Despite the burning sun, booming thunder, and pouring rain, Noisily Festival 2023 was a roaring success. Taking place in a beautiful patch of woodland just outside of Grantham, Noisily is a riot of colour, energy, and, well, noise, and that hasn’t changed with its movement to a new site.
The previously existing vibes and energy have been transferred over in full from the Nosely Estate, and the festival’s new home offers a bunch of advantages, premier among them, the fact it is level. Despite the much-mourned loss of hillside seating around the stages, this is being seen as a wonderful thing by lots of people, and for those with additional accessibility needs, it is a godsend.
Musically, the festival is very focused, offering the creme de la creme of DnB, techno, house, and psytrance, a little bit of a few niche electronic genres, and little else. Originally, plans were in place to include a Neurofunk and Psydub stage, but sadly limited ticket sales forced this to be cut, although those genres were still in attendance. Basically though, if you want to wander about seeing bands, this festival might not be for you.
At the same time though, the non-musical elements of Noisily, including its talks, workshops, and circus performances are incredibly strong. This is focused in the Mind Body Soul area, which offers lots of different venues for talks and workshops, including some by the UK psychedelic society on psychedelic storytelling.
Given I’m not quite in all the music’s target demographic, my highlights will be rather strange. On Thursday night, the art gallery (not just a stage, a literal art gallery filled with amazing trippy art for sale) played an amazing few hours of funky psydub, and on Friday I greatly enjoyed a performer utilizing saxophone loops on the Mind Stage. More conventionally, Goldie was top-notch closing the Noisily stage, and despite not really being a traditional fit for the festival, went down really well with a big chunk of folks attending.
Strangely, a large number of people were also deeply favourable about a certain pizza stall’s sound system. What I heard wasn’t really to my taste (unlike their delicious pizza), but adds to a reassuring trend of vendors actually bothering to get DJs (albeit ones which were recruited impromptu on site) and play relevant music, rather than just sticking on three-year-old top forty playlists.
Another fantastic thing Nosily has going for it is the circus performance— with a big area dedicated to it, great performers, and lots of workshops the festival is one of the best in the country for jugglers, spinners and acrobats. One particular highlight on this front was Pantheatrix fire show, where practice and talent met burning paraffin, and several less commonly seen fire props were shown off with great skill.
However, like many events on a new site, the festival was not perfect. Sound bleed was a persistent issue, ruining the potential of places like the enchanted woodland, where using ingenious technology, they had three trees controlling the lights and sound. It was good, despite the bleed, but the problem was widespread throughout the whole festival site. Too many sound systems and stages were packed too closely together and without anything to mitigate this, it had a negative effect on the festival’s feel. This made it a more intense and less relaxing experience than it probably needed to be, especially for folks with sensory issues.
Weirdly, alongside this, much of the music was very quiet. While moans on Facebook abound about this topic, I actually don’t object too strongly. Sound bleed is already a bad issue, and not annoying your neighbours is essential when starting out on a new site. In addition, due to problems, possibly related to a late wheat harvest, some people in live-in vehicles were left camping a long way from the festival in a car park, with no facilities.
Finally, the site struggled to deal with the weekend’s heavy rain. While thick mud formed in a few places, the majority of the site turned into slippery clay. Almost everyone fell over at least once, and shelter on site was limited. Customers with accessibility issues struggled particularly badly, and given the distance between the festival and their campsite, many simply opted to not bother braving the brutal conditions.
While these problems obviously aren’t ideal, Noisily, in sum, is still an absolutely brilliant experience. Beautiful and mystical, roaming the wooded site evokes a sense of being in fairyland, and the outstanding regalia sported by most of the Noisily Family adds to this impression.
Speaking of the Noisily Family, arguably the best thing about the festival is the people who attend. I literally didn’t meet anyone who was not lovely. It seems a pretty, messy and slightly mad variety of utterly wonderful humans all decide to call this patch of land home for a weekend, and that, I think, is what really makes Noisily special.
If you love Psytrance, Techno, DnB or House, you should probably attend Noisily. However, even if your relationship with those genres of music is skin deep, the festival can still be an amazing experience, and honestly, if you like good parties, you are almost guaranteed to love it. Don’t come if you’re a dickhead though.
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