, delivering what everyone wanted and needed to keep warm.
Sometimes the old guys are worth trusting and both sets included a good measure of feelgood sunshine sounds in the very non-balearic weather with just enough on the side of hard house and tech house to keep hearts pumping. Ultimately, if you are going to hold a music festival next to the sea in the UK, the weather is going to play its part. As the rain and wind intensified this time, the bravest soldiered on and SOURCE quit the stones in search of a hot bath and a cup of cocoa.
As well as event management, staging at On The Beach is really well done. It isn’t easy to drive music out into a long crowd against the wind. Each evening, as the night fell, the site came alive with visuals, strobes, lights and pyrotechnics, creating a club-like feel despite the scale of the event and the open skies. Add in some good quality food stalls and a well stocked bar and there was a legitimate kind of ‘festival’ atmosphere once on site. VIPs get hardstanding for dancing and a roof, which did little to mitigate the sideways rain on Saturday coming off the sea, but the benefits of a lounge bar and nicer toilets should make the investment worth it for some.
On Sunday afternoon, the crowd had switched up again. Most of Friday’s Teenage Steppers and Saturday’s Disco Dads being replaced by a swarm of Tech-bros and Hipsters filling the venue in the summer sun, perfect for all those social media snaps going on. More house and techno as the likes of Kolsch, Adam Beyer and headliner Eric Prydz gave it their all and the joyful crowds kept heaving against the sounds of increasingly hard and heavy beats. For dance music lovers, On The Beach’s first weekend provided an incredible opportunity to see some very skilled DJs in one place and all against the backdrop of the famous Brighton skyline.
SOURCE didn’t sample the official after-parties hosted by Concorde 2 when the site closed at 10.30pm, but music stretched on to the early hours for those with the legs for it. Being in the heart of Brighton, visitors can add to their experience with nearby clubs, restaurants, bars and all else that Brighton has to offer. This weekend (28th-30th July) brings three more nights of music with bands replacing the EDM after a Friday line-up of Trance from Ajuna, culminating in Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds with support from The Vaccines, The Coral and Gaz Coombes. Let’s just hope the weather is kind.
Madeira Drive, Friday 21st July – Sunday 23rd July 2023
Words by Louise Bloom