Glastonbury Festival, UK | June, 2024
Back after a five-year hiatus, the towering, concrete and glass behemoth, Genosys, took centre stage in Block9 West. Created to explore the birth of analogue electronic music and its lasting legacy, Genosys features music and performance from legendary pioneers alongside fresh new talent. Highlights included: Honey Dijon, Madison Moore, Eliza Rose, Bashkka, OK Williams and Hannah Holland.
IICON featured: BICEP presents CHROMA, Carista, Introspekt, DJ Python, Charisse C, Tim Reaper, and Drum ‘n’ Bass originators Roni Size and Goldie, plus Block9 veteran DJ Flight.
For the NYC Downlow, this year’s main event was the brand-new Saturday Downlow Day Party, headlined by François K on the Saturday. Across the weekend there was Kings Of Tomorrow, Jeff Mendoza (Soul Summit) & Henry Street’s DJ Spen.
The Meat Rack, now doubled in size, featured ultimate sleazy backroom selectors Wallace, Moxie, Smokin Jo, Deptford Northern Soul Club and Subb-An.
This year Block9 teamed up with activist and fashion designer, Katharine Hamnett to encourage people to vote.
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Music & Performance Programming
Glastonbury Festival, UK | June, 2023
For its oh-so-sweet sixteenth birthday, Block9 invited its international, non-traditional ‘family’ to congregate in rural Somerset for a long weekend of late-night parties, giant art installations, underground music and queer culture. Special guests included Underground Resistance (Live), Timmy Regisford (Shelter – NYC), Analog Soul, Cakes Da Killa, Mood II Swing, The Blessed Madonna, and Notting Hill Carnival.
Block9 was born in 2007 and set out on a journey of self-discovery, where diversity, freedom, collaboration, and cross-pollination were nurtured and encouraged, resulting in an annual ritual like no other. Every year an otherwise tranquil corner of Worthy Farm is turned into a temporary alternative reality by a huge network of crew, friends and comrades that include DJs, producers, performing artists, musicians, technicians, drag queens and kings, activists, go-go butcher boys, club kids and ravers.
For 2023, Block9’s family reunited once again around the legendary venues of The NYC Downlow, The Meat Rack, IICON and Genosys Sound System to throw a sixteenth birthday party in spectacular style, celebrating freedom of expression in all its forms.
“At Block9, we have always championed underground music, freedom and self-expression, and our 16th birthday feels the perfect occasion to celebrate our ‘coming-of-age’ with our Glastonbury family. In the last few years, our freedoms and our right to protest have come under sustained attack. The creation of new draconian laws means our liberty is being systematically eroded.
Block9’s 16th birthday party is a stand against right-wing populism, and a celebration of all things alt!.”
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Music & Performance Programming
Glastonbury Festival, UK | June, 2022
After a three-year wait Block9 returned to their spiritual home in Somerset with two spectacular fields full of late-night parties, artworks, underground music, and queer culture, and bringing with them invited guests TODD EDWARDS, HONEY DIJON, FLOORPLAN, JUSTIN STRAUSS, STEFFI, LSDXOXO plus many, many more.
Block9 West saw the highly anticipated return of queer nightlife institution NYC DOWNLOW plus its backroom counterpart MEAT RACK, and GENOSYS SOUND SYSTEM honoured the legacy of free parties, DIY rave counterculture and music as a form of political protest, 30 years after the infamous Castlemorton.
Next door, Block9 East featured IICON - the epic monument to our digital, post-truth age - and a brand new collaboration with NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL.
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Music & Performance Programming
Glastonbury Festival, UK | 2016 - Current
Block9’s NYC Downlow has become a nightlife institution of legendary status at Glastonbury, the world’s largest green field music festival. This multi-roomed temporary club space, housed inside a life size film set replica of a seedy New York meatpacking warehouse circa 1982, is home to the world’s best underground DJ’s, queer performers… and an army of hot gay butchers.
Originally conceived and created by Block9 for Glastonbury 2007, the latest chapter in the NYC Downlow story combines historical and fictional narratives with installation art and exceptional music.
“After ten years on New York’s East 7th Street, rampant gentrification has resulted in eviction of the infamous gay nightclub NYC Downlow, forcing it to relocate across town to the Meatpacking District. The club now shares premises with the notorious West Side Bath House in a fully functioning Meatpacker’s warehouse; two worlds colliding under one roof… “
Resident Advisor NYC Downlow is “categorically one of the best clubs in the world.”
Mixmag “NYC Downlow is the best gay club in the world”
Vice NYC Downlow “One of the Best Queer Clubs in the UK”
Donations collected at the door of The NYC Downlow support good causes in the UK and Internationally.
Take me to thenycdownlow.com
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Music & Performance Programming
UK | 2021
For their first live shows post-lockdown, Gorillaz ’21 tour presents music from Song Machine, alongside brand new, unreleased tracks and a sizzling back catalogue of classics. A host of very special featured artists join Damon Albarn and the live band, on stage and in film, in a celebration of the last 20 years of incredible music and creative collaboration.
Live-show video content takes us deep into the gorgeous visual history of the world’s most notorious virtual band. Jamie Hewlett’s beautiful artwork and animated films are presented in an emotional journey. We re-live special moments in the lives of Noodle, Russel, 2D and Murdoc, with brand new song content, idents, slogans, excerpts, and special live-show interstitials, peppered throughout.
Creative Direction // Production Design // Video Direction // Set Design // Collaboration
Dua Lipa - Studio 2054 | 2020
Commissioned by Ceremony London, Block9 headed up the creative team that designed and delivered Dua Lipa’s Studio 2054 livestream at Printworks in London. In addition to set design and art direction across the entire show, we created also developed the graphic identity of the project. Block9 cast an array of circus performers, club kids and roller-skaters to populate the show, providing costume, styling, hair and makeup.
Studio 2054 broke world records by clocking up over 5 million views on its opening night. Labelled as “the best livestream of the year”, and “exceptionally well-staged” by The Telegraph’s music editor, he went on to say the show was ,“so slick it would have impressed Scorsese”.
Variety said of the show, produced mid Covid 19 lockdown, that it, “felt like a happy dispatch from another galaxy, where dancing and dopamine both still occur, and joy is a thing of the present, not past or future nostalgia”
Glastonbury Festival’s Emily Eavis told the BBC “I absolutely loved Dua Lipa's one (livestream). It was designed by the team behind Block9, one of our late-night areas, and it really captured that proper club feel. It had us dancing around in the living room, by the fire. It really set the bar for live streams, I think, and I heard 5 million people tuned in, which is huge”
Photography @ www.davidlevene.co.uk
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Casting // Styling // Costume
Glastonbury Festival, UK | 2019 – Current
IICON is an immense sculptural artwork, architectural intervention and immersive music project, posing questions about power, technology and humanity in the digital age. It premiered at Glastonbury 2019 and will be entering its fifth live year in 2025.
Taking the form of a colossal, anonymised head - epic in scale, sinister in nature - IICON is a pseudo-religious monument to the terrifying new realities emerging in our digital, data-driven, post-truth age. It showcases a vision of future music from the cutting edge of today's underground, from Glitch-Funk Algorave and Post-Dubstep IDM, to Footwork, Grime, Electro and Cyber-Dub.
“IICON represents the data-fueled power of faceless multinationals and personifies how humanity has found itself trapped in self-imposed, digital bondage. It is our response to the world we live in today.”
Mixmag “… a festival wonder up with the world’s best”
Dezeen “Block9 reveals “Monster” IICON stage…”
Dazed “The rave monument speaking to our digital, post-truth era”
DJMag “Block9 unveils jaw-dropping IICON stage design…”
Wired “Glastonbury's latest stage is a 20-metre-tall head with 360° sound”
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Music & Performance Programming
Online, Everywhere | June, 2021
Block9 were asked by Glastonbury Festival to work with Driift and director Paul Dugdale on the art direction and production design for Live at Worthy Farm, Global Livestream, 2021.
Filmed across the Festival’s Worthy Farm site at landmarks including the Pyramid Field and the Stone Circle, the event saw a range of artists giving their time to perform in support of the Festival. The five-hour spectacular featured performances from a host of artists who gave their time to support the Festival: Coldplay, Damon Albarn, George Ezra, HAIM, IDLES, Jorja Smith, Kano, Michael Kiwanuka, Roisin Murphy, Wolf Alice, plus DJ Honey Dijon. There were also a number of surprise performances, including a set by The Smile.
The five-hour set was interspersed by a spoken word narrative, written and delivered by some very special guests, guiding Festival-goers on a journey through the sacred valley in Somerset.
Art Direction // Production Design
2020’s Covid lockdown provided the perfect opportunity for a live-streamed ‘tranzmission’ from the vast, concrete, mega-basement, deep in the bowels of Gorillaz’ legendary Kong Studios and featuring a star-studded cast of guest performers.
Drawing on TV references from the late 1970’s to create something fresh and contemporary, this augmented live broadcast pushes at the limits of the very latest ‘XR’ video technology to bridge the gap between the real and imagined worlds, allowing us, the audience, to move seamlessly between the two. The result is a truly unique mixed reality show. A crazy, dynamic, retro-digital, riot of super-saturated live performance from Damon et al, with holographic guests, chopped-up music videos and VHS-warped character animations.
Russel, Noodle, Murdoc and 2D appear live alongside animations of Elton John, holographic performance from Beck, Fatoumata Diawara, JPEGMAFIA & 6lack, and ‘live in the studio’ performance from Robert Smith, Kano, Peter Hook, Georgia, Slowthai, Slaves, Matt Berry and Sweetie Irie.
“Song Machine Live from Kong [was] a genre straddling success story” The Guardian
“Gorillaz live at Kong, virtual party, is like a AAA pass to the glitziest celebrity shindig” NME
“The bonkers virtual extravaganza was the perfect home for Damon Albarn's animated band and their roster of glitzy special guests” Telegraph
Creative Direction // Production Design // Video Direction // Collaboration
Waltham Forest, UK | December, 2019
As the finale event for Waltham Forest, London Borough of Culture 2019, Forest Uprising was an illuminated urban sculpture garden and outdoor performance space. Visitors wandered amongst artworks listening to music and poetry from across the borough with live immersive theatre and one-off installations, with a twist at every turn from protesting forest creatures to special-guest performances. The young people of Waltham Forest were asked a question, ‘What kind of world do you want to live in?’ The outcome of this borough-wide conversation became the starting point for Block9 in transforming Leyton Sports Ground into an alternative reality. Seeds of ideas germinate, hopes and ambitions are nurtured and given space to grow; whilst the many voices of the forest, loud and clear, echo all around.
Forest Uprising contained four unique installations. Each explore the genesis of new ideas:
Pillars of Society
A forest of 80 tree-like pillars—reminiscent of the protective cages placed around young saplings—sits within a specially composed soundtrack. How do we safeguard the ideas, hopes and dreams of our young people, the future pillars of our society?
Out of Time
A shipping container filled with video projection presents contradictory views of the world since 2007 – the year the iPhone was launched. The accompanying soundtrack features the voices of local children born that same year, describing their idealised future in answer to the question: ‘What kind of world do you want to live in?’
The Glasshouse
Laboratory technicians busy themselves at racks of seedlings, tending to their every need. This is a democratic environment where ideas are nurtured, but at what point do care and attention tip over into manipulation and control? The Glasshouse audio features wisdom and verse from local spoken word artists.
Import/Export
The main performance stage at Forest Uprising is a loading bay complete with a 40ft articulated lorry. Depot workers carefully handle the fragile cargo—ideas—presented as music and poetry from local and international talent.
Concept // Set Design // Graphic Design // Music // Collaboration
The disused Tower Ballroom, a former nightclub and wedding venue on the outskirts of Edgbaston, became the perfect setting for this powerful, immersive production of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by award-winning opera director Graham Vick with The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
As designers, Block9 worked across all visual aspects of the show from staging and set through to costume and graphic design.
The Guardian - “A Blast of pure energy. 5 Stars.”
The Observer - ‘5 Stars’
The Telegraph - ‘5 Stars’
The Arts Desk - ‘5 Stars’
Scenography // Set Design // Costume // Graphic Design // Collaboration
International Arena Tour | 2018
Dua approached Block9 to create her forthcoming show and bring new creative direction to the tour. Our brief was to evolve the stage show beyond a chart topping pop aesthetic to an edgier and slicker “Block9” aesthetic. We created principal production concepts for the international arena tour. Producing and directing video content and overall creative direction, Block9 worked in partnership with the choreography, lighting design and costume departments to deliver a world class stage show.
Creative Consultancy // Art Direction // Video Content // Artist Collaboration
Online, Everywhere | June, 2020
As the UK was in lockdown and Glastonbury Festival 2020 was sadly cancelled, Block9 produced an online series featuring film, documentary, photography, music, mixtapes and a live stream. Raising money for good causes through The Downlow Radio, our charitable not-for-profit, which has donated over £80k to good causes in the last decade. Profits went to Runnymede Trust, the UK's leading independent race equality think-tank and the MSF (Doctors Without Borders) COVID-19 crisis appeal supporting countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean and Europe.
Listen to a selection of live DJ mixes from 12 years of Block9 at Glastonbury Festival, including legendary recordings from underground heavyweights across all three Block9 venues. On soundcloud and thenycdownlow.com.
Listen to 3 original mixtapes from 3 block9 venues, featuring Honey Dijon and Cinthie on soundcloud.
Watch Fact Magazine’s documentary Temporary Alternative Realities on their youtube.
And check out @thenycdownlow on Instagram
Graphic Design // Music & Performance Programming // Creative Collaboration
Roundhouse Theatre, London, UK | 2009
As production designers for Darren Johnston’s site specific, Butoh-inspired contemporary dance piece, Block9 created a "frozen moment in time". The performance was staged in the round on a large, central, x-shaped platform with an ethereal, 6m tall, bonsai tree at its centre. Around the tree's canopy, as if startled by an unheard gunshot, are 2000 paper birds.
Production Design // Scenography
Tropicana, Weston-super-Mare, UK | August - September 2015
Block9 created the Dismaland Castle in response to Banksy’s brief:
“Disney, the childhood dream you sold to us has turned to shit.”
The massive installation, built over a disused swimming pool, was the centerpiece for Banksy's Dismaland, an epic dystopian art show located in an abandoned theme park in Weston-super-Mare, just south of Banksy’s hometown of Bristol.
Collaboration
Dreamland, Margate, UK | 2017
In addition to our role as Production Designers for Gorillaz, Block9 are also lead artists with Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn in the creation of Demon Dayz Festival, from concept development and graphic design through to set design for the festival’s stages.
"Demon Dayz is a portal into a new and distinctly different reality that appears briefly and is then gone. It is a crazy, dangerous, exciting, anything goes party at the end of time, where up is down, black is white, good is bad. When you are released from the shackles of daily life and your compass spins. Demon Dayz has a cult following. It exists outside of normal time. Forget about Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You don’t have to ‘like’ anything and the anxieties of your 9 to 5 melt away as you enter the gates. Demon Dayz is Carnival. You are human and you are alive.…"
Concept // Creative Consultancy // Scenography // Graphic Design // Art Direction // Collaboration
Glastonbury Festival, UK | 2010 - Present
A sinister, 50ft, decaying tower block with a life-size, blazing tube train bursting from the 5th floor, the mighty London Underground showcases the cream of London's pirate radio/sound system culture, and since its debut at Glastonbury in 2010 this temporary artwork/nightclub has amassed a cult following. The interior of the club features eye-popping lighting, lasers and visuals and Block9 worked with 'Shunt' director David Rosenberg and The Roundhouse Theatre to create a series of unexpected theatrical installations and interventions hidden within the tower block.
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Art Direction // Music & Performance Programming // Education & Mentorship
International Festival & Arena Tour | 2018
Block9 were production designers for Gorillaz’ 2018 live tour. Working alongside Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn to deliver new creative content, Block9 established a strong visual identity for the show which journeys through back-catalogue classics, across the pixilated landscape of ‘Humanz’ and into the unchartered territories of brand new album, ‘The Now Now’.
"The Now Now is presented as a series of poignant, dreamy moments peppered throughout the show. Each one is an ethereal postcard, a snapshot of a very specific time and place. The result is a rich, psychedelic, swirling, tripped-out world of light and colour."
Production Design // Art Direction // Video Direction // Collaboration
Humanz World Tour | 2017 - 2018
Block9, working with Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, were production designers for the Gorillaz’ 2017-18 live tour and art directors of creative content for the ‘Humanz' live show.
"The bio-digital world view of Humanz is brought to life through a glitched and warped reality - the 2D/digital world of Jamie’s animated band fusing with our own existence. 2D, Noodle, Russel and Murdock have taken on almost human form and seem to float in the blackness that envelopes the stage. Classic Gorillaz artwork combines with brand new illustrations and animation wrapping Damon, the band and the featured artists in a pixelating, sparking, funking world of beautifully executed, bio-digital chaos."
Production Design // Art Direction // Video Direction // Collaboration
Pico Rivera, Los Angeles, CA, USA | 2018
Block9 are lead artists in partnership with Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn in the creation of Demon Dayz Festival. Having brought sell-out, ‘bio-digital chaos’ to a quiet English coastal town, Gorillaz’ Demon Dayz returned in 2018, this time to California USA.
“Demon Dayz is a celebration of all things weird and wonderful - counter-cultural icons, scared geometry, comic books, underground hip-hop, misfits, punks and skate rats. Extraordinary live music plus hidden art works and twisted character parades. Leave the anxieties of your 9-5 at the gates, take a deep breath and step into the unknown.”
Concept // Creative Consultancy // Scenography // Graphic Design // Art Direction // Collaboration
Glastonbury & Lovebox Festivals, UK | 2007 - 2015
The original NYC Downlow was created by Block9 for Glastonbury 2007. In this film-set replica of a ruined NYC tenement, the murky homo fantasies of The Downlow crew fused to resurrect New York's golden age. The exposed first floor apartment is an outdoor music and performance stage, playing host to the UK's finest alternative cabaret stars. Having purchased a false moustache from the 'Porn Kiosk' (with proceeds going to charity) you make your way down a seedy back alley into a temporary but authentic vintage New York gay club.
This unique installation achieved instant success and in 2016, after 10 years of block-busting notoriety, the venue was reimagined and rebuilt as an equally spectacular, even bigger, full-scale 1980’s Meatpacker’s Warehouse complete with swinging sides of beef and go-go boy butchers. Moustaches are still mandatory.
Concept // Production Design // Scenography // Graphic Design // Art Direction // Music & Performance Programming // Education & Mentorship
West Bank, Palestine | 2017
Block9 designed two of the nine bedrooms at Banksy’s art-hotel-cum-political-intervention. In February 2017 we took a covert team to Bethlehem to oversee the installation, and to work across the delivery of the rest of the Hotel prior to opening.
Room 5 is a six-person dormitory featuring tented room dividers reminiscent of Balfour-era British army camps. Room 3 is designed around Banksy’s ‘Pillow Fight’ mural and boasts a panoramic view of concrete and graffiti.
Bookings available here
Scenography // Creative Consultancy // Collaboration
Glastonbury Festival, UK | 2013 - Present
An audiovisual hybrid that blurs the boundaries between art and music, the Genosys outdoor music arena celebrates the pre-digital dance floor in spectacular style.
"Hovering in the shadows of an ancient industrial power facility, a towering concrete and glass structure lies dormant and overgrown. This is Genosys. Short for Generated Oxygen System, this epic, brutalist ‘tree’ was built to save the once poisoned planet. It nurtured and preserved plant life within its huge tanks and, as it drank in the excess atmospheric carbon, it poured out fresh oxygen. Lost and forgotten, Genosys has lain silent until now…"
Originally a Thames Arts commission, the 50ft, 55 Tonne structure was conceived, designed and built by Block9 for ‘The Tree of Light’, a series of large-scale outdoor performances and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Concept // Production Design // Music Programming // Scenography // Art Direction // Graphic Design
Roundhouse Theatre, London, UK | 2015
Block9 worked with award-winning filmmaker, writer and artist Penny Woolcock to create this site-specific installation in the cavernous main space of London’s Roundhouse.
Starting from audio recordings and transcripts of interviews, Block9 collaborated with Penny throughout the creative process and conceived, designed and fabricated the installation - a series of interconnected walkthrough spaces and artworks.
Concept // Art Direction // Collaboration // Education & Mentorship
West Bank, Palestine | 2018
Conceived after an extended period of covert operations helping Banksy produce the Walled Off Hotel art project in Bethlehem, Block9 returned to the West Bank in February 2018 for a "Creative Retreat at The Walled Off Hotel" which saw us host a musical creative retreat… with a difference.
A twist on traditional, peaceful retreats for writers, musicians and painters in the Swiss Alps or the South of France, the retreat aimed to stimulate creativity and cultural connections, taking inspiration from the geo-political landscape of Palestine. The clichéd chalet with open fire and mountain views was swapped for "the hotel with the worst view in the world”, which sits in the shadow of the 25ft high concrete Israeli separation barrier.
A group of select recording artists from across the globe were invited to take part including world renowned musician and producer Brian Eno, Beirut's much heralded Mashrou Leila, underground US DJ/Producer The Black Madonna, avant-garde singer/songwriter/producer Roisin Murphy, and Palestinian heavyweight Samir Joubran of Trio Joubran.
The result was a 7-track album available here
A full article detailing the project can be found here
Concept // Musical & Artistic Collaboration // Graphic Design // Art Direction // Education & Mentorship
US Tour, USA | 2015
Taking Fritz Lang’s 1927 film ‘Metropolis’ as inspiration, Block9 created a stage set comprising a ‘graphic-novel-noir’ cityscape lit by vintage theatre lights. Designed to integrate seamlessly with show lighting and video, the cityscape also houses a state-of-the-art LED matrix. Everything was designed and built in London and shipped to the US.
Creative Consultancy // Art Direction // Scenography // Collaboration
Block9 HQ, London, UK | 2017
Block9 hosted an event to celebrate moving headquarters to an exciting new arts hub, The Silver Building, in Silvertown, East London.
We also worked with MA Students from the Information Experience Design course at The Royal College of Art who were invited to join us in creating an exhibition of their work on Surrealism.
Music & Performance Programming // Production Design // Art Direction // Graphic Design // Education & Mentorship
European Tour | 2013
Block9 worked with award-winning US singer Lana Del Rey to design the stage set for her first European tour. Taking inspiration from the Paradise Edition of her album “Born To Die”, Block9 created a world steeped in faded Hollywood glamour, with a subtle contemporary edge. A backdrop of golden, art deco windows act to frame to the specially commissioned re-edits of videos from the album, and a crumbling grand piano houses two midi-keyboards. Bespoke period chandelier and lighting fixtures are fitted with programmable LED’s allowing them to be integrated into the show and a pair of hand-sculpted lions sit as guardians at the edge of the stage. Completing the scene are six real, taxidermy crows that have raided Lana’s dressing table – the stolen jewels in their beaks catching the light.
Production Design // Scenography // Art Direction // Collaboration
Mothership World Tour | 2014
U.S. DJ and producer, and winner of six Grammy Awards, Skrillex asked Block9 to join the core creative team working on the concept, design and production of the stage set for his 2014 Mothership tour. The giant animatronic spaceship was designed by Production Club in LA, fabricated by TAIT in Pennsylvania, and finished by Block9. It debuted at Coachella festival in California. Block9 worked with Burst-tv on design variations which can be seen here alongside the final spaceship.
Creative Consultancy // Scenography // Graphic Design // Collaboration
