The SW4 Festival 2015 – From A Ravers Perspective

As demand for track reviews is on the up, and the Public House UK network is growing in popularity, we’ve had a lot of requests to start reviewing clubbing events and festivals all over the world. We are currently a London based non-profit organisation, and promoter budgets rarely stretch to paying for travel, accommodation etc for us to come and review their club, brand or promotion. With these limitations, we selected a few events and brands within London and the southern coast, and the first on the list was possibly the biggest:

THE SOUTHWESTFOUR FESTIVAL, Clapham Common, London – 29th & 30th August 2015.

Now before this event, we had a phuk meeting about what we were going to do at the festival, who we wanted to see, and who we could meet and grab a few words with. If you are regular subscriber to our reviews then you’ll know that there are two of us (at the moment) who write all of the content posts; Marcus Ali and Myself (Lawrence Friend). We both have a strong background in tech-house and techno as we are both djs, producers and label managers. It was fairly obvious we were going to head to the more underground artists to hear their sets.

The lineup was huge on both days so we had to pick wisely who we wanted to see. I wasn’t really up for getting there before 2pm on both days for a few reasons, mainly being that it would’ve been a bit too quiet at opening time. We tried to document the weekend as well as we can, let’s talk about how it went…

On the Saturday I met Marcus and a group of about 8 people at Clapham Common at about 2pm. Marcus and I were fortunate enough to be given guestlist passes by LockNLoad Events, so we headed over the guestlist entrance whilst the rest of our group went to the standard entrance gates. We were greeted at the gate by friendly security and staff and given our wristbands before heading into the festival.

Upon stepping foot into the festival, I put on my press lanyard and was immediately approached by two young ladies with clipboards, they worked for SW4 and informed me that Luciano was about to start his set on the main stage. I was asked if I would like to go backstage to take pictures of Luciano, obviously I accepted and was swiftly ushered through the dressing-room areas and straight onto the main stage. Now, it was at this time I realised that I hadn’t actually planned on taking any professional photographs and had left all my camera equipment at home, all except my trusty iPhone 6 – complete with high-quality camera.. Yes, you read that correctly, the only camera I had on me was an iPhone 6! Admittedly I looked a bit of a tit waving an iPhone around whilst there were other photographers nearby with lenses as long as my arms! Nevertheless, I took a few pictures and got out of there… quickly!

I went back to the other side of the barriers and re-connected with my group. We stuck around the main stage area and listened to the rest of Luciano’s set, the festival was still filling up so at this point there was only a few hundred people at the main stage. As well as trying to listen to the music, I was also trying to familiarize myself with what was going on, and where throughout the weekend. From what I heard, Luciano played some huge tracks and had everyone in front of him. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of the memorable sets for me over the weekend.

Next up on the agenda was to catch the end of Belgian DJ ‘The Magician’s’ set on the indoor main-stage, aka ‘Fatboy Slim presents the Smile High Club’. His set was exactly what I expected, some nice bouncy deep parts, followed by some dirty warpy basslines! A nice up-beat start to our festival experience. We stayed in the indoor main-stage tent for a few hours after this as the music selection was absolutely rocking and before we knew it, it was getting dark! So far we’d seen sets by Magician, Kolsch, Pete Tong and Gorgon City and they were awesome, but now we simply had to see Nic Fanciulli in the DJ Mag tent. As we were having such a good time in the indoor main-stage, we hadn’t noticed that the heavens had opened and turned the whole festival into a slippery mud bath. Nevertheless, we slid over to the DJ Mag tent. By the time we managed to get there, the tent was absolutely rammed, and rightly so; it was half way through his set and Nic Fanciulli was smashing it! Now, I know I’ll get some stick from readers when I inform them that also playing at the same time on other stages were artists such as Amine Edge & Dance, Sven Vath and Paul Oakenfold, but trust me, I have no regrets and know I was in the right tent. In the same tent straight after Nic was Solomun Vs AME then PanPot, needless to say, I was going nowhere! Thoroughly loved my first day at SW4 and it wasn’t finished there. There were still two more acts for me to see once this tent closed, these were Maceo Plex in the ‘Dream Don’t Sleep’ tent, and then the mighty Faithless in the main arena. Originally it was a toss-up over Faithless or Fatboy Slim, but as I’ve seen FS many time before Faithless won the bet. I was not disappointed! Their versions of Insomnia, God Is A DJ etc were spectacular. Unfortunately I only managed to get a few dodgy iPhone video’s of Faithless, but here’s a very grainy Insomnia..

So after an amazing day on the Saturday, I was ready for it all again on the Sunday! I headed up to Clapham Common for about 2pm again and was still nursing a sore head from the previous days antics, but I was so excited about the day ahead; I mean, had you seen that lineup??!! I pretty much knew who I wanted to see throughout the day, and fortunately most of which were all in the same tent. Upon arriving, I noticed it was much busier already than the day before and strangely all the mud from the previous day had disappeared?! I don’t know what they did throughout the night but it was all back to grass again… Weird!! I met up with my friends inside the gates and prepared for the day ahead; step one – beer!

The first set on my hitlist for the day was George Fitzgerald playing in the Maya Jane Coles & Friends tent. We arrived at the tent and things were warming up nicely, George was banging out some big techno tracks and the crowd were lapping it up, as were we. A great start to the day. We stuck around for most of George’s set but headed over to the indoor main-stage after about an hour. Now those who know me and have followed my DJing throughout the years will know that I used to be a resident for the event ‘Connected’, owned and operated by Jesse James. Jesse was on the lineup for the Sunday along with Johnny Bloomfield but unfortunately he was on before I arrived, I was gutted. On my way over to the indoor main-stage I bumped into Jesse James and Sam Divine, Jesse was in a great mood and informed me that Adam Beyer was running late for his set at 4pm and that he and Johnny Bloomfield will be covering his set until he arrived. This was great news, so I headed straight into that tent and waited for their set. Needless to say, Jesse & Johnny absolutely smashed it! I stood at the back again and got a bit of a grainy video but I can only imagine the buzz from playing in front of this many people, one day maybe eh?!

Next up after Jesse & Johnny was the mighty Marco Carola and unbeknown to me, was the set that blew my mind and left a mark. Whenever anyone mentions SW4 to me now, this set is the first thing I think of! Marco played the perfect mix of tech & techno, taking everyone in the tent on a journey of highs and lows and the crowd were going absolutely mad from beginning to end, I was hooked and going nowhere! Now, being a reviewer of many different styles of house and techno, it’s very easy for me to simply forget about certain DJ’s as I look forward, and although I’d heard Marco perform on recorded mixes a few times, I knew he was up my street but never got so excited about him. One of my friends who joined me on this day is a guy (and absolute legend) called Danny Cook. Danny is a straight arrow, he knows what he likes and he’d been waiting all weekend for Carola. As soon as he saw the name ‘Marco Carola’ move across the on-stage graphics he had the biggest smile on his face, he looked at me and simply said “watch this!”. He couldn’t have been more spot-on if he tried, my mind has been changed and this guy is now someone I follow intensely! The best set of the weekend in my opinion, here’s some footage I took of one of the drops… Hear that crowd!!

Up after Marco was the rescheduled later set from Adam Beyer. Adam played very well, some huge bangers in there and the already hyped up crowd were loving it, I was loving it! I was being dragged through so many emotions and feelings whilst going off to these tracks and I new the end of Adam’s set was close. Up after Adam was Loco Dice, someone I’d been waiting all weekend to see! By this point, I was cutting some serious shapes and was in desperate need of a break and an energy boost, so for the beginning part of Loco Dice’s set, I was searching for food, drink and somewhere to rest! Our group spend most of the Loco Dice set sitting just outside the tent where we could see and hear everything that was going on, but also recharge for Carl Cox’s set up afterwards. Even though I wasn’t actually dancing to Loco Dice, the set was amazing and ranked third in my personal best sets from the weekend. So now you know that Loco Dice was my third favourite set, and Marco Carola was my favourite, so who played the second best? Oh Yes Oh Yes, you got it.. Carl Cox! From the second that Carl stepped up to the decks, I got goosebumps! I mean, this guy is my absolute idol, he’s the biggest dj in the world! Fortunately I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Carl a couple of times and I’m also lucky enough to say that he actually grew up in the same road that I live in now in Carshalton, Surrey. It made a great conversation piece the last time I met him. Great guy, and an inspiration to so many djs. There’s not much to say really about his set, it went just how you would expect a Carl Cox set to go, he smashed it completely! I did manage to get another dodgy quality video during his set, here you go..

So to sum up the weekend, we had a really good time and saw some of the best djs in the world. It was obvious from the start that we would avoid the commercial performers. SouthWestFour, you ate us up and spat us out and we loved it! I would definitely do it again, and again, and again. My only criticisms on the weekend were that it could’ve been louder. On every stage, the sound systems were only set up at the front, meaning that the back wasn’t very loud. Due to this, the sound was bouncing off the back of the tent and creating a really irritating delay, this was the case for all stages except for the main outdoor. The only other thing was that this particular area on the common was a phone network black spot which stopped me from posting live images on our social media accounts, maybe this was something that the festival put in place on purpose to limit social media posts, who knows?! It would’ve been nice to do a few updates though!

We need to say a massive thank you to the guys over at Lock N Load events for giving us our passes for the weekend and the opportunity to experience something that will remain with us for years to come. Also gonna do a few shouts to some of the people who joined us at the weekend. Firstly Dmarco, my partner in crime at Public House UK, DEV:ROX (Craig) from Locker Room Records, Danny Cook from Arcko Digital, Daniel Green from Phonetic Recordings, Nicola, Laura, Reece, Raji, Katy, there’s a few more that I met over the weekend who’s names I never got, and a huge thanks to anyone reading this 🙂 Here’s a few blurry images of a select few members of our group.