Why We Do It

How it all started

We never set out to build something big. More than ten years on, people still ask why we keep doing it. Why we put in the hours, sort the tents, deal with the last-minute problems and take on stress we don't need. Keeping it small makes it harder in some ways, not easier. Growing it would mean more money to play with, but we've kept it tight on purpose.

We're Matt, Dave and Craig. Good friends for over twenty years, brought together by the same scene and the same music. A lot more hair between us back then, and a lot less grey.

This is how Beat Bunker grew, bit by bit: the nights that made it worth it, the headaches that nearly ended it, the stolen kit, the cancellations, and why we've kept going.

The first field

In our twenties we ran plenty of club nights. By our early thirties we wanted more of the outdoors: the freedom, the camping, the feeling that for a few days nothing else mattered. Glastonbury and a few others gave us some of the best weekends of our lives.

That feeling made us want to try something of our own. If no one was booking us to play, we'd do it ourselves. No masterplan, just the best bits of what we loved about festivals, on a smaller scale, for our mates.

In 2014, a friend of a friend mentioned they had a field near Reading. We thought, why not? We found a cheap geodome on eBay, borrowed some speakers and told a handful of close friends to come along. No flyers, nothing at stake financially, just show up and see what happened.

It worked because everyone knew everyone, and everyone mucked in.

Levelling up

In 2015 we stepped it up a bit. We booked one of our favourite DJs at the time, Sean McCabe, who was making a name for himself. We knew the old geodome wouldn't cut it, so we scraped together enough for a proper black inflatable dome. The crowd doubled. It looked the part, the sound was better, and we could see this might have more to give.

In 2016 we pushed it on again. We booked Atjazz and Jullian Gomes, both big names in the deep house world. Word spread, people came from wider afield, but the vibe stayed the same: relaxed, welcoming, no egos.

The break-in

In 2017 we turned up ready to build on what we'd started. We'd dropped the dome and all our gear on site the weekend before and left it locked in a secure barn. When we came back on the Wednesday to set up, the barns had been broken into. All our kit was gone: tools, ladders and, worst of all, the inflatable dome and its custom aluminium truss. It felt like an inside job, because so few people knew where it was kept.

We felt sick. We had to refund everyone. But the community pulled together, and after a big social push the tent turned up dumped down the lane from the site, which in itself was suspicious. It was a one-off tent, so whoever took it probably realised they couldn't use it openly. Maybe the guilt hit after seeing everyone's comments. By then the truss was gone, melted for scrap, and it was too late to save the party. That was the last time we did anything in Reading.

Finding Malvern

It would have been easy to pack it in, but we still had the hunger. One of the attendees put us onto a beautiful site in Malvern. It had everything we needed already there, including a giant geodome tent ready to go. We threw a party and it worked.

In 2018 and 2019 we ran two good events there, booking Malaki, Richard Earnshaw, Groove Assassin and The Journey Men, the last of those just breaking onto the scene. Familiar faces came back, new ones turned up, and we were back on the map.

Let's Love Life

Then Covid hit hard in 2020 and everything stopped overnight.

When things started moving again in 2021, we didn't have a venue of our own, so we kept it simple. We approached a local day festival called Let's Love Life. We'd DJ'd there before and the organiser already knew what Beat Bunker was about. He gave us our own stage because he saw the potential and wanted us to keep going. It gave us the lift we needed at exactly the right time.

Back to our roots

Even then, we never stopped wanting a weekender of our own, with camping.

So a few years later, by pure luck, we stumbled across another friend of a friend's field, this time in East Sussex. That chance find is the only reason we could bring Beat Bunker back in 2024, for our tenth anniversary.

We stripped it right back. No headliners, no big promises, just a field, a sound system and whoever turned up, turned up. It was exactly what everyone needed, and it reminded us why we started all this in the first place.

Where we are now

Now, in 2025, we wanted to mark the moment, so we booked Grant Nelson.

How we carry on from here, we don't really know. Whether we'll do another party next year is too early to say. A lot can happen in a year.

Beat Bunker has never been a business. Our day jobs pay the bills. This is for the fun of it. When it stops being fun, we'll stop. Simple as that.

One thing we've learned

You can plan it, set goals and scale it like a business. That works if it's your living. Or you can do it like us: focus on creating the right feeling, and the right people will find you, even if it takes time. When things go wrong, they usually have a way of showing you why later.