Photo: Jenna Foxton
It’s a crisp, foggy afternoon, and I’m lying on the snowy ground near the top of an Austrian mountain. Around me, I hear the ‘shoop shoop’ of more competent skiers calmly negotiating their way around this new obstacle before them, barely registering its half-hearted flailing from behind their goggles. Most, operating on just a few hours sleep and a generous dose of vodka-red bull, are heading down to the Reggae Shack - which can only be accessed by ski. That’s all I can tell you about that particular venue, because it’s at this point - sodden, aching and barely a few feet from where my ski career began - that I give up trying to reach it.
Snowbombing is not a festival for the faint of heart, or the lover of sleep. It’s essentially a non-stop cycle of drink, ski, rave, repeat, taking place over a week in the ‘chocolate box town’ of Mayrhofen in Austria. Mistajam probably sums it up best, DJing in a rainy forest ahead of The Prodigy’s headline performance, when he asks, “If you’ve survived the week without breaking something, vomiting or shitting yourself, put your hands in the air.” Very few hands are held aloft.
In earlier incarnations, the Snowbombing line-up was described affectionately by MTV as “the most random collection of acts,” with the likes of Madness, Calvin Harris, Pigeon Detectives and DJ Yoda sharing a bill. In recent years though, it’s carved itself a more coherent identity - one rooted in electronica and drum and bass. This year, the closest thing to a guitar band on the line-up is Bastille - whose set I miss, because I’m in an igloo at the top of another mountain.
To take part in the Arctic Disco, you’re taken up in a giant lift to 6,000 feet, given a safety briefing in which you’re warned that alcohol affects you 1.5x more at this altitude (a warning met with cheers), and that you are not to venture anywhere apart from the igloo and the toilets lest you fall of the side of the cliff. Then, it’s four and a half hours before the lift returns to take you down.
(Photographer: Richard Johnson)
It’s an extraordinary experience. Fatboy Slim performs in a DJ booth carved from ice, to a small, packed room - also ice - decked out with rugged alcoves, and whose dripping walls and ceilings are, for once, not a result of sweat. For much of his performance, Slim holds his arms out to each side, his fingertips nearly grazing the walls of his sub-zero palace. There’s something other-worldly about this place, and an almost manically joyous end-of-the-world atmosphere, so the pulsing music choices suit it to a T.
The Racket Club, which plays host to Idris Elba, is less life-altering fare. It’s huge and characterless, though Elba does his best to inject it with soul, with the help of a spectacular, lazer-fuelled light show. Fatboy Slim plays a second set there later in the week, but there’s no longer an icy booth on which he can blissfully graze his fingertips, so it’s not quite the same.
(Photographer: Jenna Foxton)
It’s testament to The Prodigy’s live reputation that, despite its non-central location and the fact it’s chucking it down with rain, the forest is packed to the branches for the band’s set on the final night. They’ve played more electrifying shows, but it’s a competent, occasionally infectious, performance.
Snowbombing is a peculiar beast. It takes place right at the tail-end of ski season, and at the very start of festival season, nestling itself somewhere inbetween the two categories, and revelling in its position in no-man's land. If you’ve got the stamina for it, it can be a glorious thing.
