Behind the Scenes: Beacons Festival

Entering its fourth year, Beacons festival, which takes place every August in the moody, misty Yorkshire dales, is often praised for the strength of its 'clubs' lineup – but, as programmer and co-director Ash Kollakowski quite firmly emphasises, “We don't consider bookings club-/DJ-led in [something like] the Resident Advisor tent, because a lot of the artists that are in those tents are music producers. People like Max Graef, Mano le Tough, Roman Flugel, Daniel Avery... they're musicians.”

Of an artist like Nicolas Jaar – one half of this year's headliners Darkside (alongside Daughter and Jon Hopkins) – he says, “it's all about composition, production, elements, finding key things in music that haven't been done before. For me that's not club music. People can go and hear Andrew Weatherall play for five hours and see what's inspired him; I don't view it in terms of clubbing anymore. I think it's probably viewed as a little bit more than that.”

Rising, in 2011, from the ashes of the few-hundred capacity Moor Fest – whose relaxed, hippyish feel Kollakowski remembers affectionately – Beacons was founded upon the desire to concoct a “relevant, up-to-date lineup that you wouldn't be able to see anywhere else, without charging an arm and a leg.”

“We're from the city, and we've grown up in clubland in Leeds, from Back To Basics to Up Yer Ronson,” he explains; “our partners went to, or were a big part of, Fabric in London and warehouse parties in Manchester, and we wanted to bring that and live music together, in a field, with no neighbours.”

---

"We get offered really big acts but if they don't fit, we won't book it" – Ash Kollakowski

---

Since the upset of the first (non-)instalment, which had to be cancelled due to flooding, the fledgling fest has had a pretty good crack at achieving that balance, with this year's programme bringing together the likes of the aforementioned Avery and Flugel, Nightmares on Wax, Pariah, Dam-Funk and Dixon with Golden Teacher, John Wizards, The Fall, and Neneh Cherry. For the bookers (Kollakowski works with a few others, but signs everything off himself), it's how the acts overlap, intersect and relate that's crucial. No one is booked if they don't work in context with the rest of the lineup. “We get offered so much stuff, we turn down more stuff than we take, and we get offered really big acts but if they don't fit, we won't book it, no matter how many tickets it sells,” he insists. It's that idea of being able to choose different paths through the festival that's key – “when you look at each individual artist, y'know, kids might not flip out,” he says. “But when you see the lineup all together... that's when it starts to get quite exciting. You can almost plan your day by, 'this is how I want to feel.' If you want to get thrown around and go absolutely berserk, go to Hookworms or Eagulls or Fat White Family; if you want to just have a good afternoon trip into wherever you want inside your head, go see Mano le Tough or Max Graef.”

The ambition, accordingly, is to remain as they are – getting 'big', he says, would just “spoil it... By putting on huge people you're gonna attract people who are not interested in the smaller artists, and it just goes back to how we programme; everything needs to be relevant together. And it can't be relevant when you're doing a 40,000 capacity festival because the earlier acts can never, ever match up to how people are gonna get excited about the bigger acts. It's very, very difficult to do that and run it well, while keeping your independence.

“We're all about curating a weekend with a great experience for people,” he summarises. “Y'know, you can meet like-minded people and make new friends.”

What with the onus on the 'journey' and the connections that you make, plus some sunny vibes from that hazier end of the lineup (hello the gumdrop pop of Charli XCX; the fuggy disco of Psychemagik and A Love From Outer Space), we dunno – we reckon they haven't totally shaken off those summer-of-love beginnings quite yet.