Following the success of this year’s sold-out UNIFY Gathering, Team UNIFY’s Luke Logemann has issued a statement celebrating the festival’s achievement and dispelling some of the sore sentiment in the Australian heavy community in recent months.
In a lengthy statement, Logemann uses UNIFY’s sold-out sophomore event as a prime example that #heavymusicisaliveandwell in Australia, despite the collapse of Soundwave and the recent postponement of the ambitious Legion Festival.
“I wanted to talk about our event in a larger sense, and touch on why we started this and where it is going,” he writes. “Obviously, the Australian festival scene has taken a hit recently.”
“And it feels like not a day goes by without our social media feeds being inundated with negative stories about festivals being cancelled and falling apart.”
“And while everyone is drawn to clicking on this endless stream of failure, I hope the media sites and people around will take the time to highlight what a successful and rewarding transaction just took place.”
After touting the success of UNIFY 2016, Logemann confirms that 2017 is already in works, but stresses that organisers will not be going overboard, preferring to maintain the integrity of the event and improve it as years go by.
“In our first year, we sold 3000 tickets in 3 hours. We could have sold more, but we didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew. Thats been the UNIFIED / THE HILLS ARE ALIVE model since forever,” Logemann begins.
“The fans were always there, and they deserve to not be scrutinised for what they choose to attend.”“It will naturally be bigger and better than last year, with the key word here being ‘naturally’ – we’ll grow it slightly, and we’ll improve and tweak the things we need to, but we won’t be trying to expand it beyond what it needs to be.”
The statement even seems to take a couple of veiled jabs at Soundwave and Legion Festival, saying, “we’ll only make announcements when we have 100% locked everything in and know what we are doing”.
“I’ve been asked probably a hundred times now whether we will try and replace Soundwave and fill that space,” Logemann continues. “But thats not what this event is supposed to be.”
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“Obviously via our various business ventures in the heavy music space (UNFD, 24 Hundred, UNIFY) we have a wealth of experience, and we will be exploring how to use that to cater for heavy music festival fans all around the country.”
“But for now, UNIFY will remain what it is – a professionally run community experience in country Victoria by the fans and for the fans. I hope the spirit of this announcement is recognised as one of gracefulness and positivity.”
The statement closes with a reminder that it’s not the fans at fault when a festival collapses. “The festivals that have shut down here aren’t an indication of the fans not showing support or complaining too much,” Logemann writes.
“The fans were always there, and they deserve to not be scrutinised for what they choose to attend. This has been an industry problem first and foremost.”
#heavymusicisaliveandwellSo by now, most of our punters and bands have all headed back to their homes, most of the…
Posted by UNIFY – A Heavy Music Gathering onTuesday, January 19, 2016
