Baselogic, the promoters behind Bloc, have been placed into administration.
Baselogic announced the news in a brief message on their website yesterday, reiterating that they have launched a full investigation into the events that led to the festival's shutdown on Friday of last week and the cancelation of its second day. Over the course of the past few days, only a small amount of official information has emerged about the events on the grounds of London Pleasure Gardens. Dummyspoke to a representative from the Met Police, who claimed that the festival's overcrowding issues "stemmed from rain"—a baffling explanation, considering that RA staff members on the ground at Bloc report that there was none to speak of.
Others have claimed that the ticketing company, Crowdsurge, were partly to blame. In a statement released on Tuesday, Crowdsurge absolved themselves by stating that "the number of tickets sold for the event on Friday 6 Jul was 15,796—a figure far short of the 18,000 capacity placed by the festival organisers and the 30,000 posted by London Pleasure Gardens. Throughout the process Baselogic controlled the amount of tickets sold and this was at the discretion of Baselogic, not CrowdSurge."
Despite being far under both stated capacities for the grounds, Bloc's announcement shortly after the shutdown of the festival on Friday cited "crowd safety concerns." RA staff that attended Bloc reported enormous queues throughout the night at each stage. Outside the festival, The Guardianreports that many who lined up to get in at 7:30 PM were still awaiting entry two hours later. Whether this was down to the festival or the venue misjudging the amount of attendees that could be accommodated on-site is still unclear at this point. Either way, shortly before 1 AM the decision was made to shut the festival down.
London Pleasure Gardens announced earlier this week that "by 2:00 [AM] the site was clear," and while that conflicts with what RA members experienced—a few were still seeing Appleblim complete the final set of the night in the Carhartt Dome at that time—the shutdown of the site was handled in a largely peaceful manner. Aside from an impromptu jam session on shipping containers by an enormous group of revelers frustrated by the situation, attendees were ushered off the grounds in a fairly orderly fashion.
Bloc's investigation into the events is still ongoing. They have set up an email address so that festival goers can help them "build the most accurate picture and report of what happened" last weekend. (You can send your experiences to bloc2012@baselogic.net.) London Pleasure Grounds, meanwhile, has announced that all events scheduled for the venue will go ahead as planned. This weekend, for example, will see Art of Dark celebrate their 1st Birthday party with Kate Simko, Phil Weeks and others. The promoter has already made announcements promising that they won't oversell the event—and that they'll be providing their own soundsystem.
Throughout the week RA has been in contact with Bloc, and once the investigation is complete we'll have an exclusive interview with the organisers to further explain what happened at the festival.
Richie Hawtin, Boys Noize, Todd Terje, Four Tet, Scuba and Marcel Dettmann are just some of the dozens of artists confirmed for this year's series in Manchester.
