Offset Festival, set in Hainault Forest Country Park, London (that’s at the end of the Central line), bills itself as one of the last chances festival with some of the best new bands in the indie, electro, artrock’n spectrum. There where definitely people with guitars and stuff and it seemed singularly a London event, what with all on-trend fashion pouring out of the tube. For me though it was all about Nuke.

It’s said that clubs are for a certain generation, if not a religion, defiantly church. Where free form energy (in this case “everyone’s the DJ and we’re all in this together” vibe) provides a primer to further creativity and the bringing on of big ideas in real world lives. Someone has me convinced that kids dancing could disrupt society again. Any minute now, it’s just a matter of time before a stray spark ignites some sort of revolutionary thinking.

This is tragic, but literally for years I’ve be Myspacing and blog watching club kids and general “people do’n things at parties”, type action. Despite being poor old Cinderella, I’ve remained assured that there was something substantive behind the all the jumping around and crazy getups. Something important had or would or maybe will happen. It could kick off in an Eastend strip club, near the guy in the Spongebob suit and the chap holding the Eat Bananas Go Bananas placard. But what? How will I know it when it happens and what’s it going to feel like? Have I missed it already?

Head Honcho Buster Bennett

Ktron of infamous London parties AllYouCanEat and Calling All Tribes fame was my local expert and general muse or was I hers? In any case, I felt I’d all the right credentials to smooze with Buster Bennett (above) and Fonteyn the duo behind the monthly Nuke Them All rave revolution. I have had some experience of being a groupie before, so I foolishly banked on this being important. I’m such a retard. The only credentials you need is the willingness to throw yourself into it, get up, dance and just be yourself. If that happens to be a furry animal or something escaped form the Cartoon Network, all the better. I don’t think they’d let you play out your own tunes, but other then that, you can sign up 100% part of the crew. Consequently, for a lot of the time it’s not clear who’s do’n what or what’s actually happening, just that something’s evolving.

Niyi werks the mic

The lineup included all their mates, a.k.a a bunch of shit hot DJ’s including Casper Clark, Not Shy, Neon Skullz, Snitch DJ’s, Trash Fashion DJ’s, Kool Kids Klub, the legendary Jim Warboy, incredible performances from Niyi (above), Ladynoise and even Dog Show Live! It really was a right old tattoo. The thing I found most striking was that regular notions of presentations, like the old “performer on Stage V’s audience in the stalls” setup doesn’t feature. Just as well as it seemed most people’s mental faculties were switched to super saturation mode and only usefully engaged in post rave collective conscience type activities or kids on K type stuff…which would be dancing and having fun I guess. Though at one stage, all this was lost on the security folks who had a bit of a crack down. The poor things just didn’t understand. Still in the face of such party pooping the show went on regardless.

So Offset, yeah, in a tent in Essex I popped my cherry. Well some of it happened in a bling’n hotel room in Romford. In any case, one things for sure, it was a lot to take in. Electrifying edifying, at times completely bewildering. I kinda felt rushed. Despite the painful anticipation I held onto, that slow build up gave way to a desperate longing for it all just to end, just so I could try and make some sense of it. Something big has passed through me. It’s all awfully confusing and I’ll need to take some time to process this. Having said that, it could have been something beginning with K. As for all the indie/ art rock’n, eh.. it rocked.

You can catch Nuke Them All at a warehouse or maybe a strip club near you, if you live in East London that is.

Text by JackRFrance

photos by Miss Alissa Whitefield