SW4 Festival

August Bank Holiday in London saw annual summer-closing event SW4 Festival. This year featuring a more diverse sweep of artists than ever before, with genre-ambassadors as wide as Knife Party, Carl Cox, DJ Fresh, Maya Jane-Coles, Seth Troxler, Andy C weighing in to head up the business of closing out most people’s festival season with a bang.

It’s been a year of controversies for festivals: Creamfields flooded out. Bloc Weekender went into administration. Even the seemingly invincible European family of events suffered a few casualties, not least infamous month-long east-European-orgy Kazantip packing it in over controversial licensing issues. SW4 has in the past had its own fair share of drama and press - to be expected really when you build a festival in one of the most musically diverse and subsequently demanding cities on Earth, centering it in an area inhabited precisely by the sort of young professionals that tend to make up the bulk of festival attendance UK or elsewhere. Trimming out the fat of bygone reviews (“My girlfriend Marissa told me she had to wait 9 minutes and 24.8 seconds to get to the toilet” / “Simian Mobile Disco were not mobile, nor did they play disco” etc) and the two recurring splinters in the Toe Of Techno that is Lock’N’Load promoters’ vanguard event was lack of music variety and lack of volume. Suffice to say - SW4 has nailed both of these on the head.

The Line Up

Stretched over Saturday and Sunday, SW4 executed their pitch well: with one main stage and 3 other arenas providing a broad sweep of genres across both days.

Saturday - was more of a straight up line up to be expected at a field festival: Carl Cox making an exclusive UK festival appearance for the year on Main Stage, closely flanked by an impressive party-set by both Knife Party and Zane Lowe with the main bulk of the music being consistent performers Dahlback, Benassi, Knight, and rounded off with Chase & Status. Meanwhile highlights in the other arenas included a fantastic scratch-mad midday opener from A-Trak, a solid performance from Laura Jones, a pounding house investigation by global veteran Roger Sanchez and lively big room sets from Markus Schulz and Paul Van Dyk - the latter making most inebriated ravers evening when he released scored of enormous balloons into a highly playful crowd.

Sunday - SW4 stretched its legs out here, with the Main Stage line up looking like a good house party’s Spotify: DJ Fresh pulled out a fantastic and slightly retro set, so into the mood of the day that he continued DJing as his rig was being wheeled off stage. Legendary Public Enemy marked their 25th year in business playing a UK festival exclusive as part of their ongoing world tour. Meanwhile summer bass favourites the likes Skream & Benga, Rudimental, joined Diplo, the Crookers and Angello for a diverse range of sounds. Finally the closing act of the day featured Skrillex entombed in a smoke, laser and pyro marathon, flanked by Tekken videos for visuals and playing an insane mix of pounding dubstep, crowd-pleaser remixes and climaxing at one point, inexplicably, with the original version of Fatman Scoop’s Be Faithful. Meanwhile highlights from the other arenas saw strong performances from Eric Prydz and Simian Mobile Disco, a fantastic, Jungle-flavoured set from Andy C and displays of serious techno precision from both Maya Jane-Coles and Seth Troxler.



The Crowd

SW4’s ongoing research into the Science of the Line Up - diversifying your offering to make it a fantastic day out for all, without widening it to the point it becomes a themeless affair (and starts dramatically shaving / adding average-age years of its overall crowd whereupon you find yourself queueing outside the Pizza-Express pop-up restaurant with 2 girls in Save-the-Rave T-shirts discussing GCSE results behind you and the face-tattooed man to your left drunkenly telling you nothing will compare to Aye-Napa 1984) has paid it dividends. The trance, techno and house cliques that helped put SW4 into play in the first place still get their hit thanks to continuing nods to the big names. Meanwhile, the growth attenders will no doubt be impressed by a highly boosted sound system and improved stage set ups, making the whole festival, well, a bit more ‘festival’ than perhaps it has been in the past. In fact the crowd here was a diverse affair on both days out, helped along by an impressive amount of mobile bars easing access to drinks and both drinks and food prices being not entirely unreasonable for a city festival.

Overall

SW4’s big sell is the site itself, on a number of levels. The size of the ground is well calibrated - there are few other festivals where in the course of 2 hours you can see Drum and Bass, Techno, House and Dubstep stage-to-stage with a 30 second walk in-between. The line-up presents zero fat - household names abound across genres. Further, its a day festival, in Clapham - the site is within a few minutes walk of 3 tube stations, 2 train stations and innumerable bus stops. The organisers have been quick to sync up official afterparties - with easy access both ticket and transport wise to nearby post-10pm events at Brixton and Ministry of Sound, whilst every bar and club in the Clapham area was pushing its own unofficial afterparties, drinks deals and all.

Conclusion:

It’s in Clapham. It’s on Bank Holiday Weekend. Its Got Louder. 8/10