The Beat-Herder Festival 2024 review

Barry Ashworth, lead singer of Dub Pistols, knows a thing or two about festivals. “I can tell you that Beat-Herder is not just one of the best festivals in the UK, it’s one of the best in the world”, he tells all gathered during a Saturday teatime set at Beat- Herder 2024. “I should know because I get to go to a lot of them”, he adds. He’s not telling us anything we don’t really know because those here already realise how special this weekend of mad smiles, beats and barminess in Lancashire can be.

It's why so many were worried when the organising team behind Beat-Herder announced earlier in 2024 that the very existence of the festival was a bit touch-and- go. Regulars were urged to get their tickets early to ensure that festival cashflow was optimised. We were told that this was going to be a cut-back Beat-Herder with capacity and some stages being pruned and whilst we all mourned for old favourite stages such as Trash Manor and The Perfumed Garden, it was of much greater importance that this festival could continue to provide us with crazy delights. So many festivals have not been able to continue this year with costs getting too prohibitive and we didn’t want Beat-Herder to be another casualty. What joy then that the new ever-so-slightly compact Beat-Herder not only went ahead but was considered to be the ‘best yet’ by many in attendance.

The changes are evident from the point of pitching your tent. The campsites have been swapped around. Those with a general camping ticket are now in the area that was previously designated as crew camping for many years. And those in crew camping get to see the delightful views on the other side of the Ribble valley that were previously only available to the masses. The redesign seems to work. I don’t hear many grumbles about the re-allocation of camping over the weekend. Photographer Phil and I are certainly happy with our outlook as we survey our surrounds and ponder the weekend ahead whilst having our first can of beer from our tents.

Those changes are not limited to the campsites. We take an enthusiastic Thursday wander into the site to see how the land lies. We’re encouraged to see that most of the site remains familiarly in place. Where things have changed, we agree that it probably makes the flow between venues slightly better. The crazed sweatbox that is the Fortress now sits on top of the hill just beyond the wooded section which houses Toil Trees and the Street. Beyond is still an underground pathway leading off from the Fortress area but now cleverly connects up with the Smokey Tentacles tent (also much improved with a proper stage) and Beat-Herder’s own late-night stone circle. It brings this area into play much more making it all a destination. As we sit with a pint of craft ale (£6 a pint from Wishbone brewery – a great new addition and a fine option to have) in the new, enlarged overflow space from the Launderette stage, we wonder if we might end up not actually missing the dancing robots of Trash Manor that once inhabited this space.

 

Things have also been compacted down in the corner that the Fortress and Beyond have been stolen from. An entrance point from general camping, the Factory is now the first stage/tent that you are greeted by on your way in. The StumbleFunk tent is no more (although they have taken over the Factory and made it a rip-roaring success) and there’s nowhere like The Perfumed Garden to sit and chill. These are things to be tolerated for the greater good.

We might have been ‘Afraid to Feel’ excited about what might behold us at Beat- Herder but a pit-stop in the Toil Trees for LF System’s house-based set sorts out our head wobbles and then the Thursday evening wander to get our new bearings ends with a fine set in the Smokey Tentacles tent by MC and hip-hopper, Sparkz (who I’m sure I once knew as The Mouse Outfit). With a tight, live band playing all sorts of jazz-fuelled riffs, it’s a perfect end to a fine, first evening. This is the chill before the big party. We watch the fire at the distant stone-circle seating area, look up to the stars in the sky and thank them that we’re once again here to have an exuberant weekend in fields with friends.

It's been said many times (and annually in my reviews) but one of the things that makes Beat-Herder so bloody marvellous is the friendliness of the punters on site. I lose count of the random smiles sent across dancefloors, the silly chats, the concerned moments when complete strangers check in on the welfare of another. Perhaps, there was never any danger of this not continuing to be part of Beat-Herder 2024 but it’s definitely still there in abundance. We were lucky this year that such friendliness spun out into our immediate camping area. Pitched next to us are a lovely young couple from Manchester, Isaac and Lois. I can tell how nice they are when Isaac desperately wants to thrust a Brandy in my hand early on Friday morning as I surface from my tent. I decline that and further offers of beer. It is after all still early in the day. Lois tells Photographer Phil and I that they’re two-thirds of At Home With Lilac and they’re playing the Church on Saturday afternoon. After hearing them rehearse a little, we make a mental note to check them out when they play.

We catch up with other friends over the course of Friday. Some that I’ve not seen for years, many that I saw here last year. We swap stories about how we coped (or didn’t) with the biblical downpours of 2023 that meant many had to cut short their festival. We look at weather apps and keep our fingers crossed that we won’t have a repeat performance this year. “Saturday’s looking a bit grey and wintry”, we think as we resolve to make the most of the blissful Friday sunshine. As it turns out, we had little to worry about. Yes, things got a bit damp on the Saturday during Dub Pistols but it turns out that an hour or two of rain over a weekend is perfectly manageable.

Each year, Beat-Herder announces a letter that punters then inventively make the most creative of costumes out of for Fancy Dress Saturday. This year, we have F to work with. It might be the case that the people stumbling about not knowing what’s going on are in fancy dress playing as ‘fucked’ but I doubt it. I chat with Frank Sidebottom, a Fridge and Fred Dibnah whilst a Fortune teller offers me a fortune from a bag of treats. Lots of footballers frolic with Fat Sam (from Bugsy Malone, not Allardyce) whilst a flight attendant massages a fire engine. Late in the evening, I chat to Frank Spencer, immaculately dressed in homage to the classic sit-com character from the seventies. “Ooh Betty, I did a woopsie”, he tells me whilst also confessing that many people might not know who he’s pretending to be.

 

It's appropriate that I’m chatting to Frank Spencer in the Beat-Herder and District Working Men’s Club (BHDWMC). Regular readers of these Beat-Herder reviews will know that this is one of my favourite venues across the whole festival – a space that ironically lives in the past. It’s full of old-school humour – you never quite know what you’ll get as you walk through the entrance. It’s a sign of the quality that’s going on elsewhere across the site that I spend less time in this venue than I ever have. But I still find time to dip into Beat-Herder’s Got Talent on the Saturday afternoon. This is the chance for punters to bag a short set on the mainstage by impressing the grumbling panel of critics who are a law unto themselves. This year, Lucy from Belfast gets a row of perfect tens from the judges with her fine rendition of Zombie by the Cranberries. Bez from the Happy Mondays DJs late into Saturday evening in the BHDWMC but the tent is rammed and I’m elsewhere.

So, I don’t quite manage to see Lucy take her turn on the main stage (I’m having an extended Sunday morning kip in my tent) but much does grab me on this stage across the weekend. It’s become something of a tradition, a meeting-place for a bunch of friends after we go off wandering, that we’ll gravitate towards the benches by the bar on the left hand side of the stage. On paper (and perhaps because of budget limitations) the mainstage acts offer less promise this year than in previous years. But, the reality is that there’s hardly a dud in sight. Critics will argue that there’s an over-reliance on DJs rather than ‘proper’ bands with guitars and they might have a point but, in truth, nobody seems to mind much. You probably know what you’re going to get with a headline trio of Orbital, Leftfield and Subfocus. I missed the latter on account of needing to leave a little early on the Sunday (boo to work on Monday morning) but can testify that both Orbital and Leftfield rolled back the years to satisfy all with their scintillating shows. As lights bounced around the arena, both left me transfixed, energised and happy. You can’t ask for more than that. The Wailers played Beat-Herder a couple of years ago and topped that great show with their 40 year anniversary tribute to the release of Legend. Our dub and reggae cravings were topped up by fine mixing from Prince Fatty on Sunday afternoon who was aided and abetted by Horseman. Porij showed their new promise with a trip-hoppy set and Crazy P drew on years of experience to get their exciting house tunes to the forefront of our consciousness. Beans on Toast offered a great festival-related folk set on the Saturday afternoon. It’s always lovely to see Jay wax lyrical about the environment, his loves and drugs. I’ve run out of superlatives by the time Henge take to the stage at Sunday teatime with their space-age prog disco but I’ll think of more before I write about them fully in the penultimate paragraph of this review.

You know how I mentioned earlier about our friendly neighbours in the campsite; Isaac and Lois from At Home with Lilac? We deliberately cut short our time at the main stage with Beans On Toast to see them up in the Parish Church of Beat- Herder. Beat-Herder is all about friendliness and this was our chance to payback. They didn’t need our support and were going down a storm by the time we rocked up. It was a set of acoustic covers. Lois’s angelic, gospel voice sounding like it should be used in a house anthem of tomorrow as it bounced over Isaac’s solid and technically complicated acoustic guitar riffs. By the time they ended with Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’, the sweating congregation (for it was stupidly hot in there) were wildly dancing and praising the lord. Top stuff.

It can’t all be perfect. I’ve grown accustomed to checking out the wonderfully informative pocket-sized programme during quiet moments in past festivals; there’s been nothing better than having an early morning read in my tent about the delights that were about to come. Each artist playing the festival used to have a lovely paragraph written about them; often witty, it did much to pass the time and help to plan out the day’s action. This year’s programme is far from bad but it’s abridged and offers a lot less. Apparently, details about each of the acts are now on a website but that’s not helpful when the internet connection across the site is often wobbly. It might be a casualty of the tightening of the belts and yet it’s one that I miss. In truth, it’s a good thing that I can no longer spend extended times in a composting toilet reading the programme for there also seems to be fewer bogs this year – and, as a result, the loo experience is one you want to hop in and out off in super-quick time. I’m not saying that this results in the overflowing, nostril-damaging heaps that you sometimes get at other, lesser festivals but it is still something to keep an eye on (not literally of course).

The Ring is a grassy amphitheatre that’s been a mainstay of the festival for a number of years now. We spend more time in here than in previous years. The sound bounces around the muddy heaps and we dance like our lives depend upon it. Madame Electrifie gets us grooving on Friday afternoon; High Contrast shows all what years of experience in the Drum ‘N’ Bass arena can offer with a frankly mind- blowing set in a packed Ring on Saturday evening before the divine Charlotte Devaney finishes us off with a genre-defying DJ set of epic proportions.

It’s noticeable that the sound quality in the Ring is crisp, clear and perfectly toned wherever you might stand. Indeed, I comment to Photographer Phil that this is something that has been the case across the site. My ears might now have had a decent syringe but I don’t recall it always been this fine. Some comment that the sound in the Toil Trees goes a little wayward at times but that’s never how I find it when wandering through. And a slight detour into Julie’s Barn on Sunday afternoon, a small(ish) shed of a venue with an illuminated floor of square chunks, becomes a longer stay simply because the bass pounds and compels us to dance so much.

My tent is packed away. Sunday afternoon will shortly be turning into Sunday evening. I look across the valley and far into the distance. The sun pokes its way through the clouds; a glorious array of reds, blues, pinks and oranges emulating and arguably topping the arrangement of colours from the fine fireworks the night before. I take a deep breath and savour it all. The Weather Gods have been kind to us at Beat-Herder 2024. On the main stage, the fantastic festival experience that is Henge are in full-flow. Matthew Whitaker and his band of merry aliens are offering psych- rock electronic advice regarding how we all could make this thing called human life a little better. I close my eyes and imagine a world of kindness, one in which we smile freely at strangers, laugh contagiously and look after those who are struggling. It’s not too much to ask is it?

This has been a triumphant Beat-Herder, one that has emerged from a difficult and dark place to optimistically reset. Tickets for Beat-Herder 2025 go on sale on the 1 st August according to the programme. I share the hopes of many others that this is going to be the case and that this wasn’t one last hurrah. Long may this festival gem, “one of the best in the world”, continue to strive forward.

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