The good old Derbyshire mist descended, and that was pretty much that…

August 7, 2009, 9:25 am
Filed under: Reviews

Y-Not Festival, July 2009

Nestled within the perfect Peak District triangle (Ashbourne, Matlock, Buxton) sits the brilliantly bijoux Y-Not festival. Despite being slap bang in the heart of Derbyshire, straight out of the pages of an Austen novel (and Kiera Knightley’s latest film), the site itself lacked its neighbouring magnificence, but the inspiring line-up made up for that.

The promoters’ commitment to fresh talent is critical to the festival’s success. 2009′s highlights included an enduring acoustic set from vocal range ripper Little Lost David, the raucous Nine Black Alps and ska-stompers The King Blues – and best of all, the sound production was excellent.

Y-Not has grown in just two years from a capacity of 500 to 4,000 in 2009, testament to the appeal of its back-to-basics ethos. Yet the festival still felt small in both scale and mindset, creating a unique house party vibe with a strong midland twang. You’ve pretty much cased the whole joint and said hello to your fellow campers at least once by the first sunset. Facilities wise, the basics were good but with no frills; there were loads of toilets, no queuing (and not at all stinky), with fresh water, recycling bins and very, very friendly stewards and staff.

For such a solidly music orientated festival the relative lack of side-shows and diversions wouldn’t necessarily present a problem… until the rainclouds move in. That’s when the comfort of healthy gourmet grub is needed. But this was burger or bacon sarnie territory, not a salad, falafel or noodles in sight.

It rains an awful lot in the Peaks because of its high altitude. Not as much as in the Lake District, but still quite a lot. Site managers were bringing tractors on site to pull cars out of the mud and frantically laying straw. They need much more ground tracks next year, in case it’s wet again; there were cars abandoned everywhere.

My 16 year old nephew, Jake, is a fantastic drummer so he wanted to check out the skills of the bands. He loved King Blues. He loved the dance tent, too, but that only got going for a few hours after the main stage closed. We both felt there was a massive lack of entertainment during the day and with everything contained within one field it had a goldfish effect on us. But we’d definitely go back and in fact it inspired Jake to be on stage himself one day. He thought that having such a musically cool festival on his doorstep was massively exciting.

Y-Not 2009 was wet but absorbing nevertheless. A full-blooded mid-summer weekender aimed largely at a late-teen/early-20s crowd.