With just over a month until Noisily Festival opens her luscious Leiceshire arms to the public, vibes at base camp are ramping up to exploding point. Curious to meet the masterminds behind the operation we hunted down Mr Charles Audley – one of the FIVE – for a quick pow wow.
Q. Firstly thanks for taking the time to give us an insight into Noisily Festival. For those who are not familiar with you – can you sum up Noisily festival in one Sentence for us?
A. Noisily is pure escapism in the most beautiful woodland site you can imagine, filled with smiling faces and excellent music – a seriously good party.
Q. P&The festival market as we know if very crowded these days – what do to you think makes Noisily stand out from the rest?
A. Noisily is a small festival on a large scale, and where most small independent electronic events focus solely on the current flavours, we try and offer something for everyone. Curating such a diverse line-up certainly presents challenges, however the rewards it affords organiser and punter alike far outweigh the efforts put in. The production also really makes the festival stand out, there is no other event of this size with as much in the way of lighting, lasers, projection mapping and mega piles of audio, and that IS a promise.
Q. What’s your capacity?
A. 2000
Q. What have been the biggest challenges for you?
A. Just keeping on top of things, you cannot afford to take your foot of the pedal at any point otherwise you will spend your entire time catching up with things. Three of the five directors run an events company as a separate venture and the moving of Noisily from May to July has really made things interesting! I have a holiday booked in the first week of August, Boom festival, yes please.
Q. What’s been the most bizarre hiccup in planning a festival of this scale?
A. In year one we had everything ready about three minutes before the gates opened, and we then realised we didn’t have a gate! Will, his dad and I hare tailed it up the hill and dismantled a fence in the corner of the car park and set up a gazebo literally seconds before the first guests turned up. Then later in the weekend the loo cleaner didn’t attach his hose properly and managed to spray 40 litres of shit all over the main pathway into the site, I turned around and walked away, that was not going to become my problem!
Q. Tell us a bit about your site and why you chose it.
A. The site belongs to my friend and fellow director Will, it is in a deep wooded valley at least three miles from the nearest village and must have been made for a festival. All the infrastructure is dictated by the lay of the land, the tree cover is diverse and lush, the audio is swallowed by the banks of the hills, and the sun pours through the canopy picking out the dance floors and clearings. Words don’t do it justice, but we feel our creativity and our amazing crew do. We value your opinions, so you should buy a ticket and check it out.
Q. This year sees the expansion of the site and arrival of the infamous Liquid Stage; after a decade at the sorely missed Glade Festival – do you see yourselves walking in Glades footsteps or is there a different mix these days in terms of what punters want? Was it a big mile stone for you to see Noisily bring the Liquid stage back to the festival scene?
A. The Liquid Stage was one of the best stages at Glade, if not the best. In the final years of Glade it was overlooked by new management who failed to realise what it stood for. Unlike the Origin Stage which was Trance through and through, the Liquid Stage played everything from Dub through Breaks and House, into Techno, Psy-Breaks and Trance – and that is what we are bringing to Noisily. Whilst there is a very strong Psychedelic line up at Noisily, there have been whisperings that it is turning into a Trance festival – this couldn’t be further from the truth. Diversity of line-up and inclusion of all is at the core of our mission statement, and that is exactly what the programming on the Liquid Stage illustrates, leave alone the Tree House and Noisily Stages which only add to the melting pot.
The similarities between Noisily and Glade are undeniable, but this isn’t us copying something that’s been done before. This is us doing what we love; carving out a place in a saturated market with something we believe because of the team who works on it can and will stand head and shoulders above the rest as the UK’s leading independent dance music festival.
Q. Tell us about the mix of music on your three main stages?
A. Three main stages, a fourth official programmed area, with a few extra venues playing music all over the site. Techno, Progressive Techno, House, Deep House, Disco, Soul, Funk, Hip Hop, Psy Trance, Progressive Trance, Psy-Breaks, Glitch Hop, Breaks, Bass Music, a bit of filth. Naughty.
Q. You’re very much an electronic music event, what’s going on for ravers seeking entertainment away from a speaker stack?
A. We’ve got workshops, unbelievable food, comedy, discussions groups, performance arts, magic, generally great conversation, the list goes on. But then you could always go back to the stack, which is where you’ll find me, in the sweet spot smack bang in the middle of the dance floor.
Q. Your website tells us how important the Décor and visual arts are to the overall feel of the event, can you give us a cheeky insight as to what you have in store?
A. We have an 11m diameter wooden canopy built over the Noisily Stage dance floor made by our master carpenter Oak Fraser; 5 lasers including a brand new custom built 7 watt fixture rigged on the stage itself; no less than 8 flame throwers and of course our solid oak Noisily sign complete with projection mapping onto it.
There’ll be a 22m diameter custom décor canopy over the Liquid Stage dance floor complete with pulsing LEDs. On the stage will be an awesome LED screen designed by Video Illusions – the guys behind the Fat Boy Slim and Chase and Status Tours. In Orbit design is giving the Tree House a face lift with some awesome décor, bringing the façade to a whopping 8m high!
For full line-up, tickets and general chit chat click ‘ERE