Next weekend, in the Kent Countryside of the UK, a special festival will be held dubbed Camp Wildfire for the first time. In one hand, it’s a unique concept in itself: an adventure camp by day, a music festival by night, featuring a secret lineup of bands and DJs. But the three day event (held June 19th to the 21st) has been created to serve as an album launch for British ensemble Keston Cobblers Club, with their new record Wildfire being released earlier that week. It may just be one of the most elaborate album launches the world has ever seen.
The official website of the event promotes the festival’s schedule to be, “a bustling adventure camp with 80 + activities, expeditions, bushcraft, artistry, engineering, adventure sports all included in your ticket.” Sounds pretty amazing, no? And with no one under 18 admitted, we can only imagine things will get… interesting.
We got to know the band while we were at The Great Escape last month, where we named them one of the festival highlights and one of the artists not to miss. I spoke to Jules from the band about the unique event just before they hit the stage, and she let us in on what we can expect from the event?
Where did this concept come from?
It came from the desire to have an album launch to display the music in its best form. So for the EP before last, we launched it on a bus, and the idea was that you’d see the Scene of Plenty as you went along. We’ve always been big on trying to make a visual to go along with our music and a bit of an experience. So you hear the album as it was intended. So Wildfire is full of rousing, wild songs. It has these visuals of running through the forests, being free, liberated, having adventures. So wanted to bring that to life. It was partly born of that, and partly just because we just wanted to do something fun. And get adults to do adventures again. Get drunk and run around like lunatics. It should be really fun. One of the ideas is called “Naked in Nature”. So definitely no kids! *laughs*.
And there’ll be live music as well?
The daytime is an adventure camp, but the evenings are much more like the traditional music festivals. It’s a bit of a twist on that as well, but we’re keeping that as a bit of a surprise. We’re playing on the Saturday and releasing the record, but there’s a really exciting program of bands we’re keeping hush hush, purely because we want people to come and discover amazing stuff. It’s well curated, around many genres. We want people to find new music and have an inspiring weekend.
Will this be a one off event?
If it works, we will definitely take it forward. It’s a bit of a dream of mine, putting this festival on. So hopefully, if I’m not insane, and other people agree, we’ll do it again!
You must have really enjoyed playing in an adventure camp when you were kids?
Not even when we were kids! We went last year! And I spent the whole time there thinking to myself “I could do this so much better.” I thought if you had strong design and you have a more theatrical experience… like you walk into a world of it… you’ll just get immersed in it. And that’s really the inspiration of it all.
Camp Wildfire will be held in the Kent Countryside from the 19th to the 21st of June. For more details head to the official website: http://campwildfire.co.uk/. To find out more about the band, you can check them out here: http://kestoncobblers.club/. Their new album Wildfire is released on June 15th.
