Electronic music festival Cultivate – tickets for which sold out in 16 minutes last year – will return to Aberdeen in 2022.
Promising to be bigger and better, Cultivate will bring some of the most popular acts in electronic music – including Denis Sulta, Ewan McVicar and The Blessed Madonna – to the Granite City on May 14 and 15.
Cultivate, which first took place in 2018 and returned to Aberdeen in 2021, is organised by Rory Masson who runs RARE Club at The Tunnels and Scott Forrest who is behind Let It Bleed at Unit 51.
Rory said: “We’re really excited about this year’s festival because the acts are bigger and the production is also bigger.
“We learnt lots of things from doing it in 2021. The September festival sold out in 16 minutes – that was amazing.
“We have a strong line-up and a unique venue, so we urge everyone to buy tickets as quickly as possible.”
Aberdeen fans ready to snap up tickets for Cultivate festival
Rory said the response to the line-up reveal was “amazing”.
“The acts that we’ve got are some of the biggest DJs in the world – it’s amazing we’re able to bring them to Aberdeen.
“The majority of them never played in Aberdeen because they didn’t have the opportunity to.”
One of the DJs from this year’s line-up Rory is most excited about is Ewan McVicar.
Rory said: “He’s got the biggest song in dance music right now – Tell Me Something Good.
“We had him playing last September – he was one of the smaller acts and this time he’s headlining. So in the space of a few months he’s gone from supporting to headlining at the festival. He increased in size and popularity that much.
“Tell Me Something Good now has about 25 million streams (on Spotify).
“We’re very excited for him to come up.
“Ross From Friends is also my favourite.”
EDM DJs heading for Aberdeen
Barry Can’t Swim and Dance System have also already been confirmed to play the Aberdeen festival.
“This was phase one of the line-up, more acts for both days will be announced during phase two on Monday February 7,” added Rory who thinks that in addition to enriching Aberdeen’s music scene, Cultivate will also support the local economy.
“The festival is also great for Aberdeen itself,” said the organiser.
“It puts it on the map for electronic music and festivals and people will be coming to Aberdeen and booking hotels, going to restaurants… so I think it’s a great thing for the city.”
Finding the perfect venue
Finding a right-sized venue in Aberdeen proved difficult, but Cultivate will once again take place at Innoflate.
While hosting an electronic music festival at an inflatable theme park may be unusual, Rory says the Beach Esplanade venue provides an amazing space and it’s big enough for three music stages.
He said: “The festival is at the Innoflate building. We’ve had it twice there before – once in March 2018 and most recently in September 2021.
“In Aberdeen, there’s a lack of mid-size venues – you go from a 1,000 capacity at the Music Hall and Unit 51 to 5,000 – 10,000 capacity at P&J Live. And we were looking at something in the middle – about 3,000 and there’s nowhere for that in Aberdeen, so we decided to build a stage ourselves.
“Innoflate has bouncy castles and inflatables inside, but when you roll them up and store them away, it leaves you with a massive room downstairs and they also have a cafe area and an entire upstairs – it means we can have three stages and fit around 3,000 people in there.”
How to book tickets to Cultivate music festival
Tickets will go on sale at 10am on Thursday February 3 at www.skiddle.com.
Click here for more information on Cultivate festival.