Watching Trees 24 Review

Wanted to do a little piece on my time at Watching Trees over the past weekend. After missing the first one in 2022, and the hiatus in-between while they looked for a new site, I knew I couldn’t miss out when they announced it was on again this year. Just like music itself, we’re at a point now where the festival/day-festival scene is oversaturated and a lot of the options out there are stale replicas of one another. This becomes glaringly apparent after spending 24 hours in the Wiltshire woods, surrounded by nice, knowledgable people there simply to let loose and enjoy themselves rather than turning up to ensure they get part of their summer quota of ‘content’..

In terms of the music, one of the most apparent things to me was how well they made use of having just one stage. In some instances this could be viewed as a negative, but you got sense of the idea behind it; the skilfully thought out programming/curation of the line up meant that by the end on Sunday afternoon it had felt like one long accumulative performance, rather than a collection of separate sets & performances from the artists/DJ’s.

The mixture of live performances/DJ sets during the day from Semi Specific Ensemble & African Headcharge and Coco Maria slowly built up the energy, but one of the stand outs of the whole thing for me was James Holdens live set. As the sun set over the woods, he performed a large portion of his 2023 album ‘Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’ alongside some of his early classics. It felt about as Balearic as you could get for some woods in the west country, and really was the perfect transition from day into night. I almost felt sorry for Manfredas following it up, but he expertly brought the vibe down to start all over again, shifting from euphoria to heads down House & warped Techno and teeing up for the Optimo boys to do what they do best - get the party going with anything & everything, in any which combination you can imagine, jumping from Electro to New Wave to Freestyle and back again.

The next real stand out was Optimo’s beatless rave, which captured attention from the minute you saw the program.. Whether it was down to noise restriction or not, to shift from peak time party vibes to an hour of beatless music felt like a ballsy move. The set consisted of (carefully edited?) sections from all your favourite rave classics like Big Fun, Sweet Harmony, Rhythm Is a Dancer et al all layered over one another. My memory is slightly hazy but it seemed there were often 3/4 layered up at the same time, separate basslines, melodies, chord progressions & vocals all seamlessly mixed together - you really had to appreciate the thought and preparation that had gone into it and more importantly the fact that the crowd, while maybe initially slightly bamboozled, could lock into the drum groove in their mind alone and prove that you can indeed continue a peak time rave without drums.. Fingers crossed that one goes up online sometime.

As the morning progressed through dawn Yu Su provided a set full of wonderful relaxed obscurities, I couldn’t name a single track (bonus points) and it was through these hours where the crowd thinned out and more vocal tracks were played that your ears could really pick up the detailing on the sound system. This was none more so apparent than when when breakfast rolled around and Optimo were back on, I was sipping a coffee while Arthur Russell's voice enveloped the dance floor, the sound was as crisp and precise as it gets. It progressed into a beautiful clear morning, and Parris followed up with a set that straddled the line between rolling Deep House/Techno and set up Optimo’s one last time for their closing set, which was a raucous send off and celebration of the clear success it had been for all those involved.

There’s so much I haven’t mentioned here, the food, the alternative offerings in the talks tent, the staff - big up to all those involved (maybe gotta give a special shout out to the Margarita man, sterling effort from you sir). It genuinely did feel like a special, singular event that provided a different experience for us on the dance floor. Given the hosts, that's probably no surprise. Until next year x