Booming Sonics
By Ben Thompson
Starting in 2015 as Thee Sunday Sonics – the spontaneous, ad hoc brainchild of artist Danny Pockets – the event now known simply as Sonics has blazed an annual trail of creative chaos through many of the town’s cutting
edge venues. Although still produced under the banner of Fat Tuesday, it has grown to the point where it requires a weekend all of its own. Sonics’ most ambitious programme to date unfolds in the newly refurbished Observer Building over the three days from Friday October 21.
Detroit techno legends (now based in Berlin), Dopplereffekt and the travelling rave circus Ceephax Acid Crew headline on Friday and Saturday respectively. Stellar supporting bills include Ukrainian composer Zavoloka, digital maverick Meemo Comma, leading UK jazz ensemble BAFOTOYA with ambient Godfather Richard Norris presenting his extended ‘Music For Healing’ DJ set. Generous assistance from the Arts Council enables this audio-visual smorgasbord to be presented at a fraction of the price of comparative commercial sector events. Weekend tickets are available at £35 and afternoon sessions are free, although one still has to register.
Observer building hosts Sonics
I asked Sonics 2022 curator James Weaver if there’s a common thread between this year’s vast undertaking and the event’s more homespun beginnings. Weaver experienced the wing-and-a-prayer thrill of Sonics’ 2015 incarnation as a performer – playing at the Compendium Studios event in St Leonards with his shape-shifting electronic ensemble The Warrior Squares, on a bill alongside British free-jazz sax legend – and Hastings institution – Trevor Watts.
“There was already a rich seam of experimental music within the town. Danny Pockets’ creative drive and restless imagination brought it further into the open for all to see and enjoy”, Weaver remembers. He had already been organising similarly fluid and experimental events such as The Freekender @The Roomz. “Crazy drill and bass, improvised stuff, getting told to turn it off by freaked punters and having dogs invade the stage.” Delighted as he was to encounter not just a kindred spirit but one whose extensive connections in the art world gave Thee Sunday Sonics a visual component every bit as strong as its musical element, it was probably inevitable that the two would start to collaborate and from 2017 Weaver and Pockets joined forces.
The event gathered momentum as a local underground showcase and started to attract national and international names alongside the cream of East Sussex avant-garde, while migrating and mutating through a series of Hastings hot-spots, from the Observer Building, to the Printworks and Borough Wines Basement, then on to Blackmarket VIP in 2019. That year’s spectacular event, with the BBC Radiophonic Orchestra and Radioactive Man representing different poles of experimental endeavour, was the first since Danny Pockets’ tragic early death from cancer the year before.
“Danny was fearless”, Weaver remembers. “A straight up, no bullshit creative force who just got on with it. And when his partner Sarah gave us her blessing to carry on after his death, we were determined to stay true to that ethos.”
An extensive programme of workshops and outreach activities will preserve and enhance Sonics’ reputation for balancing innovation with inclusivity. This year’s event will also offer a chance to see if the eye-watering amounts of regeneration funding directed towards the restoration of the Observer Building has been public money well spent. Will the shiny new digital version of that structure be able to match and even transcend the ramshackle charm of its analogue predecessor? A question all of Hastings will hope to see answered in the affirmative.
• More information: www.sonics-hastings.com
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