Stowaway Festival, Buckinghamshire review - old ravers and their kids get on one

The UK festival scene has been going through a bit of a difficult time in the last couple of years, with a number of events closing down due to financial problems. This has obviously hit the “boutique” end of the marketing hardest, with several smaller capacity, specialist weekends going to the wall. Stowaway Festival seems to be bucking this trend, however, and opened for its third year of business last weekend.

Buckinghamshire-based and with a capacity of 4,000 or so, Stowaway explicitly caters for “true ravers, new ravers and little ravers” in a similar vein to family-friendly shindigs like Camp Bestival – so, there were lots of toddlers and pre-school kids accompanied by their older raver parents. Weirdly there weren’t many Northerners though. However, there was a seriously friendly crowd in attendance, and you would have had to have been suffering from an overload of bad luck to have had your tent burgled at any point over the weekend.

Friday

Stowaway is a three-day affair. So, after arriving in scorching sunshine in the morning, we set up camp and headed straight down to the main arena for something to eat and a couple of thirst quenchers. We also soon came across self-proclaimed Digital Voodoo-ists, Nana Benz du Togo, a five-piece all dressed in white, who were banging out some seriously hip-swinging and foot stomping West African trance music. At one point, there was a call from the stage for the audience to chant “Voodoo – I feel it!” and we all certainly did.

Next up were the hysterical Oh My God! It’s the Church, with the Right Reverend Michael Alabama Jackson and the Hail Marys proclaiming “It’s time to praise the motherfuckin’ Lord” in “The last church you ever wanted. The last church you ever expected. But the church you deserve!”. Camp and funky, their set had shades of Alabama 3 and even Elvana, as they brought us songs like “Gay Bar”, “Shoes” and a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang! Bang!”. All in the name of Sexy Jesus.

The magnificent Greentea Peng (pictured above) headlined the first evening with a set of dubby trip hop that was distinctly woozy and spaced out. Singer Aria Wells appeared on stage in a cowboy hat and boots with long locks and a soon-discarded heavy jacket, while her backing band played narcotic grooves with drums deep in the echo chamber, in a set that featured new songs like “Tardis” and was littered with covers, such as “Dancing Queen” Groove Armada’s “Superstylin’” and Finlay Quaye’s “Sunday Shining”.

Saturday

Saturday began with the unexpected traditional folk drones and sea shanties of Sunday’s Child, who provided a mellow easing into the day, accompanied by a strong cup of coffee and a tray of falafel. However, the sun was already beating down at this point, so we soon retreated into the dense woods on the site to cool down and to listen to Acid Jazz-like sounds at the Listen Here stage.

This set us up nicely for a hectic evening that involved Joe Goddard’s (pictured right) blissed-out house tunes and cool protections. His set started with the excellent “Music is the Answer”, that got plenty on their feet and shaking their bits, but things did seem to run out of steam somewhat before he left the stage. No matter though, as he was followed by the magnificent Leftfield who were fully capable of transporting many of those in the audience to a completely different dimension as things progressed.

Leftfield’s rave veterans, Neil Barnes and Adam Wren, set up shop on the Main Stage with a live drummer and occasional MC and delivered a fine set of dubbed up trancey techno and progressive house tunes that took in rave classics, such as “Release the Pressure”, “Inspection Check One” and “Afrika Shok”. The audience soon became a bubbling and bouncing human soup with little kids sitting on their dads’ shoulders and rocking out, as the MC chanted “Let’s get electrified! Let’s get electrified!” Their encore started with the relatively mellow “Melt” but finally came to a juddering halt after an epic, extended “Phat Planet” that had many discovering reserves of energy that they never knew they still had.

Our evening didn’t finish with Leftfield though, as we then headed back to the Shake Off stage in the woods for some spectacular Drum and Bass deep into the early hours. First up was LTJ Bukem, who got the crowd nicely warmed up before the superb Dillinja hit us with some phenomenal bass, ratcheted up to the speed of hardcore punk. It was a truly epic ending to the day and sent us back to our tent feeling totally wrung out.  

Sunday

Sunday saw the crowds at Stowaway noticeably thinning out, with great chasms beginning to appear between the tents that remained in the camping areas. Maybe the old ravers were exhausted and no longer had the stamina that could once call upon or maybe their kids had finally exhausted the free activities, such as tree climbing, helter skelter, big wheel, giant pirate ships, roller disco and even kids’ yoga. However, any kids that were still around at lunchtime were going bonkers for the Ritalin-powered junglist insanity of Junior Jungle.

As ever, there are only two rules for Nick Terriffic and MC Rocky Patch’s show: we all dance together and no hands in pockets, as they battered those hangovers into submission with a set of old school jungle bangers and a stage full of raving toddlers and pre-schoolers. As ever, Rocky Patch’s pronouncements were a mixture of the profound, the camp and the utterly insane, but he got many laughing out loud with shout outs to “all the rude boys and the rude girls and all the rude non-binary people in between”, while yelling “The future does not exist. The past is gone. There is only now. Everything you did in your life led you to now. What are you going to do with your now?”, “Turn it up to eleven! Ask your dad what that means!” and “Get out your finger guns and make like you’re in a US High School!”

After such a sugar rush, we were bound to crash and so wandered back into the woods for a dose of comedy from the likes of Don Biswas, Andy Stedman and Lindsay Santoro, before taking in a theatre and dance production in a secluded clearing that was based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We were back in the main arena later, to see the London Afrobeat Collective though and the lively eight-piece were soon in full control of their audience, with energetic front woman, Juanita Euka calling out, “Now shake what your mama gave you”, which pretty much worked as an instruction to dance, as she lept, twisted and went spinning around the stage. All this to a soundtrack that included the stretched-out call and response of “Topesa Esengo Na Motema”, “Freedom”, a brass-powered “People Got to Wake Up” and “For the Women” – a plea for social justice and true gender equality.

Sunday’s headline set, however, was a spectacular feast for the ears and eyes provided by audio-visual artist and DJ/Producer Max Cooper (pictured above). Cooper laid down a set of glitchy and bubbling techno, Laurent Garnier grooves, Aphex Twin flavours, rocking Drum and Bass and finally, the Prodigy’s “Breath”. This was accompanied by immersive visual digital and filmed projections (using screens that were placed both in front of and behind Coopers decks) – under an almost full moon and with spotlights roaming the sky above the stage. Retina-frying visuals of desert landscapes, sunsets, sunrises, cityscapes, Dali-esque creatures and quotes from Ludwig Wittenstein swept the screens – which had elements of Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi film in places. Some people danced like maniacs, others stood transfixed by the visuals, but it was a truly mesmerising way to end a weekend out in the fields, away from the city.

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