Cosmic Roots has come a long way from its beginnings as a festival, originally held in 2018 as a celebration for a friend’s 21st birthday party. This year’s edition was their biggest, most extravagant festival to date, with over two thousand ravers making their way to East Raynham’s, 18th century Walled Garden. The festival’s organisers, Harry, Angus and Oran showcased an impressive attention to detail in creating not only captivating stages, but also thoughtfully put together chill out areas and camping areas. Sofas are located at the Pond Life stage and in between The Quadrant and Tropicle Popsicle stages for dancers to rest their weary legs, boutique camping options are offered at a reasonable price, cups are charged to encourage recycling, and compost toilets rather than portaloos are present throughout the site. These small but impactful details are rare in a world where profit and margins are often prioritised over the small touches that differentiate a good experience from an exceptional one.
From the moment we saw Avant Garbage (k means and DJ Ojo) play the opening set at Wormhole, we knew where we wanted to spend the majority of the next few days. As a stage surrounded by lasers and Funktion-One stacks, enclosed by hay bales within the woods, it easily stands out as one of the most memorable stages and spectacular audio-visual experiences we have ever experienced. Unsurprisingly it was home to many of the weekend’s best performances and hosted some of the festival’s more experimental acts such as Space Afrika, and heavier, faster dance sounds such as jungle from the likes of Stem, and ghetto-tech from Tony Neptune.
Things got off to a bang on Thursday night with stand out sets from Nick & Nath at The Quadrant and Kiara Scuro followed by Danielle at Wormhole. Danielle played a spectacular set of anything and everything ranging from speed garage classics such as “G.O.D Limited – Original Don” to Fio Fa’s latest banger, “U Drink, U Pay”, perfectly blended into the dubby rolling techno track, “Lewy – Aggar”. It was easily one of the best sets we have heard since clubs started opening up at the beginning of summer and was a brilliant way to start the festival.
On Friday morning, a few of us ambled down to The Quadrant for a spot of early morning yoga followed by a morning coffee and a delicious sausage and egg mcmuffin. Stretched and recharged, we spent a lot of the early afternoon watching and dancing to acts that we hadn’t known much about prior to the festival – which made a nice change from seeing the same ‘copy & paste’ line-up that festivals often organise in order to safeguard ticket sales. As articulated by the CR crew themselves, they take a “grass roots approach of booking artists within their budget and searching deeper to promote artists that deserve greater recognition”. This held true throughout the weekend with many new faces as well as returning ones from their existing community with the likes of Amy Alford, Skins, Pond Life, Tom Drew, and 12th Isle sharing the line-up with newcomers Changsie, MLE, and the wxman and non-binary collective, Wxmb 2, who took over and curated 9 hours of amazing music at The Quadrant stage featuring Maeve, Lucid, NIKS, Michelle Manetti and Jay Carder.
Maeve set the scene with an eclectic selection of tracks before Lucid took over. Unfortunately we only caught the end of Lucid’s solo set but we caught the b2b between her and Michelle Manetti which banged. They fed off of each other’s and the crowd’s energy producing a unique and inspiring experience, especially when Michelle got on the mic to sing over the tracks. This is something that most would find tricky to pull off, but Michelle’s voice was incredible and it took the set to another level with the Quadrant stage popping off. B.A.D. founder, NIKS, followed with a set that kept building the crowd up, intertwining crowd favourites like Floorplan’s “Never Grow Old” with Dennis Ferrer’s “The Red Room”. Jay Carder, who we saw play at Soulstice Festival the week prior, rounded things off with a bang.
The other acts on Friday night included The Bricks x Parasol Culture takeover of Tropicle Popsicle which was a safe bet for rolling tech house grooves, whereas the majority of acts at the Wormhole opted for a jungle and drum & bass tip with Mantissa favourite, Skins being the first DJ we saw there that evening. He played a brilliant selection that expertly fitted with dusk, weaving emotional, synth-laden jungle and breaksy tracks together as the sun set behind the trees. It perfectly set the mood for the evening and was a fitting warm up for Tim Reaper. Another standout set of the festival came later that night from Stem, a DJ we had seen in our first club visit of 2021 at No Symbols, Ormside Projects. On that occasion Stem was on warm up duties, but at Cosmic Roots she was tasked with closing the Wormhole on Friday night/Saturday morning. A highlight of her set came when she dropped RussMillions’ “Gun Lean” to much appreciation from the crowd.
The best weather of the festival came on its final day. A few of us took this opportunity to head to the nearby town of Fakenham to stock up, unwind and grab a cold frosty pint in the local pub before heading back for the final afternoon and night of CR. We split our time that afternoon drinking ‘cucumberitas’, a tequila and cucumber drink from the festival’s cocktail bar that were equal parts refreshing and tasty, with chilling in the hammocks and dancing at The Quadrant while Theo Everyday B2B Macualay Sulkin played some disco and guilty pleasures such as Kylie Minogue’s “Love At First Sight”. Following Joe Sansom’s deep techno set, Space Afrika took it down a few notches and back up again with a live set of experimental ambient and dub that had the dance floor in a trance. Another standout from Saturday evening was Amy Alford who played a brilliant set of tech house and UKG.
Back at Wormhole, Thea HD took the phrase ‘eclectic’ to another level with an amazing set that included early 00’s hip hop in the form of Outkast and Erykah Badu’s “Humble Mumble”, and Missy Elliott and Method Man’s “Bring the Pain”, twitchy minimal house with Deadbeat’s “Fun…k?”, UKG classic DJ Zinc’s “138 Trek”, and big room house anthems such as KH’s “Question” and Against All Logic’s “Now U Got Me Hooked”. Thea HD had the crowd in the palm of her hand as she played puppet master, building and easing the tension and energy on the dance floor, setting up the stage perfectly for Tony Neptune who dropped one the tracks/blends of the festival with a mashup of “Knights Of The Jaguar” by DJ Rolando with K.P. & Envy’s “Swing My Way”.
Cosmic Roots is truly a family affair – Katiusha has played at every edition of the festival and, on this occasion, played twice on the final day. For her second set of the day she was joined by her mates Lisene and Adam Pits AKA Space Cadets, all mates from Leeds and also good friends of the late great Alex T who had championed Cosmic Roots in its first two years and had closed the 2nd edition of the festival, making it fitting that his friends were tasked with closing the 3rd edition. There were many highlights from their set that included trance banger, “Sleeping With An Angel (Euro Mix)” by Transformer 2 & Adamski, a bassline remix of “Good Times” by Chic, Warp techno classic “Nine” by RAC. All DJs clearly had a great time behind the decks for the duration of this very special set, living and loving every moment as much as the lucky ravers who got to witness it.
As put aptly by Cosmic Roots organisers in our first conversation with them in 2019, “for us the community feel is what gives Cosmic Roots its magic”. Having finally made it to an edition of their special festival two years later, we got to experience firsthand how the community as well as Harry, Oran and Angus’s attention to detail, their charming DIY stages and exceptional music curation fit together to make Cosmic Roots Festival a remarkably unique experience that will undoubtedly go from strength to strength over the coming years – we will certainly be back for more in 2022!
Words By: James Acquaye Nortey-Glover and Tom Allman
Check out our playlist of tracks heard at Cosmic Roots Festival 2021 via the link below: