• South West Four 2011


  • Now a firm fixture on the August Bank Holiday weekend, the two-day dance festival is has become a final summer party for the London-based Ibiza lovers as well as the more casual raver. Attracting many of the biggest names and promotions from the clubbing world, there was no doubting the intentions of the organisers to wow the crowds, it was just a little disappointing that the issues of restrictive sound levels prevent all the stars of the show shining as brightly as they should.

    Saturday
    The threat of rain was never far away on Saturday, but the fun started early in the Shake It! tent where M.A.N.D.Y. were supplying the grooves at 1pm. Patrick Bodmer and Philipp Jung were loving the fresh-faced crowd and had wide smiles on their own faces as the first shower hit and the tent swelled. Bodmer looked effortless stylish dressed in a long black jacket, straw hat, over-sized shades and tall black boots playing the superstar DJ while his DJing partner Philipp Jung bobbed away happily in matching boots, jeans and grey t-shirt. Their blends of house and techno eased into another man with a perchant for style: Tiga. The electro house Canadian sported a funky baseball cap but the speakers were not playing ball. The squelchy bass was clipping while the sun was outside so while the soundman sorted things out, we headed outside to admire the sports enthusiasts on the V Energy beach volleyball court. From there Tiga’s set was proving a fine accompaniment for a sunny break before we ventured forth to the Cocoon tent where Tobi Neumann was behind the decks.

    Laurent Garnier’s L.B.S. project showed experimentation on the dancefloor can deliver epic results.

    The Berliner has been a made a name for himself producing Miss Kittin and Chicks On Speed, though in the vast tent his sound was lacking any edge and the atmosphere was suffering. Far more excitable was the crowd in the tranced-up Above & Beyond Group Therapy tent which had already seen sets by Super8 & Tab, Jaytech and Andy Moor and were now loving Radio 1 legend Judge Jules who dropped a remix of “Bittersweet Symphony” that had SW4-goers screaming from the nearby portaloos and running to the dancefloor. By now James Zabiela was enjoying himself on the Ministry of Sound main stage ahead of another much-loved John Digweed set, but the set of the day was still to come – and it was a mamoth one. When Laurent Garnier took to the Shake It! tent after Layo & Bushwacka! it was just 4.30pm. By the time he’d weaved through a mix of DJing and live performance with the help of collaborators Benjamin Rippert and Scan X, it was 8.30pm and the epic four-hour journey had been enough to send the Shake It! crowd home on a wave of euphoria. While Rippert and Scan X performed live instrumentation while remixing, creating and feeding back into Garnier’s mixing and conducting, the Frenchman looked delighted with the results and had the onlookers hanging on his every beat. Underworld and Sven Vath were dipped into but Garnier’s L.B.S. show always drew me back, and was the clear highlight for the Saturday – if not the weekend – as the now muddy field was departed ahead of day two with “Crispy Bacon” following me onto the tube home.

    Sunday
    On Sunday club newcomers Union took over the main stage while Together and We Love hosted the biggest tents, but it was the smallest tent featuring Adam Beyer’s Drumcode label that caught the eye first with a special performance from Cirez D – AKA Eric Prydz. Performing for the first time under his tech house moniker, wild screams met his arrival after Paul Ritch’s kinetic live set but it was a disappointing show from Prydz’s output on his Mouseville imprint. Pumped up tunes never materialised into the tough energy promised and an alternative was found in Ellen Allien’s lively set in the We Love tent. Back in Drumcode Slam’s live set was a majestic techno hour ahead of Drumcode label boss Adam Beyer getting on the decks, however the draw of M_NUS mastermind Richie Hawtin in the Together tent was too great.

    Ben Sims was blasting through the techno tunes and rounding off with a fine remix of Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”.

    Hawtin was doing his best to get the most from the Together soundsystem but his sonic twists and turns were simply not able to be heard properly, made worse by blasts of air cannons which drowned out what could be heard. Fans stayed with their hero, though and it was good to see the support, however Modeselektor were left with a difficult task to recapture the crowd. We left to seek out a final set from Drumcode where Ben Sims was blasting through the techno tunes and rounding off with a fine remix of Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” to cap the day. Pendulum closed the festival to raptuous praise for their final live set until 2013, but it was Drumcode’s techno that had been the favourite of the day.

    2011 verdict
    The intermittent rain on Saturday had made Clapham Common hard to navigate, however the spells of sun were enough to keep a big crowd on the main stage for Zabiela, Digweed and Underworld while the Shake It! and Group Therapy tents were constantly lively. Sunday’s Drumcode tent kept techno fans more than happy all day with a beefy system, easily distracting from main stage performances from Annie Mac, Magnetic Man and the Digital Soundboy Soundsystem. It was a shame the sound issues meant the tent which Cocoon had on the Saturday and We Love took over on the Sunday could never do their guests justice, but if South West Four can work out how to get the best from those arenas, they’ll gain a lot more fans for their festival which consistently picks up top acts from across the globe, and the atmosphere is always a winner. Performances from M.A.N.D.Y, Slam, Adam Beyer and Ben Sims were the success stories of 2011 while Laurent Garnier’s L.B.S. project showed experimentation on the dancefloor can deliver epic results – don’t miss this live show, even if it means getting a flight to Europe to a clubbing capital.

    Photography by Freya van Lessen. Full photoset here.

by Mike Barnard

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