For the past 20 years or so, Croatia has been one of the most popular festival destinations in Europe, and for the past decade, UK promoters have played an instrumental role in that. The first UK run festival in Croatia was The Garden Festival in the beautiful costal town of Tisno. A decade ago, those same organisers invited New Bohemia mastermind Noah Ball to Croatia, and Outlook festival was the result. A year after that, Noah partnered up with Soundcrash’s Rob Waller, and Soundwave was born. Eventually, Noah added a third festival to his roster – Dimensions, cementing his position as one of the most influential figures in the Croatian festival scene.
Soundwave is, to me, the most interesting of the 3. It’s the smallest, the most intimate, and seemingly the most personal. So when I got the chance to sit down with Noah Ball in a tiny cafe in Haggerston last week, I wanted to understand exactly what the distinction was.
“Outlook’s roots lie in Kingston, London and New York. Whether it’s hip-hop or reggae or grime, it’s a soundsystem festival.” Noah explained, “Dimensions has its roots in Berlin and Detroit, Soundwave is much more jazz, funk and soul influenced. It’s certainly more self-indulgent, it’s a joy to program. Being able to visualise the people who’s music you’re digging at the time playing on a stage in the Croatian sunshine by the sea is a pretty strong motivator.”
It’s easy to understand why Noah wanted to spread his work overseas, after years of running New Bohemia nights in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool, he developed an understanding of how to create a trustworthy brand so that he could book interesting acts without ticket sales dropping off. Sat opposite me, his experience was evident even in his mannerisms – relaxed, quietly passionate, self-assured, slow to drink his tea.
So when your tenure in Croatia started with something as thumping as Outlook, how does a counterpart like Soundwave come about? “The village that Soundwave used to happen in, Petrčane, Outlook was there one year but the locals weren’t too keen on the Outlook crowd. The dubstep crowd back in the day was a bit rowdy, so the site owners approached me and said ‘We love what you did but we’d like you to come back with a slightly different presentation.’ So Soundwave was kind of born from that.”
These days, Outlook takes place on the Pula peninsula further north, while Soundwave has moved spots to Tisno. “It’s quite a small site, so we can’t really go beyond 2,500-3000 people unless we move, but we like the site and we like the intimacy of the festival.” Noah says, “The village isn’t a massive tourist destination generally, so having these events there during the summer has really had an impact on it, and the locals love it. Everyone who owns a spare apartment or bar or shop benefits from it. All of the food concessions on site are local businesses, so the local culture does really add to the feel of the event. Soundwave isn’t a big drug fest, it’s a nice audience, it’s people who just really appreciate the music. It probably has one of the nicest crowds of any festival I’ve ever been to.”
All the festivals Noah runs are distinct, and independently successful. None of them rely on the others to pull a crowd, and all of them pull different crowds. As Noah explains, this is completely by design: “Different festivals approach things in different ways, and not all of them necessarily have a strong musical direction, they’ll book whatever’s hot regardless of genre, so they struggle to create any kind of specific image. All the ones I work on are based around specific niches. I prefer being specialist to being populist.” He says, “It’s year round full-time work. A chunk of the year is spent on the bookings and the big promo drive, then the operations side of things kicks in as you get closer to the event, and then event management, and so on. The structure of the year is quite well scheduled, really, but just having 3 events in Croatia and one in London makes it a pretty much perpetual thing.”
The London event he refers to is Sunfall, which had its maiden flight last year. Like all the other festivals on Noah’s docket, it had a unique approach, firstly because the day festival was bookended by several afterparties across the city, each hosted by one of the headline acts, and secondly because it had perhaps the best arsenal of sound systems I’ve ever heard at a one-day festival, in London or anywhere else. “It’s very difficult to get sound right in London because of the noise restrictions, so for Sunfall we invested massively to make sure it was the best it could be.” Noah recalls.
The amount of effort Noah and his team went to in order to get Sunfall right reflects another important aspect of his approach – the sound has to be perfect. “When you’ve got more live bands, you need precision and clarity on all of the frequencies, it has to be pitch perfect, whereas for house and techno you’re looking for something more punchy, or dub and reggae where you need a warmer sound which rolls out. For more jazzy stuff you need a nice good range. It comes back to being specialist and niche.”
This year, Soundwave is playing host to Roy Ayers, GoGo Penguin, Laura Mvula, Yussef Kamaal, Gilles Peterson, Mndsgn, Roni Size, The Pharcyde, Egyptian Lover… Well, you get the idea. Even from that snippet, you can tell that it’s a lovingly crafted festival, and as Noah says, imagining some of those acts doing their thing with a Croatian costline in the background is very enticing. “I would quite happily sit in front of the main stage for the whole weekend.” Noah says, smiling.
Soundwave Festival takes place from the 27th to the 31st of July. Check out the full lineup and book tickets here.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
