Bloc Festival Is Coming Back After That 2012 Disaster

Bloc founders George Hull and Alex Benson

In less than half a decade of weekenders, Bloc became one of Europe’s most respected electronic music festivals. Then, in 2012, everything went to shit. At 9PM on the first day of the weekend, overcrowding led to the cancellation of the entire festival, thousands of pissed off punters and a spree of shouty articles.

Anger escalated into a months-long hate campaign over Bloc’s social media channels and it seemed that the then-liquidised festival and its organisers were completely dead in the water. But a few months after the 2012 catastrophe founders George Hull and Alex Benson acquired the lease on the struggling Autumn Street Studios in Hackney Wick and began regaining the reputation they’d spent their entire careers building.

A couple of weeks ago George and Alex announced that they’ll be returning to the world of weekenders next year, with Bloc 2015 at Butlins in Minehead. I went to speak to the pair at Autumn Street about the festival, the joys of 1970s prog-rock and the nights they used to put on in a Norfolk windmill.

Autumn Street, Hackney

VICE: Hi both. So you used to put on nights in Norfolk, where you grew up, before slowly making your way into the London nightlife scene. Were there any nights back then that did it for you?
Alex Henson: Two nights, really: the Haywire Sessions – which was basically Andy Weatherall’s night; he was the main resident – and a night called Wang, which had loads of Warp, Rephlex, loads of electro…
George Hull: We were still doing these parties in Norwich – doing things like hiring a windmill on the coast and stuff like that. Then we were coming to London, and these guys who were doing this party on Hackney Road gave us a room in 2000, or 2002, so we got to DJ in London at 18, and it was terribly exciting. Then we did these nights in Brighton. They were a great success, and where me and Alex worked together properly for the first time. That was when Bloc got started.

What kind of people were you booking? Were consciously putting on acts you knew were popular, or was it more stuff you were genuinely into?
Alex: We were far too young to be that cynical. We were just so excited about all the good stuff we’d been listening to and nights we’d been going to – not just our own, but other people’s – and we just didn't see how it could fail to work. If you look at the lineups back then, loads of that stuff is now huge.
George: We gambled on doing a festival as opposed to a club night. Back then, a lot of it really wasn't that big – we were booking Skream and all sorts of things, and also guys from Detroit who are now absolutely fucking massive, but back then their fees were really minimal and no one really cared that much. We managed to find 2,000 people in England and Europe who cared. But what was fashionable then, in 2006 or 2007, was bands like The Strokes and stuff. Dance music was terribly unfashionable – really uncool. It was hard to find sponsorship. Alexis Petridis wrote an article that got a lot of attention, saying, "dance music is dead". It was a struggle – no one really fucking cared.

Clearly things have changed since then. What's changed from Bloc 2012 to Bloc 2015?
George: The venue’s the main difference.
Alex: If you wanna trace it back, we were progressing the whole time: Concorde in Brighton to Pontins to Butlins. There was a real force of positivity behind it, and we were offered a framework to do what we'd done before, which was to scale the whole thing up, which was intimidating, but we thought it was manageable.

What's the response been like since you moved into Autumn Street?
Alex: When we first came to Autumn Street, the last thing we'd done [Bloc 2012] was bad – but eventually bad memories faded and people started to remember that actually the weekend [festival] is really good. By the time it came back, they were like, "This could work."
George: When we did our first shows here they sold out, but they were kind of like cannon fodder for the feedback. It wasn't very pleasant. But there were enough people to fill this place up – around 500 – and the nights have been very successful. It was that that provided us with a platform to step back into the realm of promotion.

Is that where your heart lies, with the festivals?
Alex: We’re doing it again. It was pretty difficult to manoeuvre ourselves into doing it again, but it’s just what we do.
George: It’s all come flooding back, how to do it. We took a few years off and, in the interim, had this nightmare, but it's all coming back. People are fond of the festival because it’s an excellent and unique format.

With the restrictions on sound levels, combined with more stringent councils, it must be a pretty turbulent time for British festivals?
George: It’s a very tough game for lots of reason… but the regulatory side of it in the UK is a very different environment to what you'd experience in Europe, for instance. That's something that promoters just have to deal with.

It’s got harsher though, right?
George: It’s got bigger.
Alex: Events like Bloc – which is one of those quite big dance promotions that a couple of years ago could sell 2,000 tickets, but end up selling 15,000 – there’s a whole big team around it; authorities have to start paying it attention.

Where do you see the British festival scene in 10 years time?
George: The camping festival format has enjoyed a bubble of popularity. I wonder whether that has waned? It’s easy to sit here and say that, but it seems to me that the kind of wacky hat festival camping thing may not be quite as massive as it once was, because people’s experience isn't always that good. We tend to go to festivals in Europe. I think the more liberal regulatory environment allows for more fun sometimes. But yeah, the camping festival thing; perhaps it is on the wane… I'm not sure. The Bloc Butlins thing isn't really a part of that. It’s a weekender. It’s held indoors, in fully licensed, purpose-built entertainment arenas, which are soundproofed.

If you could go to any party throughout history, which would it be? 
Alex: I'd have liked to have seen Castlemorton in the Malvern Hills.
George: I'd liked to have gone to one of those, like, really fucking disgusting Chicago parties.
Alex: Yeah, I would have liked to have gone to one of Plastikman’s early promoted stuff in Detroit in the 80s.

What are your tastes outside of electronic music?
Alex: I like folk.
George: I'm more into my prog-rock – Pink Floyd and stuff.

Would you ever break away from the electronic music scene and put something else on?
Alex: I really want to put Hawkwind on at Bloc!
George: We’ve always got a long list of really quite out there stuff that never quite makes the final cut. At the point where we can be totally self-indulgent, you'll be seeing, like, a reformed Pentangle or something.

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