Watching Trees prepares for inaugural edition of Festival

5 Minute Read

Art & Culture

Written by Alasdair King

Next weekend in the Forest of Dean, we embark on our first festival.

The highly anticipated first edition of the event, spearheaded by Optimo and Ransom Note, will kick off on the 3rd of September next week playing host to an assortment of friends and family in the backwoods of the Forest of Dean. The intimate festival will showcase a unique line up of artists from across the spectrum of Dance, Electronic and Experimental music with the likes of Joy O, Maximum Joy, Josey Rebelle, O Yuki Conjugate, Scratchclart aka Scratcha DVA and Aba Shanti-I all set to perform over the course of the weekend.

Watching Trees was announced earlier this year and was described by the team as being the resulting ‘dreamworld’ of many years spent on dancefloors, at raves and festivals around the world. The festival was announced in tandem with celebrations marking 25 years of the acclaimed Optimo parties which were born and evolved in Glasgow. Ransom Note and Optimo have collaborated on a number of projects before now, with this being their most ambitious to date.

The programming of the festival is unique, reflecting the ideology behind both crews – blurring the lines between genres and challenging preconceptions. Music programmed across the course of the weekend moves between Ambient, Dub, Post Punk, House, Techno, Jungle, Leftfield Pop & beyond with a no holds barred approach taken to curation.

Other key performances over the weekend come from Glok (the electronic alias of Ride’s Andy Bell), The Golden Filter, C.A.R, 12th Isle, Ivan Smagghe, Oceanic, Josh Caffe, Debonair, Budino and Lou Hayter.

Set in the idyllic woods which make up the Forest of Dean, the festival is focussed toward two stages, with on site camping and boutique options available to guests and attendees.

Final tickets on sale HERE.