ELECTRIC FIELDS
BRIGHT SPARKS
Last year, Electric Fields was the breakout success of Scotland’s festivals scene. Organiser Nick Roberts tells David Pollock they’re in it for the long haul
T wo months ago Nick Roberts received an ‘on this day’ message on his Facebook wall. It reminded him how little time it had taken to throw together 2014’s i rst edition of Electric Fields with his brother Alex. Back then, it was a modest, thousand-capacity one-day festival headlined by popular local names Fatherson and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Yet within two years it had become i ve times the size and added another day, featuring big-named headliners the Charlatans and Primal Scream, and a strong, expansive, supporting lineup. In a Scottish festivals scene shrunk by T in the Park’s absence but otherwise holding its own, Electric Fields is one undeniable breakout success of the last couple of years. This summer, the task is to build on their two-day format’s success, and the organisers have once again chosen popular, commercial headliners in Frightened Rabbit and Dizzee Rascal, with a strong undercurrent of good quality local and international artists in support. The Jesus and Mary Chain, Kate Tempest, Band of Horses, Arab Strap, British Sea Power and Anna Meredith are notable among an eclectic bunch.
‘We started out as a result of going to a lot of different festivals around Europe and down south,’ says Roberts. ‘We then realised that among all of Scotland’s great festivals, there was no smaller event which sat comfortably in a commercial position and wasn’t ashamed of that. We wanted to put on the kind of bands you might get at Latitude, Green Man or End of the Road, but in Scotland.’ The i rst year was an experiment, the second was an attempt to repeat the experiment’s success (King Creosote and the Phantom Band headlined), and 2016 was the moment things turned a corner. This upturn in fortunes came with the addition of new promoting partners – Paul Cardow from PCL in Glasgow, and Andy Smith and Ben Robinson from Kendal Calling and Bluedot – who just clicked with Roberts. ‘It was pretty great to have new partners involved with business sense, but who were willing to keep the event small and grow it sustainably,’ he says. At the same time, the previous year’s move by T in the Park from its long-established site and the closure of the nearby Wickerman after its owner’s tragic death opened up a need for the likes of Electric Fields.
‘We’ve also seen the demise of Rock Ness while the Connect festival only operated for a couple of years,’ says Roberts. ‘We have to build that coni dence again, to convince people that we really do intend to stick around.’ As to why the new Electric Fields has hit the ground running, he has one simple explanation. ‘When I looked over last year’s sales I realised the average age of those attending was 33. That seemed really old, until I realised that it’s me and my brother: it’s a festival put together by people who know what they want, and who know what people their age want from a festival.’
For Electric Fields, that’s the combination of a strong lineup, family-friendliness (already, 500 of the tickets sold for this year are for under-17s), and a bunch of quality extras beyond the music. Roberts points to the fact that Leith’s exceptional food market The Pitt will be making an appearance this year, as well as bar-quality cocktails and the like. ‘It’s common to hear people saying the festival market is saturated right now, and that’s kind of true,’ he says. ‘So it’s about stripping it right back to “if you like the sound of this, you’ll get exactly what you’ve paid for”. You can be assured you’ll be spending two days with good people who are there for the right reasons. I think we’ve had about three arrests in three years.’ Personally, he’s looking forward to Frightened Rabbit, because they’ve been with him since his teens (‘Scott Hutchison came up to me at Record Store Day to say thanks: apparently this is their i rst headline slot at a Scottish festival’), and Band of Horses. And then there’s Dizzee Rascal. ‘It’s a tricky one, deciding who to i nish the festival with on Saturday night, but we realised that a good festival is like a wedding: you start off with the ceilidh, but by the end you want to put a tie around your head and have a disco. He’s still a great artist, but it shows we’re not taking ourselves too seriously. For me, though, the fact that the rest of the bill isn’t i ller is a really important thing; it’s packed with up-and-coming acts who are really well thought of by us.’
For the future, Electric Fields is looking at the possibility of getting larger over two days or possibly expanding to three days, but anything they do won’t come at the cost of breaking the ‘promise’ they feel they have with their audience. ‘We won’t jump from 5000 to 25,000 in a year,’ says Roberts. ‘It’s about making sure our audience trust us at each stage . . . we’re on a nice site and we care about what we do. There are always opportunities, but we have no mad desire to reinvent the wheel too quickly.’
Electric Fields, Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries and Galloway, Fri 1 & Sat 2 Sep, electrici eldsfestival.com
46 THE LIST 1 Jun–31 Aug 2017