ARCADIA - The Limits Go Up in Flames

Call it rave culture, festival culture, warehouse culture, call it whatever you like.......Arcadia may just be the best thing to have burst out of it in a generation. In a lazy age of PR driven commercialism across the club scene and an underground so often locked down in a sweaty basement where music and vibe alone push the envelope, the sheer insane majesty of Arcadia in full swing is just something else – another level, another realm, another vision, another circuit of consciousness altogether. Just fucking look at it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welded, melted, moulded, soldered, and mesmerizingly mutated from the scrapheap up, Arcadia is truly a transformational experience – both in its construction from abused military refuse back at HQ and the overwhelming flow of the Spider, their largest structure, as it oscillates spectacularly between the best trip you never did, the most unlikely bit of interstellar travel you never piloted, the most reassuringly bass drenched monster you never did a runner from, and the most awe inspiring, earth shattering party you’re actually going mental at.

We interviewed Pip Rush and Bertie Cole, the gloriously down to earth lunatics behind Arcadia last year after their epic performance at Glastonbury 2010 (see Issue 5) and having dropped back in to this year’s Glasto to reconnect with and relive the Arcadia experience – our minds were blown yet again by the sheer, all encompassing frenzy of it all going off. You never quite get your head round the structure itself, let alone the awesome basslines its hammering out, the acrobatics, the lasers, the precision lighting, the bolts of lightning sizzling across the night sky....and then of course.....there’s the explosions.....Fucking hell.......The explosions..... It’s a constant battle between dancing your nuts off and just standing still for a second, taking it all in and shaking your head in utter, wide eyed, sparkling disbelief.

If this was some commercial construct with no heart and soul – well – it would never have happened. You do have to be a certain shade of complete nutter to even dream it up, but in combining the DIY ethic of the old school with the sheer vision of their own mission, the technical know how and complete professionalism required to pull it all off, Arcadia have managed to harness the magical through the mechanical. Not to mention nutmegging Health and Safety with the fact that despite looking like a genetically modified spaceship that’s whistled into a rammed field through a tear in the space time continuum, every last bolt on the Spider is rock solidly precise, and, of course.........throwing the best party this side of a supernova.

Engineering Ecstatic Experience. Liquifying the Limits

Could keep going until the superlatives run out, but bottom line, it really boils down to Arcadia being at the apogee of underground creative culture – where the consciously commercial is blown clean away through sheer imagination, pure vibe and an absolutely slamming inter dimensional groove. It’s just unique.

To be honest – describing it has a certain pointlessness. You can’t encapsulate it. You can’t define it. You can’t explain it. And you can’t really believe it. You just have to live it and cling on for the ride.

Now check this video ;-))))

ARCADIA WEBSITE

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LSD Magazine Interviews ELATE

Well it’s not often that we find ourselves at a loss for words here at LSD, but having read the interview that Elate - Jon Hammer sent back to us, apart from getting straight on the blower and asking him to write for LSD, we gorged ourselves on the stunning intellectual breadth, conceptual range and lyrical wonder of his sparkling mind. Tracing a primal path between the organic and the magical, his canvasses plunge us into the fault lines between the utopian and the dystopian and hurl us out into a molten core of shimmering imagination where genesis and apocalypse close the circle of archetypal consciousness. A pure old school graffiti writer, Elate has lived witness to the artistic evolution of daubing punk slogans in ’82 to the renegade rush of bombing trains, then the explosive colour and sizzling letters of the street into the concept projects of breathtaking pieces of collaborative creativity like Mutate Britain and Arcadia. Instinctively poetic, searingly perceptive, profoundly positive and inspirationally open hearted, his art and his words hold an enchanted mirror to the ebbs and flows of decades of underground subculture and beyond into the bewitching landscapes of the collective consciousness and the ideas, emotions, complexities, corruption and towering innocence that defines the hidden Hades of the soul and the trickling mysteries of the unchained mind. Seriously though - just fucking read this. - his first ever interview

Can you tell us a little about your early life and your initial drive into art?

I was born in 1970, on the enchanted day of the enchanted month, according to the ‘Old Religion’, or so I’m told. I’ve always been captivated by colour, patterns, reflections and how things are affected by light and shade. My earliest memory is lying in my cot, rubbing my eyes to marvel at the crazy patterns which I could generate. When I got my own room I stared at the artexed ceiling above my bed to make vividly animated landscapes and characters, which kept me awestruck, as did my kaleidoscope, much as kids these days play video games. As I grew a little older I was similarly transported by viewing slides through our antique microscope. I could already read and write when I started school so I drew, in full perspective, in an attempt to ease the boredom and was brutally attacked by a teacher for my efforts. At this point I first realised that making art would not necessarily be easy. I came from a poor but cultured family, our working class background was lit up with amazing colour prints and books on art and music everywhere. We only had a black and white TV but Heironymous Bosch’s visions hung in almost every room which I lost myself in continually. There was always a fresh supply of paper and art materials to hand. My aunt was an amateur archaeologist, armchair historian and expert on the classics, and took me round museums, castles and churches regularly from the age of three. I loved the sacred architecture, staring at stained glass and into the cabinets. She told me what the things were and where they came from, how they were made and how they found their way to the museum and this fired my enthusiasm for art and history.

How did early experiences of sub culture and counter culture impact themselves on your developing identity?

In the early 70s the consciousness revolution that happened in the 60s, had spread from the hippy underground into broader society. My parents were clearly affected by that ethic and the self sufficiency and whole-food thing, there would always seem to be Bob Dylan and blues playing, vegetables growing, joss sticks burning and yoga going on. I remember hearing Dylan and blues songs as a very young child and making visual narratives in my head so I guess that stretched my imagination quite a lot.

We lived in Norfolk back then. A lot of the people who were involved in the London hippy scene in the 60s moved out to the West Country and East Anglia to pursue dreams of pastoral living and put on festivals. One I remember very well was Barsham Faire in ‘74 and ‘75; a medieval folk festival with entertainers, and puppeteers, horses and dogs everywhere. I remember seeing adults, playing totally innocently just like us kids, banging drums and playing flutes and singing and dancing and basking in the sun in wonderful costumes, it was like being transported into a golden age, very beautiful times. I felt at home instantly and understood what was going on. It gave me the idea that there was another way of living, a higher human purpose of imagination and fulfillment that was beyond the everyday capitalist conformity of living in a house and going to work or school.

Back in the real world I got more disillusioned with the iron fist of my teachers and became more aware of the rapid outbreak of punk from the ‘shock-horror stories’ on the news and from playground rumours. After feeling completely powerless at the hands of authority it was as if aliens had suddenly landed in our midst, and they were on our side. The significance of their presence in society was something we instantly understood, and as we got older and became brave enough to stand up to the teachers we found that punk was there for us too, it became a symbol that there really was another way of living that us kids could actually do ourselves, whether our parents liked it or not. Back then punk really adversely affected them, threatening the whole fabric of society. When we saw the punks walking down the street the adults’ powerless anger and outrage made us warm towards that and copy parts of it so that you could cause a little bit of that outrage too, it was a way to take back power, of standing up for yourself and saying no, fuck you I’m different, even if it was just a badge or a safety pin, or the name of a band on your schoolbag it showed your mindset and loyalty and really pissed authority figures off. It’s difficult to comprehend now just how shockingly different punk was, people were reacting like it was the end of society as we know it, punks were regarded with the sort of fear and loathing normally reserved for killers, as in effect they were, they were killing the broader conventions of polite society, behind which lurked all the bullshit.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE IN ISSUE 6

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LSD Magazine Interviews - Pip Rush / Bert Cole - Arcadia (Issue 5)

We know our way round a party here at LSD, but this is pure next generation stuff as every single synapse crackles into a lightening bolt of gobsmacked wonder and the barriers crumble before the onslaught of thousands upon thousands of heaving minds, bodies and souls coming together in breathtaking unity and rushing their fucking nuts and their bolts off. After the spellbinding spectacle that was their field at Glastonbury, we caught up with Pip Rush and Bert Cole - the visionary nutters behind it all for a word...

Can you tell us a little about your backgrounds 

PIP - I grew up in the countryside in Dorset within a family of artists. My brother Joe had just started the Mutoids when I was born so got a lot of inspiration seeing their shows as a kid.Tried the school thing but didn’t enjoy the system, Started working on and off with the Mutoids 15 years on, learned how to build big scrap sculptures and enjoyed some wicked parties around the world. 

BERT - I grew up in the Dorset countryside with an early passion for mechanics, machines, improvisation and acquiring the skills for making things. I went to my first Glastonbury 20 years ago and witnessed Archaos aged 10 which helped my wheels get turning.  I took off on the road at 16 with tent company Kayam that took me all over the world in amongst festivals and events and was quickly made a tent master and spent the next 11 years touring the globe in the summers with a motley tent crew moving giant structures for events from orchestras to raves. In the off season I started to put on my own free parties and was becoming more interested in getting people together with music and entertainment outside of the normal system.

How did you come together to create Arcadia?

PIP - I started a traveling arts café and travelled round European festivals and squats building party environments. It was hard graft with no funding and we spent a lot of time trying to fix the trucks and acquire diesel... But it was loads of fun, and we met hundreds of creative, driven people. We rocked up at a Spanish festival one day and bumped in to Bert who I vaguely knew from childhood. He was erecting these massive tents, having fun with his crew playing about with serious machinery. I was really inspired to see the possibilities when you had quality tools and good food…and I think he was also inspired by how much fun our freestyle creative lifestyle was…


The next year we scored a good budget from a festival in Ireland and he came out to help with his crew. It was a real potent mix of crews and we built an amazing environment full of sculptures, with a big tent in the middle with bands and stuff. Sometime in the early hours we had a chat about how a linear stage and a separation between the musicians, crowd and sculpture was all wrong, so decided to try and merge it all in to one 360 arena…. From the outside we looked like a dribbling mess, but on the inside wed just hit on an idea that was about to grow beyond our wildest visions!


BERT - I knew of Pip from an early age as we grew up pretty near each other but started to get more in touch as time went on and we realized we had some common interests. I worked as part of a team Pip put together to produce an area at Electric Picnic in 2006 and there was something really positive about working together and the ball started rolling there really as the momentum gathered to try and create, make or produce things in festivals that were nothing traditional but a fusion of influences and elements that combined, made for a full 360 degree all encompassing atmosphere in which people could really let themselves go. This was made relatively obvious from witnessing years of festivals and concerts always following the same old linear formula of stage and auditorium etc. We quite clearly decided to turn it inside out and upside down and create a hub from which effects, music, energy radiates in which people are amongst rather than simply watching. Where things have got to now is a mere evolution of what started for us there.

How important is recycling and mutation in within the Arcadia concept?

PIP - Hmm, it’s massive. Anyone with a few basic skills and a welder can make amazing things out of scrap with very little other resources. Also the inspiration that comes from visiting a scrap yard and seeing mountains of machines from past generations piled up high is massive in itselfe.… We get all our stuff from military scrap yards, Its interesting seeing crates and crates of 

BERT - I feel like we start with outlandish concepts and then search for good bits of scrap as building blocks, slot then in and re arrange them. This allows the concept, design and manufacture to organically and simultaneously develop along an exciting path.

How important is wider team spirit and the essence of collaboration in the bigger installations?

PIP - It’s all about that really, building creative stuff, pushing the boundaries and having a big party at the end really brings the best out of people. ‘Arcadia’ has attracted so many amazing individuals and groups in to my life, all who have inspired me and shaped how I live. I think everybody must have a similar motive, because they all give their heart and soul to work around the clock and make it happen… and they’re definitely not doing it for the money! 

BERT - It’s all about the people, community and spirit. What we do is fuelled greatly by huge amounts of enthusiasm, focus and relentless hard work towards a collective goal by many amazing people who have a huge range in skills, interests lifestyles and ideals. Together these form a multi faceted, ever changing collective who point in the same direction.

READ FULL INTERVIEW IN LSD MAGAZINE ISSUE FIVE