All Gone Wrong

I’ve known Kieran Delaney for years — through his club night Society and various festival takeovers. But despite sharing more than a few hours on the dancefloor together, I had no idea this part of his story existed until he told me about it at a friend’s wedding, after he’d heard this podcast.I actually think this might be exactly why All Gone Wrong exists.Kieran and his mum built Offset - a DIY camping festival at the end of the Central line in Essex - from pretty much nothing. Zero percent credit cards, personal loans, a PO box for cassette tape entries, and a lineup that somehow included The xx, Metronomy, Gang of Four and Liquid Liquid.Over three years, Kieran navigated ludicrous band riders, two cars written off in the weeks before one festival, a police helicopter circling before he’d worked out what was happening on the ground, a misreported riot, and a staging company who slept in their cab all night in gale force winds just to give the festival a chance of happening. On the Monday morning after it was all over - exhausted, soaked, finished - he watched the heras fencing come down before the litter pick was complete, and spent the next few hours retrieving it from the forest.The festival didn’t survive. But what he learned from it did.Kieran now runs FlatPlan, a tech company used by some of the world’s biggest media publishers.This episode is about three years of things going wrong -and what you actually learn when they do. It’s also a quietly devastating love letter to DIY culture, and what’s been lost as the industry has consolidated around it.Episode 4 is out now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angietowse.substack.com

This one is different.The first two episodes of All Gone Wrong were about public collapses - moments that make headlines and haunt careers. Leena Sharma-Spring’s story is warmer than that, and in some ways more important.If you’ve spent time in the world of We Love... at Space or on the Tisno festival site in Croatia, you probably know Leena. She’s the warm, familiar presence who always seems to be everywhere at once - at the gate, backstage, checking in, keeping things moving. What you probably don’t see is what’s actually running underneath all of that.For two seasons - 2012 and 2013; she was right at the heart of We Love... at Space. Fifteen hour Sundays. Seventeen weeks a season. An operation she describes as being run like an office block in central London, complete with its own staff canteen, hundreds of dedicated employees, and its own hospital behind the back entrance. Qualified paramedics. Every night.She has now run Barbarellas - the club at the heart of the Tisno festival site, for the best part of sixteen seasons. Open air. Generator-powered. No fixed water or electricity. And where Adriatic storms arrive in seconds, with no warning, and everything from the staging to the DJ booth is at their mercy.We talk about what the industry got right early and has struggled to hold onto. About the shift in crowd welfare - what it looks like now versus fifteen years ago, and what it costs the person managing it night after night. About the internal monologue of being the calmest, most prepared person in the room at 4am. About the years of being everyone’s unofficial in-house psychiatrist - though as Leena makes very clear, she still loves every single one of you.This episode exists because All Gone Wrong isn’t just about the moments that go wrong. It’s about the people who make sure they don’t. And what that work actually looks like from the inside.Thanks for listening, Angie. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angietowse.substack.com

The unravelling.In Part 2, we dive straight into the operational fallout, the heartbreak of fractured partnerships, and the powerful personal rehabilitation that happens after you walk away from the wreckage.This is a raw, vulnerable look at what happens when you identify so tightly with your creation that when it breaks, you break too. But it’s also about what the island gave him, and the question he’s been sitting with since: what do you build next, when you finally know what you’re actually building for?Stream Part 2 right now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angietowse.substack.com

An island. Literally.What happens when an elite team of international festival curators takes on a massive island territory, and the reality of the physical build collides head-on with the dream?From the initial, progressive vision to a total construction nightmare, this is the definitive, inside story of a broken paradise.In Part 1, Obonjan co-founder Dan Blackledge joins me to track the meteoric rise from Northern club promotions to the high-stakes, ticking-clock tension of the Obonjan build. We go inside the immense vision, the impossible contract, and the final, breathless countdown on the mainland docks in Croatia while a building site waited on the other side.Dan joins me with the kind of raw, funny, and breathtaking honesty that you rarely hear in this industry.Stream Part 1 right now. Part 2 ready to go. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angietowse.substack.com

In part 2 - the music stops.In the conclusion of our story, we go inside the night the dream collapsed at the London Pleasure Gardens. This isn’t just about a cancelled festival; it’s a look at what happens when the thing you love becomes a machine you can no longer control.Alex and George go on the record for the first time about the “original sin” of the build, the visceral pressure of the contingency site layout, and the devastating morning they woke up to “terror sweats” and a panorama of their failed dreams.In this episode, we discuss:* The Friday Night Call: The “softly-slowly” strategy used to dissipate a 15,000-strong crowd without a riot.* The Megaphone Moment: Alex on taking his “medicine” and the humbling reality of facing a crowd that felt betrayed.* The Rehabilitation: How they rebuilt from zero - from running out of diesel on the way to the administrators to buying second-hand urinals on a credit card to get a new venue open by New Year’s Eve.* The Closure: The “miraculous” return to Minehead and why recovery is always possible if you act in good faith. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angietowse.substack.com

It’s a two-part special:Episode 1: The Vision & The Rise. We go back to the living room in Brighton and the DIY idealism that birthed the ‘Bloc-mentality.’ We track the transition from niche Norfolk raves to the the Butlin’s years, Bloc then at the peak of their power, a massive cultural machine that came to define a generation.Then in Episode 2: We’ll go inside the night of Bloc’s 2012 festival at London Pleasure Gardens. An hour-by-hour timeline of that infamous 2012 event. From the technical pressures of the site to the moment they made the decision to ‘pull it’ was finally made. And then comes everything after...This is the anatomy of a crisis, the fallout of a collapse, and the hard yards of brand rehabilitation.It’s vulnerable, raw, and at times pretty dark-humoured, because that’s usually what it takes to survive. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angietowse.substack.com

In the electronic music industry, when things go wrong, they usually stay in the shadows. Managed in private, signed away with NDAs, and buried under a quiet agreement that we just don't talk about it. We’re told to maintain the "vibe," keep the aesthetic tight, and never let the mask slip.But that silence has a cost.Hosted by me, Angie, a crisis consultant and founder of The Rest Is Noise - All Gone Wrong is a deep-dive investigation into the anatomy of crisis. By speaking with the people who survived the collapse or were pushed to the brink, this series documents the story behind the story. Not the press-release version, but the real one.In an industry that is largely self-made and self-taught, we cannot afford to keep starting from zero. This is the history of what actually happens when the lights go out. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angietowse.substack.com