Late last month one of the most successful new additions to the brimming festival calendar, We Are FSTVL, announced the dates and vast majority of the artists for their 2014 event. Expanding from one to two days, reaction to the announcement was near feverish, with Twitter ablaze with praise for the expansive line-up. So why in an arguably over-statured marketplace has We Are FSTVL proved to be such a success? Here, Defected’s Ben Lovett’s catches up with one of the co-founders Reece Miller to find out.
Planning is everything. Just ask Reece Miller, co-director of one of global clubland’s newest and already most important festival experiences – We Are FSTVL. When Miller and partners Nikki Gordon and David Winney first conceived the idea for such an event, they were still three-and-a-half years away from its opening beats.
“The key is very much in the detail” Miller confidently opens. “We spent three or so years organising that first festival, all whilst holding down other jobs, and that’s no mean feat. It’s been hard work but without the planning it wouldn’t have had the impact it has. The music is one big thing but if no careful thought is put into the other little things like access, parking and emergency services then people’s memories are often tarnished. A festival is remembered for all the wrong reasons.”
We Are FSTVL was actually due to debut in 2012 but, echoing Miller’s measured approach to promoting, the team shifted things back when faced by a snowballing amalgam of free major sponsor parties tied to the London Olympics. “It really wasn’t wise to go up against the Olympics and all of its associated events. It was all happening in east London which, of course, is where we were going to be so we decided to leave it for another year. That worked brilliantly because now we had even more time to plan logistics. We also had time to look at the music even more closely and further assess what was going to work and what wasn’t. Beyond that, there was probably a little luck. Dance music is massive at the moment and that suits us down to the ground.”
Spread liberally across 122 acres of former World War One airfield last May – Damyns Hall Aerodrome, a short distance from Upminster on London’s eastern periphery – We Are FSTVL 2013 thumped, bumped and jumped. Clubbers shrilled ecstatically on social media, whilst media praised everything from the staggeringly varied yet consistent line-up to the careful positioning of stages (no sound-overlaps) and amenities. Highlight performances included those by Crosstown Rebel Damian Lazarus, Ricardo Villalobos and FCL.
Inevitably, perhaps, an industry award has followed – literally hours before our phone call with Miller. Understandably, he’s beaming. “We’ve never felt better” he confirms. “To win Best New Festival at the UK Festival Awards is a major achievement for the team here. We had some really stiff competition from the likes of The Royal Parks and AEG with their huge [Barclaycard] British Summer Time event in Hyde Park, which featured Bon Jovi and The Rolling Stones. To win against something like that was ridiculous; to even be considered among some of those legends was a huge honour.”
So how do you go about surpassing something like that? Miller and co. only have months, rather than years to perfect their eagerly anticipated follow-up. “Well, we spent a little time after the first event to debrief everyone...all of the suppliers, the council, the people involved in setting this up” he says. “And then our own team sat down and assessed everyone’s feedback and what worked, and what didn’t - that immediately put us in a great position to ensure what we do in 2014 is another step forward and even better.”
With debriefs and a three-night ‘thank you’ staff party in Ibiza out of the way, Miller and team set to work refining We Are FSTVL for next spring. It helped that dialogue was being maintained with the artists who couldn’t make the festival’s debut. “We expected a few letdowns last winter when we were contacting people, so rather than putting them aside we immediately asked about the following year” Miller explains. “We were thinking that far ahead, already getting some of the wheels in motion for our second year. It’s a big reason why I think next year’s event will be even better because we’ve got artists returning from this May, and then others joining who we’ve long been talking too.”
At the same time considerable investment in an ‘after movie’ and in photography and digital media, for use in hyping successive festivals, has proved a masterstroke. “Don’t underestimate it” Miller enthuses. “We took a lot of care in capturing the essence of our debut festival. We’ve used these assets when talking to new suppliers, production companies, agents and artists directly, and they’ve really helped build the hype and convey what it is that we’re trying to achieve here. Add to that the fact that Nikki and I have a decent array of contacts from our 12 or so years of promoting club nights...we feel we’ve got the right set-up to put on something really special.”
Next year’s event, May24-25, should rock. An expansion from last year’s one-dayer, We Are FSTVL promises six major stages and arenas on both days co-hosted by the likes of Cocoon, Circo Loco, Paradise, Hospitality and, of course, Defected. Many acts are returning, not least Vath, Villalobos, Kerri Chandler, MK and Hot Since 82. But there are exciting additions all over the shop. Jamie Jones’ Paradise experience enters the fray, with Jones supported by Cassy, Solomun, Infinity Ink and Richy Ahmed. Elsewhere, Richie Hawtin, Disclosure (DJ set) and Maya Jane Coles grace the main stage, Fatboy Slim plays his own Eat Sleep Rave Repeat space, Circo Loco introduce Apollonia, Black Coffee and Matthias Tanzmann, Luciano joins Carl Craig and experimentalist Cesar Merveille, and Defected presents Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez, Nick Curly, Huxley and Copyright. House, techno, bass, drum & bass, breaks, electro, hip-hop...all of it is covered....
The “Big Top arenas” themselves will, according to Miller, benefit from more attention in 2014 – more emphasis on production, AV quality and overall va va voom. In terms of logistics, car parking will be tripled and dedicated transport hubs provided for 500 taxis, 300 buses and coaches, and a specially designated link to the local rail station. The relatively minor criticism of bar queuing and lack of toilets (often a tricky festival balancing act) are also being looked at.
“At the time we conceived We Are FSTVL I was working in the City as a front office trader” Miller explains. “I saw that venture capitalists were backing big shows like Creamfields and realised corporate funding was the way to go for us. At the same time, from [Tony] Blair’s day, the government had an Enterprise Initiative Scheme designed to offer tax breaks to relevant projects, to help them get off the ground and flourish. We’ve got firm, tax advantageous foundations now but, absolutely, we need to be able to report accurately and frequently to a wide array of people in order to ensure they’re happy with their investments.
“It’s good, sound business practice anyway. I’ve been putting on small parties since I was 13 and at that time it was all about the love of the music, being the most popular kid in school and grabbing a little pocket money for a new, fucking nice pair of shoes. As you grow into the dance scene, naturally the business side develops. It has to, today, if you’re going to stick around. We’re good for the local economy and we want to grow.”
Miller’s background is closely associated with several of the UK’s biggest clubs and parties; much like that of his partner Gordon, whose CV includes The Cross, Canvas, Pacha London, Mixmag ‘on tour’ and the TDK Cross Central festival. A number of failures, nestled between their far more numerous successes, have spurred them on to continually bigger and better things. “Everything we do is about growing and improvement. How do we enhance the events we’re running and make people enjoy them even more?” he says. “There’s a saying from the States about not knowing business until you’ve been bankrupt three times and I think it’s true that you need to have failure before success. Nikki and I have a lot of experience between us now but we’re still learning now. We Are FSTVL wasn’t some great epiphany, just an extension of our desire to try bigger things.”
Does he concur that the marketplace for festivals remains fragile? The UK economy has rallied, to an extent, over the past five years but still club nights and live events are closing down, and still doom and gloom headlines are being written. For all of Miller and team’s forensic analysis and infectious swagger, it is a bold move launching new festival brands onto a global club scene already saturated by them and at times financially perilous. “It is a difficult climate” Miller agrees. “I hear some promoters moaning about artist fees, and others moaning about overseas events taking all of their business and potential booking away but this is very much the landscape we have to deal with and, from our perspective, you just have to deal with that...get your head down, put on the best show you can, live, eat, breathe, sleep....”
He continues: “At some point guitar music will come back into focus. Music is cyclical, so the mass interest in dance won’t always be so strong. We’re concentrating on the rich vein of form dance is in now, and enjoying it, but we’re big enough to make changes in the future if we need to. Look at what the Reading and Leeds festivals have been doing, or Glastonbury; they were traditionally guitar and now there’s a lot more dance content. You adapt. Ultimately, I think the festival scene will keep growing and continue to reach saturation point, at which point only the best, most passionately organised events will survive.”
We Are FSTVL looks set to be one of them....
We Are FSTVL 2014 takes place May24-25; check www.wearefstvl.com for regular updates.
