As festival season drew to a close, Equinox was the last major party I had lined up for 2023.
Having heard good things but never been, I had high hopes but little idea of what to really expect.
Situated near Grimsby in the waning days of September, Equinox Festival offers the UK’s punks, hippies and ravers a final chance to get together and have it large outside before the cold embrace of winter hits.
Set within an old chalk quarry (essentially a hollowed-out hill) in the north Lincolnshire Wolds, magnificent views extend out towards the north and east. Keen-eyed attendees could look over the picturesque countryside and catch sight of ships steaming down the nearby Humber Estuary, and on a clear day, the wind turbines out to sea.
The site itself was adorned with quaint painted fences, and colourful festoon lighting ran between everything. Art was everywhere you looked, with an elaborate willow structure greeting punters at the main entrance and a series of portraits of famous artists and musicians lining the path into the festival. Once inside, more aesthetic work emerged, with giant mushrooms and a bright blue moon dominating the landscape, and a tumbledown structure serving as a visual centrepiece for the whole arena.
Bounteous smells of cooked meat and spices emanated from the varied food vendors, offering a huge range of street foods at surprisingly good prices— £5 for a decent hotdog in 2023 is amazing. Craftspeople and traders also peddled their wares and skills, with stalls including wood crafting, jewellery, musical instruments and a circus shop.
Despite this bustling business, Equinox Festival 2023 felt completely untainted by corporate capitalism. All the traders were small independent enterprises, prices were generally reasonable, especially by festival standards, and no adverts or blaring pop music lunged out at you, keeping the bubble of freedom intact. Unlike at most events, nothing at Equinox felt like it was there to exploit people, or to maximise profit— in order to be present, one needed to add to the affair.
Dreadlocks, undercuts, tattoos and piercings adorned many of the crowd, with a wide age range represented. There were local kids just looking for a night out, and people who had been punks since punk was first a thing, alongside everyone in between. Clothes were natural looking for the most part, with either dark tones or bright colours being the order of the day, and anarchistic options chosen at every opportunity. Very few bucket hats were worn.
Equinox’s deep anti-capitalist spirit was reflected in the music too. Featuring festival favourites and new up-and-comers, everything booked was far to the alternative side of the spectrum. A wide variety of punk artists made up the mainstay of the live lineup, with many of the rebel genre’s subgenres represented. Beyond punks, the dub and reggae community came out in force, while a decent number of folk and hip-hop artists also found their way onto Equinox’s stages.
Several large tents were dedicated to the ravers, with one, the Lunar Stage focusing entirely on the art form of Drum and Bass. Filled with dedicated dancers all night every night, this stage was a haven for the wild and energetic. If a meditative, trancelike approach was more what you needed, the Sunrise stage had you set, with its psytrance rhythms inducing the energy to help folks twirl and spin their way through the night.
The act I remember most clearly is One Eyed God. Struck by tragedy shortly after their Friday gig when founding member Buz passed away suddenly, the band’s final performance as a complete unit was an unforgettable tour de force. Tight as fuck, offering happy, bouncy energy, and a simple, powerful sound, One Eyed God’s show was an example of what ska punk can be when its core elements are perfect. As word spread on-site about the death, many musicians dedicated a tune and a few words to their departed comrade, with the festival acting as something of an impromptu wake for the fallen punk rock hero.
Other heavy acts which shined on the first day included One Eyed God’s ska-punk peers Filthy Militia, whose horn and sax combined to create a really full rich sound, and Buff, a grindingly powerful hardcore “space punk” band, whose message of “eat the rich” meshed perfectly with their roaring screamed vocals. Offering a counterpoint to the heavy, loud Buff, Fidget and the Twitchers added a keytar and flute to the typical ska punk assembly and played a brighter, more absurdist flavour of ska, which was a ton of fun.
From a psychedelia point of view, the Friday at Equinox had us sorted too. On the main stage, Gong started off fairly calming, with a gentle and jazzy prog rock sound. This developed throughout the set, with the performance’s intensity growing and growing until it was almost overwhelming. While they are definitely trippy hippy BS, I liked them a lot, and their music is amazing for spinning flow toys too.
Offering a very different approach to psychedelia, Friday was also graced with the presence of Spacehopper. Long known for mixing trance, dub, and live guitars, this trio created a rolling ocean of luscious delicious space rock on the Sunrise Stage. A perfect fit for this trippy little venue, the Equinox crowd loved their show, with many dancing like mad throughout the band’s entire set. Unfortunately for psychedelic guitar music lovers, Spacehopper clashed with psychedelic festival legends Ozric Tentacles. Given the crossover of fans, this can’t have been anything but a mistake from the organisers and probably should have been caught and put right before the event went ahead.
One last Friday act worth mentioning was Cara Means Friend. Playing reggae infused folk on an acoustic guitar, her performance was unlike much anything I’ve ever seen before and has potentially opened up a whole new genre for me. Of particular note was her final emotional cover of The Whole of the Moon, in honour of her late father, which was wonderful.
Saturday offered even more than Friday, with a jam-packed schedule of top-grade artists— The first act which caught my eye was Panda and the Moniums, a balkan-esqe festival folk band with hip-hop elements, bizarre lyrics, and a didgeridoo. Reminiscent of Mobius Loop and offering the same sense of fun and whimsy, the band had a beautiful, grateful energy, and the leading lady sported a powerful and interesting voice, both when rapping and singing.
Following Panda I caught another Ska-punk band, this one called Skiprat, whose metal-style solos were an interesting change from the genre’s typical approach. After their performance, I journeyed to the Big Dub Tent, to see Doozer McDooze. Essentially, playing pop punk on a single acoustic guitar, he sings a nice mix of deeply personal and yet universal songs, many of which are genuinely very funny in a pretty self-aware way. He also tried to convince a member of the crowd to buy us all shots, which was brilliant, albeit less successful than I would have liked.
After Doozer I stumbled into Legs On Wheels. This band was as strange as their name and played a funky kind of prog rock which seemed to be messing with polyrhythms and strange new melodies. Another prog-rock band which caught my attention were the Space Falcons. Kinda bluesy, with driving, chugging guitars and drums, this band was never stagnant and had a bright, sparkling stage presence, matching their upbeat fiddle line. Their music features mostly spoken word, or vocalisation-based voice sounds taking it even further away from a traditional sound but by damn, it works.
Equinox Festival’s 2023 Saturday headliner was Neville Staple, of The Specials fame and his fantastic band. As close as you can get to a Specials gig in the modern day, Staple and his gang have great energy on stage and are as tight as a vice. It is wonderful he is keeping the legacy of two-tone going. Mega hits, including “Message to You Rudy”, “Monkey Man”, “Ghost Town”, and “The End” were singalong spectaculars for almost everyone in the audience. If you like ska, you owe it to yourself to see the Neville Staple Band live.
The final act I caught on Saturday was Boom Boom Racoon. Now, this trio were really exciting because they’re the first third-wave folk punk band I’ve heard of who hail from the UK. Clearly taking inspiration from Dayz N Daze, these guys are silly and self-effacing, but still deeply political. If you’re inclined towards anarchism, don’t take yourself too seriously, and not a copper, you’ll probably love it.
Beyond the music, the festival had a bunch of other exciting things going on. A Circus had put up their big top and were offering shows and classes, while a central area played host to a fantastic fire performance every night. This incredible show featured the performance troupe Piratechnics, among many other skilled performers.
I also saw three walkabout parties venturing around the festival: One set of culty grandmothers, one of stiltwalkers, and another of robots. While Equinox does not go particularly hard on the acting front, even the light effort they put in here goes a long way. After all, groups like these often make an enormous impact on people’s festival experiences and can be the memory at the forefront of their minds when they think about their time years later.
Sunday was a bit of a voyage of discovery for me, as I only knew one thing on the lineup. Getting up, I could see immediately that Autumn had started, and the season was practically done. The sky was dark with clouds, and it honestly felt a little like the end of the world. Putting on my coat, I hoped the rain wouldn’t fall and headed on in, trying to think positive thoughts.
Starting off in the early afternoon I caught Featherteeth. Progressive and ethereal, this band looked like punks, but really didn’t sound like it, instead fitting the sound scape stage’s name perfectly. Following Featherteeth, I saw the Majestic who played sweet roots reggae. With a rich mellow warm tone like the crackle of a vinyl record on a sunny day, the lead singer, an older Jamaican dude named Baba Ras, ordered us to dance to get warm, battling the dark and cold of the sky with his band’s wonderful bright energy.
After that wonderful infusion of reggae into my life, I caught an act named Mental Block. Now Mental Block is psychedelic dub, but is not psydub. The difference is substantial, as the dub part is emphasised, while the psy part resembles psychedelic rock, more than the psytrance and ambient music psydub is based on. I very much enjoyed this band and they were very good, but occasionally I found the most obvious ragga elements to their sound not to add much to their feel.
Still at the Soundscape stage, I next encountered Brewers’ Daughter. Initially singing a song focusing on our country’s malaise, as spoken through the metaphor of our decaying waterways, her deep dark voice enchanted, as a crowd gathered to sit staring on dumb-struck. Using her fiddle, guitar and extremely distinctive voice, Brewers’ Daughter is one of the most exciting and interesting folk acts I’ve ever seen, able to enchant and haunt in equal measure.
After seeing Brewers Daughter, I followed the crowd to the main Crispy Disco Stage. It seemed people were going to see something called RDF. Now, I didn’t know RDF, the Radical Dance Faction, before this show and somehow I feel like I should have. Performing on and off since 1987, The RDF plays what sounds like dub and ska, stripped of many of its ragga elements. These are replaced with a thick layer of crusty, traveller and free party culture and the resulting sound goes pretty damn hard, with the dark spoken word lyrics pairing really well with the ever-so-slightly haunting dub instrumentation.
The next band I saw, Kangaroo Moon, offered something completely different. Essentially a bunch of old hippies playing danceable folk really fast, the band fuses traditional Celtic elements with Australian psychedelia. Think Jerry Garcia got lost in Cork for a decade, before being dumped in the outback for another.
The final act, and stalwarts of the UK ska punk scene, Inner Terrestrials offered a pure blast of British resistance culture. Embodying the crusty movement, and its disdain for the norms mainstream society tries to force on it, the band strongly resonated with the Equinox audience. Much heavier than most ska punk, the Inner Terrestrials go very hard— their classic punk rock cover of the classic 1960s traveller’s song “Movin On” went down a particular storm.
Now, this leads onto the feel of the festival as a whole— At Equinox, the survival of the spirit of free festival crusty culture is undeniable. Probably close to half the people in attendance identify as travellers, or traveller-adjacent in some way. While some might find this intimidating, for many, the experience is invigorating. It feels like a brief hiatus from the grip of capitalism, where the anarchists reign and the mundane confines of the “system” dissolve. Attendees describe it as stepping out of “the matrix” or sensing a “thinner veil”, and while I’m not so spiritually inclined, I certainly sensed a unique psychogeography, which bigger, more corporate events cannot hope to mimick.
Equinox might not be everyone’s cup of tea. If you’re a fan of the establishment or don’t vibe with punk, folk, prog, ska, psytrance, or DnB, this might not be your scene. But for those with anticapitalist leanings and a penchant for music reflecting such views, seeking respite from the ever-present globalist corporate world, Equinox stands unrivaled.
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