Bangface 2012!

http://www.bangface.com/weekender/lineup/bfw2012lineup.htm

Hard to resist with a line-up like that. 90% of time I look at festival / weekender line-ups and at best there are 1 or 2 artists I would be tempted to see, the rest is mundane indie dance student semi-alternative bollox. Bangface always seem to hit properly hard though and in the end this proved too much to resist, even as a solo mission with a lot of driving.

Unfortunately that amount of driving resulted in me arriving late on Friday night, setting up camp several miles from the rave, and then not having enough petrol to get there and back and not enough energy to dick around with taxis and stuff. If I'd known that night's line-up was: Dave Clarke > Venetian Snares > Bong-Ra > Outside Agency then I'd have tried a bit harder....clearly I am pretty pissed I missed that lot.

But I got good value raving on the next two nights, catching, in order:

Renegade feat Ray Keith Live:
(jungle)
Pretty good job of a live set and pretty good jungle overall, although a bit stop/start and I'd have preferred more old-skool Ray Keith stuff.

DJ Starscream (ex-Slipknot):
(techno, dubstep, jungle, breakcore)
Good and surprising set, I thought this dude was just relentless breakcore but he mixed it up pretty well with a full spectrum of styles, building up to the proper mashed up stuff, all pretty good.

Wisp:
(electronica, jungle, hardcore)
The surprise of the night, I only caught the last part of this set but it sounded really nice, bleepy trancey melodies with fast jungle and hard techno beats. Not sure if the whole set was like this but would happily see more of Wisp.

808 State:
(oldskool, breakbeat)
Another surprise, I didn't really know much about 808S apart from them having done some old skool / housey anthems, but despite the least charismatic frontman ever, they did some good breakbeat stuff, and some of their newer tracks which were nice solid drum and bass styles.

Current Value:
(hard drum and bass)
Excellent! Proper hardcore Current Value style, but not all pots and pans, with a few abstract and dubsteppy bits thrown in amongst the mayhem. Set of the weekend for me and great to dance to. I find some of the modern hard dnb a bit relentless on CD but it works great in a rave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-kQz3FeAlE

Producer & Hellfish:
(gabber, breakbeat)
Good stuff, exactly as expected, I used to catch Producer loads in my earlier raving years, and he's still going strong, mixing it in well with Hellfish and some hip-hop and breakbeat styles with proper pogoing gabber beats.

DJ Yoda:
(hip-hop, funk, dubstep, audio-visual)
Well put together set of slick and entertaining audio-visual mixing. Entertaining stuff although not my sort of thing to rave to.

u-ziq:
(electronica, ambient, techno)
Again another nice set but not really that energetic and dancey. Some of the earlier parts were excellent listening ambient / downbeat.

Aphex Twin:
(acid techno, industrial electro, breakhop, neo-jungle, noisecore)
Good set....maybe a great set. Slightly marred by early technical hitches (15 mins late start, then 15 mins downtime just after starting), and being bloody boiling in the rave so I had to chill out even when he transmogrified into the jungle stuff. But the actual music was often great, some classy acid techno, the vibes were mad (5 lasers + 15 giant inflatable dolphins at one point) and the breakcore finish was amazing. So yeah good stuff...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNwJpzJP_ZY
(Terrible sound but you get the idea)