The biggest event on the Bang Face calendar, though, is the annual 'Weekender' festival at Pontins in Camber Sands; a rabidly-anticipated three day celebration of all things Bang Face, which attracts fanatics from across the globe.
The extent of Bang Face's growth has surpassed any prediction. It's somehow managed to burst out of the London club-going bubble and step onto an international stage without ever leaving the country and, in the process, has become something of an institution among consumers and producers of hardcore dance music.
Yes, there will always be people who say it's not what it used to be - as with almost anything touched by human hand - but Bang Face has stayed admirably true to its ethos, and its founder and mastermind, James St.
Acid, is a pleasingly unpretentious fellow particularly given the pontifical implications of his pseudonym. I spoke to James a few days after the All-Stars party to discuss the history of Bang Face, the definition of Hard Crew, and a few ground rules James St.
Acid: Yeah, the hour party couldn't happen for reasons beyond our control, so we did this free thing instead. JSA: [Laughs] Yeah totally! I think particularly with it being an all-star lineup; those are some of the guys that have stuck it out and supported us since the start. They all played for free as well, so it was - as much as we could do - a genuine free party. JSA: I don't know to be honest.
I'm gonna see what the fallout is from their point of view, make the assessment from that. But yeah I liked it, it certainly worked well for the night. JSA: Well that hard breakbeat sound, and the way people approach it and get stuck into the chopped up beat, is definitely the backbone of a lot of the music that goes on at Bang Face. If anything I actually thought the free party was less breakcore-y than some of the monthlies.
In terms of pure breakcore artists there weren't as many - even DJ Scotch Egg did a new live bass project as Devil Man, and Ebola's playing a lot of bassline stuff now. The whole scene seems to be changing, more towards a mixture of beats and basslines; perhaps because of the technology that's around these days. It started as a result of me having put on parties years ago then walking away from it, but then getting bored and frustrated with going out; a feeling that things had got a bit too serious basically.
So I started DJing with friends, [and] we did a few warehouse parties around London. It was the first time I'd really done anything in London, and quite quickly I thought 'Oh, I'm enjoying this again, enjoying DJing again'. Coming back to my DJing, I'd built up a big record collection of loads of different styles and thought 'Why not throw them all together? That's where the St.
Acid thing came from. I DJed purely acid for a couple of years - maybe - and it was just a DJ name that everyone thought was funny, so it stuck.
So, because these warehouse parties were going well, I thought I'd arrange a night. It started off in Public Life in Shoreditch, which is an old underground toilet you could get about people into.
We only did three there and they were free entry and just for mates, but quickly word got out - just through our network of friends - that it was funny, and people started turning up. So we moved to another basement venue in Shoreditch called Traffic, and it was there for over a year. That's were it really started to get silly. We started getting professional artists to play; particularly the Rephlex lot, because I'd been to a lot of Rephlex nights and I knew those guys quite well.
They were really into what we were doing, so they started to play more live sets and experimental sets that perhaps they hadn't done before - they felt the freedom to do that.
That further snowballed the night's popularity, along with all the fun elements that were thrown in literally for a laugh like the banners and the toys, the stuff on the wall, the slogans and the costumes. During that first year or so, did you feel like you were doing something separate from other nights in London? I still think we are - trying to keep the real ethics of what a party should be, which is fundamentally just one big laugh, you know? We left Traffic for various reasons, but mainly it was just too small.
It wasn't an ideal venue anyway; none of those Shoreditch venues were. We just didn't know where to go and didn't wanna pitch to big clubs, so we found wherever would take us basically. We were only at Medicine for three nights; they didn't really get what we were doing and it was still oversubscribed, so we quickly moved to Electrowerkz, which had a reputation for supporting the underground.
People submit them and I have to type each one out. It takes weeks. Over time, I realised you can deliver something way more powerful with state-of-the-art LED screens and lighting systems and lasers. As you might expect, this attitude spills out into their bookings. Early on Friday morning, a few dozen ravers lie on the floor of a Pontins pub, in a pile of pillows and blankets, engaging in a guided meditation to the sound of crisps being eaten, toilets flushing and the discordant strings of what could well be a horror-movie soundtrack.
Eventually the sound of a piano banging a single chord repeatedly, getting faster until it stretches into a wall of abstract digital noise. This is part of the takeover by Chinstroke Records, who have previously curated the on-site TV channel and this year have graduated onto a real stage. They have been part of the festival for years by embracing the Bang Face ethos and putting their own twist on it, as have bassline and rave outfit Off Me Nut Records, who have gone from hosting the pool party to the second stage.
This is how I grew up and this is one of the very last places where I can be just that. The Hard Crew has even spawned its own DJ supergroup.
Few clubs manage to reach their 10 th anniversary, so what is the secret to the longevity of Bang Face? They have stayed true to their vision and paid massive attention to the people who go there religiously, and they deliver, time and time again.
The Panacea highlights the spirit that runs throughout Bang Face as its reason for thriving during the past decade. James reveals the future of Bang Face may include taking the mayhem further afield. Following a decade of unbridled partying, it looks like Bang Face will continue to be a hub of hedonism for many years to come, especially as more people are driven away from the commercialism of EDM and go in search of that original rave spirit.
Carry on banging! Copyright Thrust Publishing Ltd.
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