Stuart Banks interview

eFestivals spoke to Stuart Banks who believes that what East Anglia needs now now is an intimate, creative and fun, festival experience, and so has set up the inaugural Natural Rhythm Festival. eFestivals spoke to Stuart to find out more about this new electronic music event.

Can you tell the readers a little about yourself?
I've been putting on parties in Cambridge since the late Eighties. I was part of the illegal warehouse scene in 1989, me and my brother would put illegal warehouse parties on in Cambridge, and then we moved on and put on the first legal all night party at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in 1990, and that was called 'Eclipse', and that ran for three years. Within that three years we also put on two outdoor festivals, the first in East Anglia, and we had 5,000 people at each of them. The first one that we did we had The Prodigy for £700. Since then we've been doing lots of different club nights right up until the present day.

Where we got the inspiration to do Natural Rhythms was a party that took place two years ago on the same site, it didn't go particularly well, but I played at them and hooked up with the land owner, and took the site over. We have 200 acres permanently licensed, which is huge, and the capacity is 15,000 but we are only looking for 1,500 people in year one, with a view to grow it as the years go on. It's definitely an annual event and we're going to try and build it up to the legal capacity.

With so many festivals taking a year off, do you think it's the right time to start a new one?
A lot of festivals may be taking a year out but in East Anglia there isn't a festival that is concentrating mainly on electronic music, so we feel there is definitely room for a festival of our sort. We have to start somewhere and we just decided to start this year. The people involved in the festival all run successful club nights and we do feel there's a need for it, and we're just going to have to concentrate on getting the people, it's a small number of people to get in relative terms of most festivals, and we think it's more than achievable.

How have ticket sales been going?
They're going really well, we had five tiers of tickets, and we're on our fifth tier now. The ticket price itself is at it's most expensive £63 which we think is quite reasonable.

What makes Natural Rhythm attractive compared to all the other festivals in the calendar?
I think what makes us unique is that we have got a concentration of like minded people who really enjoy good music, and we're hoping some of the better elements of other festivals out there into our festival. ie the experience, as well as the good music, we want interactive art, good food, as well as good music.

How many stages do you have?
We have got four arenas. A house music arena, a joint dubstep and drum and bass arena, what we would loosely term a mash up arena, and then we have a small live tent, and we also have an outdoor stage that we're not going to announce, that people are going to discover when they get there. It will also be where we will be running our spoof Olympic games from, and playing music all day, it will just be DJs, there may be live acts, we just don't know yet.

The spoof Olympic games are running for two days, and everyone can partake in it, all the DJs, and festival goers, run by a group of actors called the Tax Deductable. It's going to be a whole bunch of silliness in keeping with the whole Olympic thing. It runs on Friday and Saturday and we're looking forward to that because we're hoping to turn that into an annual thing, some kind of Natural Rhythm thing. Like a village fete/Olympics theme running all the way through the weekend which encompasses being in East Anglia too. Silly, creative games made up as you go along like human snail racing.

What's been the most difficult obstacle you've faced so far putting this event together?
We haven't had too many difficult hurdles, luckily for us the land is already permanently licensed, which has saved us an awful lot of hassle, so we didn't have to jump through many hurdles to obtain the license, so I'm not sure we've had any difficult obstacles. I think the most difficult hurdle is actually getting the numbers we would like for day one, until we get to that amount we haven't achieved it. But, in terms of organisation at the moment we haven't had any massive hurdles.

Is it easier to put on event these days than it was in the Eighties?
The problem you've got these days is that there's so much choice, and these days it's whether people look at your festival and think I'm going to spend my hard earned money and go to yours. These days it's year one and year two that are most difficult because people look at it, and go "that looks really good" but probably won't react to it for a couple of years.

For instance two years prior to me actually going to Secret Garden Party, I remember thinking, "Oh that looks pretty good, so I must go to that." It's just getting the festival out there and letting people know what we are capable of. We've got a lot of little hidden things going on , we've got the Tax Deductible actors coming down to run around and do a collection of little characters that will interact with people. We've also got a wooded area that as well as house music, there's a few other things going on in there, to be discovered. Our site has got quite a lot of personality, and that's what we hope people will realise when they get there. It's not just a rave in a field.

Do you think the days of 'just a rave in a field' are over now?
I think that people these days expect a lot more for their money. There's a group of people out there that do want to listen to good music, but want just a little bit more culture, than just a bunch of tents and big sound systems. They want nice seating outside, they want stuff that they can peel away from the music and enjoy away from it for a while. I think people these days expect a lot more, if festivals like Bestival, and Secret Garden Party have raised the bar in terms of what you get for your money. There are people who are into dance music who have been to both of those festivals, and experienced all those extra things, and when they go to another festival with only the really basic stuff it really does stick out.

I'm sure there is still room for a rave in a field somewhere, and that's how some people like it, but that's not how we are going to present our festival. Ours offers really good music, and really good stuff going on as well if you decide to step outside the tent. If you do there won't just be standing there kicking your heels, there will be somewhere nice to sit, or a place to wander over to and experience, and you might even forget about the dance music for an hour or so. That would be the ideal scenario, for us if someone does forget about the music for a while because it means we are providing equal measures of music and an experience. There will be other stuff going on that isn't all about the music.

It's down to us to put on the best festival that we can, and draw on influences from lots of other festivals, and hopefully when you come to Natural Rhythm you'll just have a really good time, and show people we've made a really good effort with the money that we've spent and that we've spent it in the right areas. It's a long term plan for us.

What are the installations you have planned for the festival?
We have an installation going in that is the shape of a fifty pence, we have a church confession box, that has been turned into a structure that has street art on the outside of it, and on the inside it's a chill out room that we may put some music in. We also have two guys coming down who have done a big installation at SGP, and they're going to be building something. We don't know what they are going to build, and we have a couple of contributions to art. They're very small, but that's because we're very small. Some of these installations cost thousands and thousands pounds, we can't afford that. But we will have two or three things that will be very poignant for that festival, and it will be clear what direction we will be going in.

You mention Bestival and Secret Garden Party, is your intention to one day sit should to shoulder with them?
The only reason I mentioned those two festivals is because I think out of all the festivals they have set a precedent for the other things you can find at a festival apart from music. But, we won't be trying to copy them, we will be doing our own stuff. But, I think anyone that's starting a new festival if they could eventually sit shoulder to shoulder with some of the events that are more established I think that's not a bad objective. What we are going to concentrate on, is the fact that we know our area, we know the people that are around it, and hopefully we are going to put on something that provides something much need in the area. That's a good party basically, in East Anglia.

I think at the moment economically you can't beat the system. Essentially, all the best festivals start off on a really, really good small idea and have all got bigger at the right time, at the right pace. We don't care if it takes us 10 years to get to 15,000, we might not even get to 15,000 we might sit quite happily at 5,000. We would even be happy with a couple of thousand as long as we have a really good time. We have no long term expectation, apart from that we would like to grow, but we're not going to lose heart if in five years time we haven'.

You mentioned you booked The Prodigy many years ago, are there any acts you'd like to have on the bill in the years to come?
Well, ironically, if we could ever, ever afford them, it would be really ironic if we could book The Prodigy again wouldn't it? Romantically, from my point of view it would be nice, because there would be some kind of story behind it. They're a lot of money, they're more than £700 I can tell you that much. But, I think it would be really good to put on a giant of dance music at some stage.

One of the things that occurs me is that some people get delusions of grandeur. Won't I don't want to do is to start saying we really want to book this person. We are quite happy to accommodate whoever comes to Natural Rhythm and make sure those people that come have a really good time, and that's the best we can do I think for the early days of the festival.

Natural Rhythm Festival takes place at the Harlocks Farm, in Ely, Cambridgeshire from Friday 6th to Saturday 7th July 2012 and has a line-up that includes DJ Marky, MC LowQui, Krafty Kuts, A.Skillz, Clive Henry, Mungo's Hi Fi, Richy Ahmed, Killawatt, Bladerunner, Nisekay (Lo*Kee), Sebastian Voigt (Lo*Kee), Tred Benedict (Spilt Milk), DJ Lord Fothersgill of Kent, BMK, Carl Woodward, Coda, Color DJ's, Daddy Genius, Dan Bolton, Dave Venn, DJ Dee, DJ Squeaks, Flat T, Foul Matta, Get Low Cartel, Gigante, Henry Kirkup, Inigo Surio, Inja, Jarmz, Jimmy Danger, Just Jazz, Kevin Agius, Le Jockey, Luke Stereo, Michael Carolan, Mike Hartley, MissChivers, Mr Margaret Scratcher, Mr Mhishi, Penny for the DJ, Pete Moore, Pow! Party Boys, Ricky Cox, Ryan Covill, Savage Rehab, Simone Gatt, Simsi, Stuart Banks, Swiss, T_!, Technically Sound, The Brass Funkeys, The Colour Movement, The Sharps, The Soft, Tim Coombs & Frank Besant Timba, Ursa Minor, Variations, Whittz, Wil Maddams, Will Streetwise, and Zak.

An adult weekend ticket is priced at £63. To buy tickets click here.

This event is over 18s only.

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