Sign up at information to take part in the Spirit Animal Fashion Show. We will be building costumes in the run up to the show and have some resources to help but you are more than welcome to prepare outfits in advance for what will no doubt be the most glamorous event in anthropomorphised soul manifestation.
Contributors will be cosmically rewarded.
Note: Need not be an animal. If your spirit guide is ice cream, moss, or Chris de Burgh, we’re fine with that – it’s your guide after all.
All the great feeling of raving, jumping, and ‘just wiggling your fingers in the sky yeah’ but totally sober, if you like, and in the middle of the day!
All the joy of blood pumping, moving in time with other humans, spandex and getting red in the face – without gyms and ‘gym people.’
Moving all the muscles in your body feels GREAT, getting a warm face and a fast heart is GREAT, hardcore is GREAT.
THERE IS A STRANGE TRIBAL MAGIC TO GROUP AEROBICS THAT EVERYONE SHOULD ENJOY
Puppy Piles 4 Lyf
Megan The Hardcore Fairy
Dolly Turing may be a poet, party organiser, transformation instigator, collection of entities, dancer, experimental musician, process, git wizard, joke. She has read poems as part of Veer to Athens, at the Sussex Poetry Festival, at Supernormal Festival as part of the Archbishops of Banterbury, Hi Zero and in various pub gardens. She recently had some poems published by Datableed. At the moment she musicks with Four Manatees and Thee Hairee Kuntz, creates parties, playtimes and worlds as part of 3EYE.SPACE, explores and rambles with future Zen group Chapter Perilous, writes occasional blog posts at Outside Inroads and has a monthly allsorts music show BANG! on Totally Radio. She is also RIGHT NOW conducting research into personal apocalyptic/illumination experiences.
Verity Spott is a poet and musician from Brighton. Verity has had poetry published in several journals, magazines and anthologies. Her work has been translated into Greek, Korean, Spanish, Czech and Portuguese. Verity’s books include “Effort to No”, “Dear Nothing and No One in it” (Iodine Press), “Balconette” (Veer Books), “Gideon” (Barque Press) and most recently a selection of essays / prosody called “Trans* Manifestos” (Shit Valley). Whereas “Gideon” was a very direct hex against the UK chancellor and gut pincer commonly called George Osborne, Verity’s Manifestos are attempts at destabilising the language of law, prescription and assumed “natural” order; a narrative of conscious terror, police violence, gender dysphoria and magical decay. Verity is also working on a long poem, which is a set of suites / lyrics aimed at entirely dismantling the private mental health sector. And if you don’t think that’s a good idea, well, you’re part of the problem, and you’d better fuck off.
http://www.barquepress.com/publications.php?i=97
Think you have trained a fine quality human? Submit them for Festival 23’s Human Crufts! Only humans of the highest pedigree allowed.
No biting! No licking! No humping! Dogs marked on their teeth, coat and vigour! Agility and party trick rounds!
Register your human at the information point on Friday to enter…
One crisp morning at the “Toy Haven”, the Sun fighting its way through begrimed windows, the telephone rings. The owner and manager of Worcester Park’s premier toy shop answers. Somehow he does not infer from the cod German accent on the line that he is being made a fool of, or worse. The voice is demanding directions and is intent on buying a plastic sit-upon, “The bus with the face”. For little Wolfgang, of course. Amid smirks and giggles from the party at the other end of the line, and many calls later, our brave Mr. Hall, (for it is he), finally is moved to weary exasperation. He suggests our friends from Europe board the bus, a 213 to Kingston Garage and head back towards the shop; they would appear to have disembarked in North Cheam. “We are in Beam!” they squeal. “You must get on the bus”, He says, starting to shout just a little. The party who claim they are from Dusseldorf are confused. “The bus with the face?” they ask. “No!” he blurts. “RED BUS, NO FACE”! The legend is born, and the whole sorry episode is captured on quarter inch tape. It will be listened to many, many times. Many, many times. Notwithstanding the impious treatment meted out to Mr. Hall and his minions at the “Toy Haven”, the music springing from this pointless but gladdening episode is certainly not intended to amuse, but rather to divert your attention from the adorable little miseries you would rather not confront, today or any day. Never was so little precedent engaged for so little reason; damaged music from who knows where created for reasons we should never wish to know. Be like little Wolfgang. Enjoy.
Watch their super wonderful collaboration with Jo Spratley and Bic Hayes covering Tim Smith’s Ocean Shipwreck at the Alphabet Business Convention in 2015 or this sweet little rehearsal clip.
Ben Graham is a poet, writer, performer, counter-culture historian and music journalist, whose work has appeared in the Quietus, the Stool Pigeon and Shindig magazine, among other publications. He is the author of ‘A Gathering of Promises: The Battle for Texas’s Psychedelic Music, from the 13th Floor Elevators to the Black Angels and Beyond’ (Zero Books, 2015). He has also self-published two novels and several collections of poetry. His work has been compared at various times to that of Lester Bangs, Julian Cope, John Sinclair, Hunter S Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Wolfe and Colin Wilson. He grew up in West Yorkshire but is now firmly ensconced in Brighton.
Binnsclagg mix spoken word and electro-acoustic sound sources, often creating deliberately, provocatively unpleasant audio events. Past performances have seen them using industrial cutting equipment, filling cramped venues with showers of incandescent sparks and grating metallic shrieks [Wire Magazine]
Binnsclagg are idiots.
https://binnsclagg.bandcamp.com/album/live-april- may-2015
Thee Hairee Kuntz beamed down from planet Kuntz in 2013 to provide earthlings with crunchy space jazz and improvised musical visions. We are a “super group” of all-female be-hooded and be-robed players, residing in Brighton and London, comprised of members of: The A BAND, Dolly Dollycore, Gardyloo Spew, BINNSCLAGG, Earth Mother, Bloom, GAGGLE, The Zero Map and The Bald Knobbers. We are ecstatic to play a set of improvised, experimental soundscapes using a variety of electronic and acoustic percussion instruments and vocal sounds.
We want to create MAGIC! We shall be creating a shamanistic smoke, smells and incantations to a visual pre-filmed backdrop of us completing a ritualistic performance. We will create a film of us performing an incantation to the benevolent spirit of Festival 23 and the ever-lasting Goddesses Freya, Isis and Eris, a short while before the festival to be incorporated into our performance.
We are here to represent the under-represented. To have fun, spread cosmic vibes, create a force field of love and energise the spirits. Our sound is sometimes jazz, sometimes noise, spacey, minimalist, building, controlled sets with lots of ear play, interplay and lysergic psychedelic drama. We move between twinkly, soft and enchanting to heavy, crunchy, pulsating, rhythms and screeching saxophones and back again along a seamless river. We are influenced by Sun-Ra, Bolide, Bjork, Moomins, the films of Tarkovsky and the celebration of disorder and the lightness of chaos. We have been cited as sounding like all of these things.
We are a dreamscape. We are evolving. We are mischief. We are tiny particles of light. Let the light shine through at Festival 23.
FOUR MANATEES: Backlight Dreams
Four Manatees will explore, expose, explode, merge and destroy boundaries between composition, improvisation, play and ritual. We will fool around with the idea of a “game”, or a “ritual” of a “piece of music” or “poetry” in five written pieces, each using a different compositional method and including elements of ritual and play. We will invite others to join us, and if you are in the audience you will become involved too.
Four Manatees are Dolly Turing and Verity Spott. They met five years ago in a whirl of free improvisation and live together in Brighton. They are in love and spend their time making and shaping dialogues, friendships, schemes, play, poetics. Both are musicians, using improvisation and composition. They play together using instruments, toys and electronics. Both are writers. Through different stresses and spheres their writing has in common queer love, transformation, bathos and a distrust for power games and established and arbitrary formalities.
Both hold a deep burning love for ritual, symbolism and process, a light hearted tendency to “make shit up” and a practical cynicism in the face of life and death.
Verity and Dolly have a fascination with exploring / exploding the boundaries between music/sound, magical ritual, poetry and play, using this as a tool. They have continually developed these ideas, for example composing a piece “Rocket Science” for Cage Rattling, a tribute to John Cage, Kings Palace, London; collaborating with each other and others on soundscapes, poetry and ritual at the poetry press’s “Veer to Athens” event last year, and creating a music/poetry/ritual for 2015’s Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival’s aftershow.