Arriving at the iconic Glastonbury Festival on Worthy Farm, most visitors flock west towards the famous Pyramid Stage and other major music sites. However, those venturing to the opposite Southeast Corner discover a different world entirely – the fantastical, rule-breaking realm of Block 9 Glastonbury.
Created by designer duo Steven Gallagher and Gideon Berger, Block 9 resembles a post-apocalyptic version of Glastonbury filled with huge, twisted music and art installations reflecting the evolution of electronic dance music (EDM). Wandering its sprawling, multi-stage site is like discovering the radioactive remains of an apocalyptic event – where only the sickest beats have survived the cataclysm.
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Origins: How Block 9’s Twisted Universe Came To Be
Back in 2015, Glastonbury organizers approached creative partners Stephen Gallagher (production designer) and Gideon Berger (architect) to develop a new area at the Southeast Corner of Worthy Farm dedicated to immersive theater, contemporary art, and electronic music.
Dubbed “Block 9” in a nod to its location in grid square 9E of the site map, the duo envisioned constructing a fully realized environment transporting attendees into a post-cataclysmic parallel world fueled by underground club culture.
Inspired by dystopian influences ranging from the Mad Max movies to abandoned meat-packing plants in Brooklyn, Gallagher and Berger hand-built four intricately detailed sets over 18 months intended to provoke and disorient. Block 9 opened to dazzled festival crowds in mid-2016 as a riveting adult playground for music, mischief, and escapist revelry until sunrise across its stages.
The immense effort required paying off spectacularly. Block 9 rapidly emerged as an essential Glastonbury destination for those seeking adventure beyond platform headliners. In 2017 Block 9 expanded east into 9W, adding new art installations and performance spaces to critical acclaim. Its legend continues growing annually thanks to Gallagher and Berger’s knack for manufacturing creative chaos.
Delving Into Block 9’s Twisted Stages & Sights
The mad design genius duo at Block 9 have crafted four fully realized zones and experiences spanning music, theater, art, and technology – each more immersively mind-bending than the last:
London Underground x New York Grit: NYC Downlow
The vibrant heart of Block 9, NYC Downlow resembles a temporary underground club constructed in a derelict New York bathhouse-meets-seedy London meatpacking warehouse. The split-level structure channels grungy subway tunnels, with graffiti-strewn walls and crumbling plaster colonized by fake molded debris.
Thumping basslines spill from blacked-out chambers and strobe flashes pierce the darkness from labyrinthine corridors resembling a heaving 1980s club scene. Costumed characters and avant-garde performers interact with crowds, enhancing the provocative atmosphere and celebrating unbridled DJ and club culture in a surreal space recalling urban mythologies.
The “Naughty Corner”: The Meat Rack
Behind NYC Downlow lies its seedier sister space – the aptly dubbed Meat Rack. This hidden, intense venue offers hardcore electronica and industrial techno across two rooms catering to serious ravers as well as surreal, often disturbing experimental performance art pushing boundaries.
BDSM themes reinforce the salacious vibe, with pig carcasses and anarchy symbols dangling over the DJ booth bracketed by tangles of chain link fence skinning the room’s perimeter. A blacked-out “Tunnel of Terror” gifts temporary blindness to foolhardy guests en route between exposed brick chambers. Only true nightlife extremists willfully enter The Meat Rack’s seductive darkness – consider yourself warned!
Egg-Shaped Dancefloor: Genosys Stage
Delve deeper into Block 9 East to discover the Genosys stage, exploring the mythic origins and evolution of electronic music alongside the Block 9 realm itself. Its previous extravagant spherical “Egg” and womb-like “Cube” structures centered on primal symbols of creation, with 2023 promises to continue innovating as festival-goers gather for cutting-edge music and dazzling displays.
Creative Director Gallagher explains that Genosys represents “not only the birth of electronic music but the genesis of Block 9 itself. It invites you to become part of the performance.” Prepare for your senses to heighten exponentially as you pass through the mysteries of Genosys!
Two-Story Robot Head: IICON Stage
The most visually iconic stage at Block 9, IICON contains an immense, 14-meter-high robotic head with flaming eyes presiding over the space. Its giant disembodied chrome head and chest, slung with cabling erupting into the huge uptilted hands framing the DJ booth give it an imposing deactivated android appearance.
State-of-the-art video mapping technology integrated into the flagship IICON structure transforms its riveted surface into an ever-evolving canvas. The vivid projected visuals streaming across the colossal robotic forms chronicle the entire lifespan of electronic music from rudimentary pulses and pops to intricately layered melodies. Standing encircled by towering visual set pieces as lasers strafe overhead, the experience proves wholly hypnotic.
Easter Eggs & Hidden Details
In addition to its mindbending main stages, what elevates Block 9 into such an immersive highlight are the subtle worldbuilding details peppered everywhere transporting you deeper into its twisted alternate realm:
- Burnt-out cars, overturned trucks, and rubble signaling apocalyptic demise
- Peeling motivational posters, parking tickets, and ID badges from pre-disaster times
- Flickering underground utility lights and sparking, exposed electrical panels
- Rusty oil cans, hazardous waste barrels, and oozing toxic waste spillages
- Malfunctioning robots, heads mounted on walls, and milk-filled bathtubs housing eels
- Shattered statues and partially collapsed architectural elements in decay
- Hidden rooms behind bookcases, camouflaged tunnels under trapdoors
- Quality street candy wrappers, matchbooks, and notes offering cryptic clues
These intricately distressed nuances make simply meandering Block 9’s streets into an adventure game, never knowing what odd environmental narrative might manifest around the next corner. Clever lighting and cell-like chambers glancing into one another maintain a perpetual aura of ominous unease.
Fusing music, art, and visceral imagery, the entire hand-fabricated environment serves Gallagher and Berger’s dystopian vision. Block 9 operates akin to a giant immersive theater where the very walls watch you dance past ruins towards an uncertain future.
Mischievous Characters Roaming Within
In addition to its unconventional structural elements, specially devised avant-garde characters roam Block 9 enhancing its speculative fiction aura. These subversive, often unsettling entities engage with wanderers, sometimes directly addressing or challenging their presence with perplexing remarks in a street theater style.
Standouts include large fembots wearing towering papier-mâché heads and bondage gear like post-apocalyptic marionettes. Others sport tattered top hats and steampunk leather looks complemented by disturbing facial prosthetics. Foreign soldiers, escaped mutated prisoners, sophisticated corpse brides glitching out and a baby-faced giant embodied by performer Pete Fowler frequently make appearances as well.
Like the off-kilter structural realm they occupy, these bizarre Block 9 personas promote provocative public discourse through their peculiar interactions focused on empowerment versus exploitation. They represent Gallagher and Berger’s commitment towards manufacturing an entire offbeat, confrontational universe expanding notions about music festivals, contemporary arts, and the critical debates electronic entertainment culture can nurture.
Al Fresco Drum & Bass: Outdoor Rig Arena
While indoor spaces like NYC Downlow and Genosys host leading acts from the UK bass and global club music scene, Block 9 also boasts its own massive, custom-built outdoor rig. Towering over 18 meters high, this technical apparatus pumps thunderous drum & bass across the sprawling derelict courtyard, with towering sound systems blasting slick DJs and live electronic acts.
Sharing much of Arcadia’s colossal mechanical pedigree including soaring flame cannons, hydraulic cherry picker viewing platforms, and spectacular light displays – Block 9’s open-air rig stands as Europe’s largest mobile outdoor sound system. Dance amongst the rubble while warning sirens wail over pneumatic bass pressure, or retreat to sheltered seating tucked behind rusted chemical silos to catch a breather before braving the outdoor dancefloor in all its apocalyptic glory once more!
The 400 Blows Discotheque: Another Musical Hotspot
Should exhaustion overtake even the most hardcore ravers, rest your eardrums by ducking into another fascinating hidden venue humming within Block 9’s sprawl – the intimate 400 Blows Discotheque. Inspired by 1960s Parisian record stores transformed nightly into underground clubs for youth culture, this cozy, carpeted bar regularly hosts DJ sets until 3 am from breakthrough electronic acts and local party crews.
With limited capacity, gaining entry requires patience but offers a cool opportunity to discover rising talents. The Discotheque’s retro vibes make it an alluring late-night hub for sonic discoveries where champagne corks fly against mod wallpaper interspersed with stacked vinyl sleeves. From rare grooves to stripped-back micro houses, expect plenty of musical gems unearthed for patient listeners stuck in here while the party rages outside.
The Making of Apocalypse: Constructing This Mini-World
Manifesting the immense, intricately detailed environment flourishing across Block 9 requires a monumental undertaking rivaling whole festival setups each year. Assisted by a crew of 80 craftspeople, it takes 5 weeks for set builders, sculptors, painters, animatronics experts, sound engineers, and construction teams to fully assemble this mini-world within a festival from scratch.
Overviewing the creative construction process offers insight into how every visual texture and aural sensation across Block 9’s multiple zones gets consciously architected by Gallagher and Berger as an artistic opus:
Concept & Design:
Following each Glastonbury, the visionary Block 9 team analyzes feedback, refine ideas for new spaces, and sketches fresh concepts to realize for next year. By October, intricate CAD models and renderings set visual intentions for scenes and structures.
Fabrication & Custom Creations:
Across UK workshops, specialist builders then construct and assemble sets, props, and mechanics over months to specification. Many elements like the 14-meter high IICON head or 40-ton outdoor rig must get engineered and fabricated specially onsite.
Transport Logistics:
Hundreds of trucks haul 40-foot container loads with labeling systems ensuring all pieces migrate efficiently onto trucks in order. Police even escort a 3-mile wide load containing the gigantic IICON parts along local roads.
Construction & Detailed Dressing:
On Worthy Farm, the talented crew rapidly frames, builds out, and mechanizes Block 9’s many zones. Every surface gets textured with realistic aging using sculpted foam bricks, customized wallpaper, spray paint, and physical debris integrated with dynamic lighting setups.
Finally, hand-picking graffiti, distressed objects, signage, and other narrative touches imbue poetic depth to the immersive world awaiting eager crowds. It’s a gargantuan endeavor fueled by intense devotion towards manifesting Steven and Gideon’s offbeat vision.
"It’s mad every year turning a beautiful green field into crumbling city; each area telling stories, setting people’s imaginations racing about who or what might have occupied them."
- Production Manager Andy Dobbing
Secrets of the Apocalypse: Uncovering Block 9’s Hidden Narratives
Beyond its architectural feats, closer inspection reveals Block 9 contains myriad environmental clues and subtle references alluding to an intricate backstory. fragmentary pieces of rich mythology detailing exactly how its world fell into cataclysmic ruin.
Sharp-eyed visitors may spot makeshift Missing Person flyers, sinister corporate logos on hazmat barrels, or radar maps tracking freak storms hinting at what cumulative disasters spawned this post-civilization wasteland. References to a chemical weapons facility, water scarcity protests, lethal epidemics, and banking system collapse reinforce society’s fraying order as conditions turned anarchic.
This embedded textual evidence offers discernible narrative strands to ponder amid Block 9’s broader abstract pandemonium. It invites attendees to critically unpack how socioeconomic volatility, biotechnology profits, climate armageddon, and civil rights injustices (explored via confrontational stage performances) may converge to unleash doomsday unless culture changes course.
Ultimately Block 9 operates as a warning 从within’ highlighting real world fractures through subtext…while simultaneously providing temporary escape into hedonistic release. Ironically by welcoming us into their chaotic block party at civilization’s end, perhaps Gallagher and Berger aim to galvanize reflection on preventing this speculative future from becoming our reality outside Glastonbury’s utopian bubble.
Navigating Block 9’s Apocalyptic Playscape
While navigating Block 9 often means joyfully losing your bearings inside its immersive worlds, first-timers appreciate a few tips offered by repeat visitors for making the most of this Glastonbury marvel:
- Study the schedule – With multiple venues, strategize must-see acts across Block 9’s four stages.
- Arrive before midnight – Block 9 gets painfully crowded by 12:30 am once headliners finish at Pyramid & Other Stage. Explore freely earlier.
- Follow whims – Wandering aimlessly discovering hidden rooms or artworks makes for the quintessential Block 9 experience…
- Pack light – With crowded dens and nonstop dancing, carrying a bag grows cumbersome. Stick to pocket essentials only.
- Mind the warnings – While anarchic fun occurs inside Block 9, Glastonbury’s rules around consent, legal substances, and cameras still apply.
- Watch where you walk – With debris and uneven surfaces, stumbling into toxic goo pits or equipment is easy. Look before you leap!
- If overwhelmed, take refuge in Chill-out Areas: With Block 9’s full-on intensity, peaceful gardens and comfy sofas in the perimeter offer sanctuary to gather strength before re-entering the madness!
Come nightfall as Block 9 awakens, veteran Glastonbury-goers enthusiastically migrate southeast into its tempting chaos. The promise of stumbling upon avant-musical talents, witnessing provocative performance art, or simply exploring fabulist environments laden with clues keeps the cult of Block 9 swelling annually.
All who make the journey agree Gallagher and Berger’s wholly singular apocalyptic adulthood playground represents Glastonbury’s most riveting portal into the future imagination. Brave its visionary madness to experience the strange rebirth no other music festival provides!
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