Following last year’s debut festival themed around music memoirs, Subculture returns to celebrate the enduring power of all things wyrd. Co-organiser John Best explains the thinking behind a weekend that will navigate the leylines of yore, featuring Weird Walk, Daisy Rickman, Jarvis Cocker, Bridget Christie and more.
“Inventing NeoAncients as a theme was a no-brainer for
a town like Stroud, since you only need to scratch the surface to find someone using the past as a guide to the future. Paganism and pagan-adjacent activity lies around every corner and so we put together a wishlist of participants from different walks who, on some level, might get through
the entrance exam. Someone like Jarvis is not day-to-day operating in the NeoAncients sphere, but he’s adaptable enough that if you ask him to put together a ‘pagan DJ set’, you know he’s going to nail it. Weird Walk were a shoe- in, and Gruff Rhys too. Bridget Christie qualifies because of The Change. Once you start looking, it feels like there’s enough to run a NeoAncients festival every year. But I suspect we’ll probably think of a completely different idea.”
a town like Stroud, since you only need to scratch the surface to find someone using the past as a guide to the future. Paganism and pagan-adjacent activity lies around every corner and so we put together a wishlist of participants from different walks who, on some level, might get through
the entrance exam. Someone like Jarvis is not day-to-day operating in the NeoAncients sphere, but he’s adaptable enough that if you ask him to put together a ‘pagan DJ set’, you know he’s going to nail it. Weird Walk were a shoe- in, and Gruff Rhys too. Bridget Christie qualifies because of The Change. Once you start looking, it feels like there’s enough to run a NeoAncients festival every year. But I suspect we’ll probably think of a completely different idea.”
