Now in its fourth year, Brainwash Festival is not a festival in the ‘traditional’ sense; there are strictly no tents, overpriced food or muddy wellies involved here. Instead, the festival runs as a weekender across several venues in Leeds, centring around next-door neighbours The Brudenell Social Club and Royal Park Cellars, right in the middle of the student stomping ground of Hyde Park. This year, the festival has expanded to include performances at The Library, TJ’s Woodhouse Liberal Club and Leeds University Union itself. Now a staple in any music fan’s calendar, I met with organiser Haydn Britland to find out more.
The festival is held every October, right after the start of the university semester. This is no accident, I am told; the festival purposefully coincides with the return of the students . Partly, of course, this is purely practical – there will be more people around to actually attend – but, Haydn says, the festival is a great chance for newcomers to the city to explore the local music scene and discover new bands, both local and more far-flung. This year’s offerings range from giants of the local scene such as Pulled Apart by Horses and These Monsters…, to more international (and distinctly Scandinavian-themed) crowd-pullers such as Efterklang and Jaga Jazzist. However, Haydn insists, no bands are there simply as number-pullers and each band is handpicked to showcase the quality and variety of new music and local bands. The mix is an eclectic one, because, as Haydn says, “no one just likes one type of music”. There is some coherency here though; louder and heavier bands are normally restricted to the aptly dungeon-like Royal Park Cellars, and on the Saturday a second room will be opened up in the Brudenell Social Club for quieter, folkier stuff in amongst the pool tables. We are lucky (“spoilt”, Haydn says, and he is not wrong) to have such a thriving music scene right on our doorstep, and the festival is both a celebration of that and a taster of what is available to those not yet acquainted.
At just 25, Haydn has been already been organising gigs for eight years, starting small in village halls in his teens and building up from there: has promoting changed much during that time with the advent of Myspace and other social media?
“Yes”, he states emphatically, “is the simple answer”. In its heyday, Myspace was the first real tool for promoting music and gigs online, and whereas once he would just have to mention a gig to people if he happened to see them in the pub, he can now use tools such as Facebook as a modern type of ‘word of mouth’; inviting a few friends, who will invite a few more, who will invite a few more, and so on. However, he says, though the internet has certainly made promotion easier, it should only be used in moderation and never in the place of more traditional forms of promotion. The festival has its own regional PR team for the first time this year, and according to Haydn, by far the most effective form of advertisement is still the massive poster drums which dot the city and are seen by people are walking past or “just sitting around waiting for the bus”.
With the festival seemingly getting bigger every year, I wonder whether there are any plans for further expansion. Some of the bands, it is explained, ask for a larger space than that can be provided by The Brudenell or Royal Park Cellars, and it is this that has led to this year’s broader choice of venues, stretching across the green expanse of Hyde Park to TJ’s Woodhouse Liberal Club, The Library pub and Leeds University Union. Though obviously happy with this growth, Haydn insists that he “could never leave the Brudenell”, which he describes fondly as “one of a kind”, and absolutely pivotal to the music scene in Leeds; an all-inclusive, welcoming space where ‘old man pub’ meets music venue and the generations coexist and mingle happily. Such a thing is happy and rare.
Though Haydn says that he would happily shrink back to a smaller festival in the future, this looks unlikely with the breadth and variety of the ever-growing music scene in Leeds, which, he says, is one of the best outside of London and “as healthy as it’s ever been”.
To buy tickets to Brainwash Festival and join in with the celebrations of this vibrant scene, please visit the website. The Festival runs from Thursday 29th October to Sunday 1st November at venues across the city. This year’s event will be raising money for three different charities: Sheffield Children’s Hospital, St Gemma’s Hospice in Leeds and Unicef.