AVA Festival 2017

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  • AVA Festival began in 2015 as a showcase for Belfast's electronic music scene. The event has since expanded—this year it ran across two days for the first time—but it's retained a certain low-key charm. Friends and family are central. The parents of the festival’s organiser, Sarah McBriar, work alongside the team of volunteers. Homegrown talent often outperformed international acts, but more than any DJ, it was the crowd that made AVA special. Belfast ravers are noisy, excitable and often shirtless. They're also remarkably quick to get involved. Almost as soon as the first kick drum sounded on Friday afternoon, a gaggle of 20 kids appeared at the festival doors. Once inside, the group ran straight to the front. I saw them in the same spot seven hours later, sweat-drenched, fists-pumping and clambering on each other's shoulders. They personified Belfast's unpretentious love of partying. AVA's third edition took place at T13, a warehouse in the historic Titanic Quarter overlooked by gigantic yellow shipping cranes. The action was split between a huge main room and smaller outside courtyard areas. Periods of sunny weather meant that these outside stages remained packed. There, local acts like Swoose & Cromby and Timmy Stewart + JMX did a sterling job of stoking the up-for-it crowd. As the first day turned to night, the crowd ventured inside to catch Ben UFO playing ravey cuts in typically classy fashion. Jeff Mills closed with Close Encounters Of The Fourth Kind, a new collaborative A/V project that tried to convey the feeling of an alien abduction. Guillaume Marmin's lights, which pierced through the smoke-filled warehouse, were truly impressive, but the music didn't always connect with the audience. Not that Mills would have worried. As he told me during a discussion at AVA's pre-festival conference, he doesn't make music for himself, his fans or for record sales. He makes music for the sake of "it."
    The second day got off to an equally lively start. By 3 PM the Boiler Room Stage was already heaving with half-naked lads and glitter-covered girls. For the next eight hours it was home to intense scenes, the most memorable of which came during Saoirse's set. (Full disclosure: Saoirse is an RA employee.) The Irish DJ was on her way to delivering one of the performances of the weekend when she dropped Armand Van Helden's remix of Tori Amos's "Professional Widow." A cheeky teenager leaned over and turned the fader down, cutting the music with perfect timing. The crowd cheered and, emboldened, he went in again. This time, though, he blew it, causing the music to awkwardly stop. Saoirse gave a theatrical thumbs-down, the crowd booed and then went crazy as she smashed the tune back in. At most festivals something like that might have caused an ugly incident. At AVA, it was all part of the fun.
    Or:la was another act who sent energy levels sky-high at the Boiler Room Stage. Her set stretched from disco to wild acid house with great effect. In fact, Boiler Room was almost too popular for its own good. The admission queue was occasionally so long you might have thought Larry Levan was playing. The energy outside was not always translated to the main stage, meaning sets from Bicep and Marcel Dettmannn, although solid, felt a little flat. In comparison the Dsnt X Lumen stage was always going off, packed with hardcore techno devotees dancing to comically tough beats. Irish DJs such as Techno & Cans and Myler rattled through speedy acid techno to a dance floor filled with semi-deranged characters. The stage climaxed with Sunil Sharpe and DeFeKT, whose collaborative set as Tinfoil sent shirts flying into the air. It felt like a moment you could only experience in Belfast. Photo credit / Grant Jones - Lead, Boiler Room Stage Luke Joyce - AVA Conference Tremaine Gregg - Main Stage
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