Full disclosure: I had never been to AVA at any stage during the festival’s ten-year existence. I simply wasn’t all that interested in the kind of music on offer. Until recently. Some amateur DJ experience – OK, half-drunkenly mixing records in local pubs in a way I hoped wasn’t ear-achingly unbearable for the locals – recommendations from friends and the wealth of excellent club nights put on by some of Belfast’s best promoters and tastemakers have opened my mind to dance music in its myriad forms.
Since its inception, AVA has been the focal point of the dance music scene in Belfast and has cemented itself as one of Ireland’s best festivals. As well as hosting some of the world’s most recognisable names over the years, the festival has always been a proud platform for local talent.
Under the unfamiliar Belfast sun, we made our way to the Titanic Slipways to see what AVA had in store for its tenth anniversary celebrations.
The gates lead right to the Boiler Room, so we could hear Plain Sailing getting everyone in the mood as we queued and waiting for the inevitable pat-down. With many still filtering in, there wasn’t much in the way of a crowd yet, but the DJ duo who regularly curate genre-bending nights at Ulster Sports Club made sure those who made the effort to stop by the Boiler Room did not regret their decision.
Meanwhile, legendary London-born, Belfast-based MC Emby kept up the tempo between sets, ad-libbing “Everybody ravin’ to the boys from Plain Sailin’” as Andrew Moore and Peter Gibney ceded control of the decks to Space Dimension Controller, who took the gradually busier Boiler Room on a journey through the disparate influences on his cosmic electronica.
We peeled ourselves away from the Boiler Room to check out KEM on the Main Stage. Though born in the small County Tyrone village of Pomeroy, KEM began her career in the Hanoi underground scene. Despite a strong, post-punk-influenced set, KEM too fell victim to her early set time, with disappointingly few people in attendance at the Main Stage’s opening act.
With their respective club nights, Ponyhawke and the Night Institute, Marion Hawkes and Jordan Nocturne are stalwarts of the dance music scene in Belfast. Moreover, with the former’s Sound Advice shop and the latter’s nascent record label, the two also foster and promote others within the scene. Marion and Jordan went back to back at The Lookout stage as a small but lively crowd danced under the sun.
Throughout Marion and Jordan’s set, a familiar face kept popping up behind the decks. Through occasional plumes of cigarette smoke, David Holmes cut a jovial figure as he laughed and joked with the incumbent spinners before taking control himself. David has been on the Belfast scene as long as anyone can remember, but his set at AVA – just like at his God’s Waiting Room parties – showed no signs of staleness.
The highlight of the first day, however, was undoubtedly Nia Archives – the first act to draw a huge crowd at the Main Stage. The junglist’s energetic set included her reworkings of ‘Heads Will Roll’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (released in 2023 as ‘Off Wiv Ya Headz’), Gwen Stefani’s ‘Hollaback Girl’ and ‘Horny ‘98’ by Mousse T. in quick succession. These remixes proved a huge hit with the crowd, but what made the set truly memorable was Nia taking the microphone in front of the decks to perform her original material, like ‘Forbidden Feelingz’, ‘Crowded Roomz’ and the beautiful ‘Cards On The Table’, between interjections of “Hey Belfast, how you f**king feeling?”. This was her first performance in Belfast, and tickets are sure to be scarce when she returns.
As the sun set on the first day of AVA, who better to bring the curtain down than local legends turned international stars Bicep? Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar have been a fixture at most instalments during the festival’s ten-year history, and returned this year with incredible visuals across seven separate screens as they treated the crowd to the fruits of their recent CHROMA projects.
Though the music kicked off at 13:00, we arrived at AVA on the second day at around 13:25 to find a small queue of people still waiting for the gates to open. Given the entrance’s proximity to the Boiler Room, Danse Intermission’s Lorcan McDonagh warmed us up before it was straight to The Pumphouse as the gates finally opened.
S. Sentif – aka Sean Creaney – has been to AVA almost as often as Bicep have, but his set to open The Pumphouse on Saturday was his first time behind the decks at his spiritual home. “Since the first year I attended AVA, it’s been a dream to play,” Sean said. “It is the highest height a DJ here can achieve, and I think that’s backed up even further when you find out how much the international DJs respect and love AVA.”
Disaster struck just three weeks earlier: “I actually wiped all the music I had sorted over the past year only a week after I got announced, which was a major setback. But I knew the mission: Stay true to myself, keep it interesting, and have fun.”
A last-minute change to the line-up afforded Sean an extra half an hour, which, thankfully for us, made up for missing the opening part of his set, though I imagine this added to his stress levels. Undeterred, however, Sean knew that “this was now the time to prove to myself I was in fact always prepared for anything and that I definitely deserved to be there”.
And prove himself he did. Despite early worries – “I was stressing myself with hoping that everything I picked out would make the set a good reflection of what I like and constantly interesting to those who were there” – Sean showed what earned him a place at the festival.
Drawing the biggest crowd of the weekend for an opening set, he dropped the likes of Donna Summer’s disco classic ‘Bad Girls’ alongside Italo disco gems like Fun Fun’s ‘Baila Bolero’, and surprising cuts like Madonna’s ‘Music’ and Flight Facilities’ edit of ‘Call Me Al’ by Paul Simon – “One of my favourite edits ever. Special shout out to the girl laying on the hangover hill beside the stage, it made me feel like I truly did the job I was supposed to when this track got her from chilling to giving it absolute stacks.”
After S. Sentif’s set we made for the Boiler Room – that boasted a stellar lineup from start to finish – to catch Marion Hawkes return to the ones and twos, this time with Ponyhawke co-conspirator Dillon McDonnell. The pair are behind one of Belfast’s most important queer spaces and brought their dark and sweaty monthly party from Ulster Sports Club to the brighter environs of a daytime Titanic Slipways. Ponyhawke gave way to legendary local promoters Twitch before Aika Mal got one of the biggest crowd reactions of the weekend by dropping ‘Dance N Move’ by Dart and Kyle Starkey.
We swung by the Main Stage to see Australian band Confidence Man masked up and on DJ duties while on our way to catch horsegiirL at The Pumphouse. The enigmatic German DJ’s 2023 track, ‘My Barn My Rules’, drew ire from some – Radio 1 presenter Arielle Free had her mic cut and was suspended for a week for her derision of the track live on air. However, herds of people showed up to see the equine prosthetics-clad artist play this contentious track and others, while footage of horses galloping through fields was projected side stage.
It was then up to Barry Can’t Swim to seamlessly blend influences on his critically acclaimed album When Will We Land? with harder tracks like Jacques Bauer’s ‘Abandon Ship’ before New Jersey house pioneer Kerri Chandler brought AVA’s tenth birthday celebrations to a close.
In its tenth year, it is abundantly clear how important AVA is to the local artists it champions and to the Belfast ravers who religiously attend. Though this year could take some beating, 2025 and beyond promises exciting things for the festival.
