Brighton City Festival 2008

Various, Brighton. 23-25 October 2008

Overall - 6/10
Brighton City Festival is an autumn urban festival of electronic music that pulls together a selection of leaders in their respective fields in an attempt to create a co-ordinated 'festival' experience. The event is hosted by some of the most popular venues around the South Coast's coolest city.

In reality, with artists dropping on and off the line-up in the run up to the festival, and venues subject to late change too, this year's event didn't really warrant the 'festival' tag. That aside, the choice of acts was pretty good and an obvious effort to make each night different made it a worthwhile venture.

Getting There and Back – 8/10
As with all urban festivals, travelling there and back wasn't the issue, with routes into big cities well served by rail, coach and car. The only issue once you're there is the expense of travelling between venues, but exploring the city and stopping off at various places is half the fun. Brighton certainly isn't short of cool places to waste a couple of hours if you want to take a break.

Finding somewhere to stay in Brighton wasn't difficult either, with loads of hotels and self-catering flats of all shapes and sizes to choose from. In tune with the theme, we stayed in the boutique Hotel Pelirocco's Skint Records designed room – the label home of Stanton Warriors and Brighton's own Fatboy Slim. CityPad and LateRooms both provided us with a great choice of last minute offers too.

The Site – 5/10
Being fairly new to Brighton myself, I was quite looking forward to roaming the different clubs listed to get a feel for what's on offer at each. However during the run up to the event the venues shifted and the Ocean Rooms became the primary venue for most of the weekend with two venues getting completely wiped off the schedule. The festival equivalent would be the closure of two main tents as you arrive on site, so you can imagine what that did to the crowd's excitement and anticipation. Much of the event's festival feel was lost as a result, but Brighton itself is still a great place.

Atmosphere – 6/10
The Ocean Rooms generated a great atmosphere and the crowd were well up for the main attractions. Jeff Mills packed out the basement on Thursday night and the walls were dripping from the heat in there. Nightmares on Wax and DJ Krush pulled in a big following. Although the beats were downtempo, it didn't stop people from having a great party. The mass of alternative entertainment in the city did mean some of the nights took a while to get going. Not really comparable to a festival vibe overall.

Music – 7/10
Jeff Mills always brings a kind of alchemic wizardry to any place he plays and Thursday night was no different. Incorporating the classic TR-909 drum machine into his set, he mesmerised the crowd with a barrage of filtered snares, booming kick drums and rattling hi-hats for the last 20 minutes and everyone went home knowing they’d seen a legend at work.

Underworld played their summer festival set at the Brighton Centre before Nightmares on Wax brought a live feel of the festival at the Ocean Rooms with guest vocalists performing funky tracks like 'Bringin It' from the recent 'Thought So' album - they had no problem getting the crowd in the mood.

DJ Krush followed with a turntablist exhibition that was surprisingly eclectic with tracks like 'Kemuri' getting a huge reaction from the crowd. Sunday saw New York's James Murphy delve deep into his record bag for some obscure disco gems, playing classics like 'Rockers Revenge' to perfectly fill the gaps between the old and the new.

Brodinski took it to the next level with a much harder but still very danceable set, before the night got progressively darker with Sven Vath's Cocoon label DJs. They saw out the night, banging out tunes well into the early hours of Sunday.

All in all the festival boasts a good 'across the board' selection of electronic music - obviously picked with passion – though it does feel a little behind the times.

Uppers
The fresh sea air is always a great cure for a hangover and from most of Brighton its only a short walk to the beach. There was always plenty of activity on the waves with kite surfing and various beach sports making pretty entertaining watching.
The town is a maze of endless bars, restaurants, record shops, vintage and boutique clothes shops and busy back street market stalls. Brighton is a great place to visit and the people are generally very friendly. Sounding a bit more like a festival now? What more could you ask for?

Downers
The cancelling of shows, moving of venues and general reliability of the published line-up made for some disappointing moments. Why was Plump DJs slot a whole week before the festival actually started?

Random Events
Good graffiti work dotted around the city.

By Matt Cook

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