Infest (festival)

Infest Festival
"The UK's Premier Festival of Alternative Electronic Music"
Genre	Industrial music, Electronic body music, Synthpop, Futurepop, Rhythmic noise, Gothic rock, Deathrock, Darkwave and related genres
Dates	Annually in August, usually Summer Bank Holiday weekend
Location(s)	Bradford, West Yorkshire, England
Years active	1998 to today
Founded by	1998 "Black Lobster Promotions", 1999 "Slag Industries", from 2000 until today "Terminal Productions"
Website
http://infestuk.com/

Infest is an annual three-day music festival held at the University of Bradford Union in the United Kingdom, featuring alternative electronic music acts from genres including industrial, EBM, futurepop, synthpop and power noise. The event usually takes place on the August bank holiday weekend.

Infest was born in early 1998 through the efforts of three students of the University of Bradford and the Students' Union Entertainments Manager, Floyd Peltier – the founding team of students being Gareth 'Gadge' Harvey, Chris 'Crusty' Molyneux and Max 'Maxi Slag'. The concept of the show was a one-day event for local goth bands in West Yorkshire. Even before the first event however, it spiraled into an altogether bigger beast when the Students Union agreed that funds could be found to book some much bigger acts; most notably gothic/deathrock band Alien Sex Fiend. The student organisers were already fans of the Whitby Gothic Weekend and took the idea for Infest to the Whitby festival-goers and traders to gauge how popular the show might be. The response was positive and the first Infest festival was confirmed as 14 and 15 August 1998.

The following year (1999) the festival paid more attention towards the electronic side of the goth and industrial scene by booking Apoptygma Berzerk for their first UK show.

By 2000, the University of Bradford's Students' Union felt that they couldn't carry the costs of the festival any longer. In addition, the original students who had promoted the show had all but moved on. Fortunately, an independent goth/industrial promoter and DJ named Mark 'Gus' Guy (former drummer with the Indie band Kerosene), who had been advising Chris during the show's early years, stepped in to fill the void. As a result of the heavy involvement with Gus and his Terminal Productions company, another twist to the show's music style took place, defining Infest in its current form. The show's theme has moved from goth/industrial crossover to alternative electronic, with a greater emphasis on power noise, futurepop, synthpop and electronic body music. Occasionally more darkwave-style goth bands do still appear on the line-up.