PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
Trevelgue Holiday Park, Cornwall | April 26th-28th
The main man Freud says happiness is impossible, and that the ‘pleasure principle’ is when we let our Id run the show, give in to sin and cash in on some sweet satisfaction. Well hell, that’s what we did all weekend. We went, we participated in the fun, and returned home on Monday morning. Tuesday wasn’t fun.
Thanks to the warm-up party one week before the festival, our team had quadrupled in size. We’d had tinnies in the sun at 6pm on a Friday, hung out in a small dockyard and watched Swamp 81 boss Loefah smack it in a warehouse. 168 hours later and we’re on the top floor of the Waves Club, Trevelgue Holiday Park, Newquay, watching Loefah going in at it again. His tune selection is second to none, dropping a Kendrick Lemar number to euphoric response and fluctuating between hard hitting electronica and techno that just doesn’t have the same effect when played out of your Macbook speakers.
But back to our arrival. The venue was quite remarkable. Walking amongst the campsite, there was no sign of acoustic guitar sing-alongs, no campfires and definitely no Andy’s Loos toilet queues with the stench to match. Just fresh Cornish sea air. Koreless was truly a perfect start to the weekend. After an intense five minutes in the arcade room, throwing a few 20 pence pieces away, we located the Uptown area and none of us said another word until he closed his laptop.
Blawan‘s set was heavy stuff. Like, really heavy. We freaked out when we realised the night was still young, feeling as if we’d just been dancing in a German car factory where each movement pulled us further and further in like a jolty one-way escalator. Now it was time to head upstairs and let Oneman, Artwork, Chunky and our boy Loefah destroy six months of anticipation. No more anticipation. We were there.
We kicked off Saturday with a nice, cold, ice-cold beer in the sun at Midtown. 95% of festival goers were now sporting sunglasses; the sun is out after all. TNGHT are playing at 1. Life is good. As the team moved down to Downtown in time for Move D, we quickly realised we’d completely forgotten about the Jackmaster Pool Party. We were slightly confused about how exactly it would work, based on the general rule that alcohol and swimming pools don’t mix. There seemed to be no problems though, and after a very enjoyable poolside intermission in the Numbers man’s company, we headed off to catch the back end of the legendary Move D’s set, only to find he’s been shifted to Sunday. Later on in the evening veteran grime crew Ruff Sqwad produced a highly entertaining set at the Downtown stage, but Crack began to feel like Numbers and Dedbeat didn’t get the numbers they might of wanted for the Sqwad’s set, as it was pretty easy to go between the bar and the very front of the crowd.
TNGHT had gone to extreme lengths to produce a multi-sensory set that began by visually impairing us, followed by a wind machine that would give HAARP a run for its money, and finally a steady build of trap-corrupted electric beats that made us lose our sensibility no end. Crack was blind, cold and hot at the same damn time, and Higher Ground was juuuuust about to drop. Our conscience went into a coma. They had full control of all of us and everybody was alone and together at the same damn time. No one got their smart phone out. Billed as the set of the weekend, this was the set of the weekend. Rustie was next up, and Crack stood to the side of the stage, amazed by the pure wizardry of his sample selection and offbeat-but-in-time rhythms.
On Sunday we all made the effort to get clean and head to catch Downtown sets from the brilliant Floating Points, the ever-reliable Spencer, and a headline slot for David Ram Jam Rodigan. He’s got the incredible ability to select tunes that every single person in the crowd cheers for, yet none of us would ever think to put on. However, it was hard not to feel that the Ram Jammer Man has become a caricature of himself, with a lot of nonsensical talking and pull-ups littered throughout his set.
On Monday morning we cleaned up all the rubbish in the caravan into two bin liners and about seven Tesco bags. El vino did flow last night. Enough to clean up most of the memories, too. As we walked the keys back to reception we heard a group of Scots mumbling and bumbling their ways into five-seater, two-door cars overflowing with sleeping bags, backpack and lads. Absolute respect to those guys for driving all the way down here. We’d be in our bed in about 40 minutes.
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Words: Zack Presley
Photo: Ben Price
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