HU1 Festival w/ Eats Everything & Joey Negro

Bank holiday weekend´s never seem to get old, and there is a reason for that besides the obvious attraction of the extra day to get inebriated. There is always something new on the event calendar, and this year May bank holiday was a year to behold for Hull residents, with the small matter of Hull City getting promoted and Hull FC going top of the Rugby League.

The people of Hull were ecstatic, and where better to celebrate and prolong the jubilant mood than the brand new HU1 Festival, the brainchild of Hull´s prolific promoter and event stalwart Terry Spamer, the man behind the long-running Deja vu party series. Hosting a multitude of artists over the Saturday and Sunday, the venue was the unique Zebedee´s Yard off Princes Dock Street, providing the audience with a little sense of history in the nicely enclosed old schoolyard of Trinity House School.

Saturday played host to headline act, rapper Fuse ODG, whereas the Sunday line-up was dedicated to the organiser´s strengths, dealing the people of Hull a large dose of house music from the ever-iconic Bristol spinner, Eats Everything, with support from Joey Negro, Doorly, and many more including local rising star Lee Jeffrey.

As Eats made his way straight from Birmingham´s Elrow party, he joined the stage to witness a crowd of Hull´s finest bank holiday bravehearts risking the cold in a rapture of anticipation. Despite the excitement the crowd remained uncharacteristically flat courtesy of a poor opening from Eats. However, as darkness slowly descended and he ´ate´ into his two-hour slot the energy rose in conjunction with the attendance. The sound quality was certainly a bit different, with the four four beats ringing off all of the historic Old Town´s windows.

A highlight of the set was Oxia´s ´Domino´, which ignited the crowd with a much needed pulse of energy, which thankfully crept away from the string of ugly, high-pitched screeching build-ups which had taken place beforehand. Unfortunately, you got a strong feeling that Eats was at the end of quite a long day, with no real shake-up or unique selection; although to his credit, once he had the crowd, he kept them (so much so that a bear-like man began to swing his shirt around his head as if he was the Toon Army watching a rare Newcastle win) Eats then bagged yet another crowd-pleaser with the ever reliable ´Let´s go dancing´(Breach remix) which had everyone getting involved (including the lady serving chips at the back of the yard). Close up behind was Cajmere´s ´Time for the Percolator´, which served as another reason for the chip lady to get involved and girls to get on shoulders as the bass grew ever deeper with each safe selection.

Ultimately the event seemed a success and hats off to the organisers for getting such a unique space in the centre of Hull. The crowd were fulfilled and carried themselves off to Funktion for a 5am curfew with Mirko Di Florio seeing them home. Nonetheless Eats Everything´s set did little to enforce his dubious title of the UK´s number one DJ, and the monotony within his set was perhaps down to laziness. Still, Hull had a great weekend all round and so did that lovely chip lady.

#housemusic #eatseverything #hull