Beautiful People Festival @ Queen Elizabeth Park

These days when I see the line up for a festival my reaction tends to be a mixture of who the fuck is that, too much EDM nonsense, they used to be good but not any more and Carl Cox is the only one on the line up I'd want to see. The reality is as someone who's the wrong side of 40 with a music taste that's perhaps a bit older than my years I'm unlikely to be inspired by a line up that's in all probability designed to appeal to a younger demographic.

Then I saw the line up for Beautiful People Festival which I confess I'd never heard of before, my first thought was I haven't seen a line up like this for years and given it's also in London I should probably go.

The headliners were Masters at Work who I'm a big fan of. The rest of the line up was a mixture of styles, but there was also a dedicated UK garage arena. I loved UK garage back in the day but was never too keen on garage arenas at raves because the stereotypes were true in that respect. In a festival where the punters were likely to be older and the other music styles being mixed in though, this seemed the ideal setting to go to a garage arena. 

Arriving at the festival I headed straight to the garage tent. Jason Kaye was playing to just a handful of people with it being early on. He kept it 90s, the way I like it and by the end of his set the tent was filling up.

Next on the bill was Matt Jam Lamont, but also joining him was Mike Ruffcut Lloyd who was due to play afterwards but they started an unplanned back to back set. However, Mike Ruffcut Lloyd soon disappeared off the stage. I stayed for around half the set, conscious that I wanted to experience the variety the festival had to offer.

Wandering round the other tents it became apparent that the garage tent was by far the busiest. The main arena was outside as expected, but there was also another outdoor arena that basically had the DJs playing out of a shed to a small outdoor space that was a bit of a corridor. After a quick visit to each arena I settled on the tent that didn't have any must see DJs on the line up, but there was some pleasant house music being played in it.

Next up on the agenda was Evelyn Champagne King. I'd been in the tent she was playing less than 30 minutes prior when it was pretty empty but now it was full. DJ Bigger finished his set and handed over to Shortee Blitz who announced that Evelyn Champagne King would now be on a bit later. Cue the mass exodus from the tent.

I then returned to the garage arena where Mike Ruffcut Lloyd was playing, followed by Masterstepz. I stayed for around an hour, before returning to see if Evelyn Champagne King was now playing. Shortee Blitz was still playing but I decided to stay put in the hope Evelyn Champagne King would be on shortly.

She finally appeared on stage and it was worth the wait. She did the big hits, but also sang "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke acapella, did an excerpt of "Rappers Delight" and played the bongo's.

DJ Hype appeared afterwards and it was good to hear a bit of drum & bass out loud. After the altered schedule though I remembered I was hoping to catch a bit of Brandon Block so went out to catch the last 10 minutes of his set where he'd gone way back playing "Stomp" by Brothers Johnston and "I'm Every Woman" by Chaka Khan. I then returned to see Hype play who I gather was playing newer stuff as I didn't recognise the majority of what he played.

Then it was back to the garage tent to see Artful Dodger, though not the original Artful Dodger. They started off playing pretty much every garage anthem from the turn of the century. Then they did a bit of grime, before playing a bit of old skool jungle. What they didn't appear to play though was any Artful Dodger tunes which seemed a bit odd.

Next up was Pied Piper and early on in the set Da Click appeared on stage to do "Good Rhymes". I stayed until it was time for Arrested Development.

These days Arrested Development is Speech and a few randoms, though in all due respect Speech was the only member people knew back in the day. Being a festival you're more likely to get a crowd who simply thinks your music is decent without being your biggest fans and this was evident from the mass exodus once they'd played "Mr Wendal".

Finally it was headliners Masters at Work on the main stage. After chopping and changing all day this was 2 hours straight of them. It was solid without being spectacular, maybe I was hoping for more of their anthems in there of maybe I was just knackered. By 10pm I'd been going for 9 hours and even though I live in London, Stratford isn't exactly close to where I live and the walk from the park to the station takes long enough. A few minutes later I decided to beat the rush and leave, though there were plenty of other people who had the same idea.