𐐪♡𐑂 recommendations: may 2025 𐐪♡𐑂

a special edition diving deep into my experience of refractor festival

and

Jun 04, 2025

hiiii! how are you? : )

i’ve just touched down back in london, fizzing with inspiration after the most nourishing and stimulating weekend in toledo for refractor festival. it was everything i needed and more to get myself out of a creative rut and zap my brain into gear as it felt a bit stale for a little while — turns out all i needed was to be in the middle of nowhere, by a lake, with good people, music and an insane soundsystem to bring myself back to life.

i’m trying to find the words or the way to begin this story. still deeply processing what happened last weekend but so excited to share everything with you. let’s start with the facts… refractor festival started 3 years ago as a one day event, well 20 hours, existing at a location closer to madrid where the crew are based. the founders are jan swam and emilia grima, who are also behind the label and agency organic signs. this multi-faceted organism tends to a certain niche ~ low end psychedelic music. you see why i’m so excited about this festival? it’s an event and label entirely catered to my special interest. some of the locals described refractor as something that was pretty unique for the madrid scene as it’s one of the few, if not only, parties of this ilk. refractor is a real family affair too. most of the people i spoke to on-site had been attending since its first event, attending with people they had met at refractor over the years and some of the people working behind the scenes during the festival included jan swam’s parents 🥺 this tight knit community was felt through everything they do including the artists they booked and the volunteers. there was a genuine mission and interest to help each other create this special gathering of likeminded individuals who were one of the most engaging and open minded crowds i had ever witnessed and felt honoured to be a part of.

what interested me the most about refractor, aside from the idyllic location and being a smaller scale festival (i think the max capacity was 500 people), was the lineup. the programming was curated a very european sound, mainly inspired by sounds & scenes that existed predominately in france and the netherlands. it’s a sound that hasn’t translated that well to the uk just yet but one that i’m obsessed with and wanted to hear it in a proper setting. it’s the perfect sound to be listened to within the depths of nature, surrounded by water and trees, as the synergy between the two worked beautifully. a similar experience to the one i felt when i heard the textural deep techno sets at the aura stage at draaimolen festival a few years ago, where the music bounced off the trees and elevated the sound.

the set up for refractor festival was one stage, nestled by the water (maybe too close to the water haha), with an insane soundsystem. might have been the best soundsystem i’ve ever experienced at a festival. it was the perfect system for the music that was played across the weekend and on the sunday, they brought in the mud and fyah soundsystem for a day of music dedicated to dub or dub-adjacent soundscapes. no detail was left out when it came to the music! this was the first time i had experienced the one stage set up, it’s not a common approach here in the uk, but i found that it was actually my new favourite way to engage with festivals moving forward. it allowed for us to fully lock into every set we saw and have more of a communal experience. plus very minimal distractions with decisions needed to be made about where people wanted to go or see. the programming was excellent too. the way they broke up each day and night into different segments with refreshing moments in between that either challenged the crowd or allowed for respite. this was especially felt on the friday night when it was mostly focused on deep techno for the first few hours with the likes of solma, ultra low velocity and sindh live playing before le motel and magugu brought the crazy energy of grime and dubstep to toledo. for a moment i thought i was at a chaotic freshers night in london with magugu egging on the crowd, encouraging a call and response and bigging up the ‘galdem’ during one of the new exclusive tracks he performed. it was refreshing to see the crowd open to this kind of energy in amongst wild and introspective deep techno sets, especially outside of the context of the uk where these sets are more often seen. the contrast of this happened during saturday night where the high energy, alien-like sets of convoluted mental mirror, tangela and tsuniman were married together with the trippy, minimal, mediative live sets of spekki webu & feral, loek frey and formant value & simone bauer. curating a full day of dub-focused sets on the sunday was the most serene way to round off the weekend. it allowed for some respite after bouncing around on the steepest dancefloor i’ve ever witnessed (not good for my knee injury) and being able to mellow out and process the days gone by. i’m not exaggerating when i say that every set was a stand out and a highlight. every single artist brought their a game and the crowd were so here for it. it’s really hard to pick my favourite sets from the weekend but there were some really special moments that i wanted to talk about.

one of these moments was loek frey’s live set. this was one of the only times we went right to the front of the dancefloor, in front of the huge otherworldly speakers (which someone referred to as friendly monsters), and you could feel the bass vibrated through your entire body, creating that healing effect that is referred to in the low end theory book. this might have been the perfect set to experience this during as loek frey then played the most mediative, trippiest set, as in, i completely left my body and was absorbed by the music. i had never experienced anything like it. at one point during an ambient moment, the crowd was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. everyone was collectively lost in the music. it was beautiful and something i won’t forget anytime soon. some other highlights include trois-quart taxi system’s insane psychedelic dubstep set pffft, tsuniman’s sunrise set which was so emotional and colourful, sindh’s groovy af live set, ema’s dubstep session on sunday afternoon, spekki webu & feral’s galloping live set, tangela’s bubbly energy, ultra low velocity, atrice live and i’m going to try and stop it there. actually no, jan loup played a crazyyyyyy closing set on the sunday night which was so fun, light, and bouncy, and was so welcomed at that moment.

i’m really excited for the day that i venture back to refractor festival despite some organisational issues that took place during the weekend, this was bound to happen for their first 3-day event - teething issues are to be expected! but the community they brought together was so special and something that i had been longing for, for a while, i’m so inspired to create something similar to that here in london. or at least try to find pockets of that in the parties i attend and the artists/communities i engage with. want to bottle this up and keep it with me all the time! thank you to alejandro, emilia and the whole organic signs crew for creating such a nourishing weekend <3

my next untitled 909 refuge worldwide show will be running next monday and i’ll be dedicating it to the tracks and sounds i heard at refractor : )

⋆ other bits ⋆

𖦹 next weekend is finally abyss weekender at open ground where i will be closing the saturday night with an ambient set. lots of friends coming down too, it’s going to be a beautiful, healing weekend and hope to see some of you there : )

𖦹 the may edition of spiralling, naturally on netil radio was a very cute back-to-back session with dj wiggles ~ listen back here

𖦹 recently announced is my next gig at corsica studios for planet people with mantra, tim reaper, mjk & oblig - tickets here

𖦹 parties i’m excited about this month:

~ nldc x bait @ cu dalston

~ goodness @ fold

~ 29 speedway @ ormside projects

~ sub:system x whomp

~ sybil & softi all night long @ gaffe

~ playbody x V&A

~ marylou, rRoxymore and yumi @ ormside projects

~ perspectives @ sauna social club

also shoutout to tiesto and ccl for getting me through the copenhagen marathon and hackney half marathon !!! : )