We are delighted to confirm Front 242 are joining our ever growing bill!

Front 242 arguabley the fathers of Industrial were created in 1981 in Aarschot, near Brussels, Belgium, by Daniel Bressanutti and Dirk Bergen, who wanted to create music and graphic design using emerging electronic tools. The first single, "Principles", was released in 1981.The front part of the name comes from the idea of an organized popular uprising. Patrick Codenys and Jean-Luc De Meyer had separately formed a group called Under Viewer at around the same time, and the two duos joined together in 1982. Bressanutti, Codenys and De Meyer took turns on vocals at first, until they settled on De Meyer as the lead vocalist (early recordings with Bressanutti on vocals were subsequently released in 2004). De Meyer came to write most of the lyrics and Valerie Jane Steele also wrote several tracks including "Don't Crash". They decided not to use the regular waveform settings on their synthesizers, arguing that creating the waveform for each note was part of the creative process.

In 1991 the band released Tyranny (for you) and the rest is history! In 2014 F242 will join our ever growing bill at Alt-Fest for an exclusive 2014 UK appearance!

We've spent quite some time working on the new Alt-Fest logo and font. We also put this to the 'vote' and to your input via the Alt-Fest Facebook page HERE

After MUCH deliberation here is our lovely new logo:

Alt-Fest cog logo design by Bonnie Makes Pictures

We've just spent an HOUR looking at the word 'AltFest' in different fonts. Lots and lots of different fonts... You may think we're being a bit dramatic here, going overboard on a tiny weeny detail when, hey, look at the size of that fucking festival you're trying to put on! See that huge beast? Think the font matters now?!

But it does... while looking through these zillion fonts, we spotted several from bands, films, books and so on. And some of the others carried connotations for no apparent reason, that would affect people's perception of the festival before they'd read more than one word about it!

Our conversation over the last hour went something like this...

"this one?"

"too German"

"This one?"

"too hippy"

"this one?"

"too 'beer festival'"

"this one?"

"too elvish"

"how about this?"

"that's Nirvana's"

"or this?"

"hmm..I quite like that... but it makes me think of Sweden for some reason..."

"Ok, not that. This?"

"too haunted housey"

"this?"

"That's GREAT for the industrialists, but the goths and the metallers may not be keen..."

"this one?"

"too arty"

"this one?"

"you mean this font that's comprised solely of naked women's silhouettes? yeah, let's go with that."

We'll have some samples up after the weekend for you to vote on!

Its been a VERY busy week at Alt-Fest HQ, so here is a little update for you....

The inbox (and outbox for that matter) has been ON FIRE! So many emails, many volunteers, thank-you all who have been in touch, if we haven't got back to you yet please bear with us we will!

We've also been to MANY meetings!

We have a date for ALT-FEST and a beautiful green field site 15/16/17th of August 2014 in Kent. This is wonderful news as it means we can really steam ahead and start looking at potential line-ups, get quotes in for stages and so on....

We also will be working with Workhard PR, http://www.workhardpr.com/ which is another superb piece of news as Workhard are one of the foremost agenies in the music world and this will greatly benefit ALT-FEST in getting the word out to the media....

We have 'taken' Bonnie Baker on to design our ALT-FEST logo. Bonnie is an amazing freelance Alternative artist http://bonniemakespictures.blogspot.co.uk/ and we cant wait to see what she comes up with!

So suffice to say the excitement levels here in our rather hot office are HIGH! AND it's all go go go!!

This is Bogie, he has 3 legs and we've decided to make him the Alt-Fest mascot, he likes biscuits, when you come to Alt-fest bring biscuits...

Hello and welcome to the Alt-Fest Blogs...

It's little over a week since we formally or properly decided to pursue our idea for a MASSIVE UK alternative festival. We've thought about London festivals before but the venues just wouldn't play nicely.... then we came upon a wonderful and simple idea, take many, many 1000's of Alt peeps, go to a lovely BIG field and have a damn good celebration!

For those that do or don't know us we run AC one of the biggest Alternative clubs in the world, so with a similar ethos in mind (for the scene) we thought, think of the BIGGEST best festival in the world for the Alt lifestyle and then we'll aim for that.....

So currently we'll be costing and doing a business plan for 3 sizes of festival:

1/ 10-20,000    2/ 20-40,000 and  3/ 40-60,000 people

Which ever of the 3 it turns out to be will largely depend on you and how the scene itself supports the idea. We were greatly impressed by how films such as Iron Sky got a large chunk of their funding from the very people who would want to see or watch the film and there was born the idea. We'll make it the peoples festival, you decide how big it becomes based on your support, you decide on the line-ups and you have as much input as you want into the festival itself. Soon we'll have Crowd Funding options so you can help us with our funding and there is more HERE on some simple ways you can help us out with getting the word on the idea and the festival out to the Alt masses......

I've been asked how I or how do you define Alt. We see Alt-Fest as embracing every single beautiful corner of the Alternative scene and its many lifestyles. From its rich and diverse music to art, performance, tattoos and body modding through to Wiccan, BDSM and everything in-between. Our Music and live bands at Alt-Fest will cover a broad but strictly Alt spectrum - Goth, EBM, Industrial, Dark Electro, Metal and more.

We would like for most of the zones at Alt-fest to be family friendly and children under 12 will get free entry (1 per full paying adult). This doesn't mean that Fetish and Kink or BDSM lifestyles will be excluded as we intend to have an adult only separate 'village' with its own 'private' over 18's area's....

So in short imagine the best festival ever, with your favorite bands, your favorite clubs, shops and more all in a lovely scenic site in the Home Counties... Excited?? I know I am!

Now its down to you to help us get the word out...

Oh and as its the peoples festival for the scene, so we aim to share the entire process with you, so you can regularly check these blogs and the website to see the latest goings on at Alt-Fest HQ.

Darkly

Dom/Alt-Fest