Choosing one room at Zombie Fest 9 means missing five others, which is how 12 hours of music can still leave somebody complaining about a shortage of time. On October 31, Cambridge Junction will hold 96 artists, several generations of British dance music and a crowd dressed for Halloween. Somewhere between N-Trance, Grooverider, Ultrabeat, Jaguar Skills, Stanton Warriors and Triple Threat, even the most disciplined timetable will probably collapse. That may be the proper way to experience it.

Zombie Fest has spent the past decade growing out of its original all-night rave at Mildenhall Stadium and into a festival capable of occupying an entire venue complex. Its ninth edition carries the confidence of an established brand and the nerves of its largest production so far. The tenth is already hovering in the background under the working title ZF-X, because apparently organising six stages leaves enough mental space for fresh trouble. Ahead of this year’s event, we spoke with the organiser about rave nostalgia, television crossovers, Halloween excess, difficult booking decisions and the peculiar business of planning controlled chaos.

First of all, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Zombie Fest 9 promises 12 hours of music, six stages and 96 artists — quite a large-scale celebration, enough for even an experienced guest to get lost. How would you describe the atmosphere of the festival to someone attending it for the first time?

The best way I can describe Zombie Fest is controlled chaos — in the best possible way!

You can walk from one room into another and experience something completely different. One minute you might be singing along to a huge 90s dance anthem, then you turn a corner and you’re in ’the graveyard’ listening to a full on jungle and drum & bass, then Garage, House, Trance, Hardcore, Hardstyle or even Breaks. But what really makes Zombie Fest special is the crowd. We have people who were there during the original rave era alongside a younger generation discovering this music and culture for themselves. Everyone mixes together.

The Zombie Horde really make such an effort with some incredible costumes, which has pushed our Boo Crew characters walking around the venue to another level with theirs. And because it’s Halloween the level of production is huge with lots of photo opportunities and surprises throughout the day. For somebody coming for the first time, I’d say don’t try to plan every minute. Explore it. You’ll probably discover a DJ, room or style of music you weren’t expecting to enjoy.

Zombie Fest began in 2015 as an overnight event at Mildenhall Stadium — from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Since then, the festival has changed venues and format, and has grown considerably. Looking back at the beginning of the journey today, what seems most incredible about what Zombie Fest has become?

Probably a prominent event in the festival calendar. When we started at Mildenhall Stadium in 2015, it was very new. No-one else was putting on a “Halloween” music festival. It was a proper 6pm-to-6am rave and we were concentrating on creating a great event that was more than music.

I don’t think we could have imagined then that Zombie Fest would eventually grow into an event taking over the whole of Cambridge Junction complex with six music areas with a line-up of this size. What I’m most proud of, though, is how it’s grown without losing its original identity. I’ve been promoting dance events for years and I’ve seen many come and go, musical trends change and generations of clubbers change. Zombie Fest has managed to evolve with that while still keeping to it’s roots. 

Seeing people who came to the early events still attending today — and sometimes now bringing the next generation with them — is pretty special.

The name Zombie Fest has long been a recognisable brand, even though the festival itself is much broader than a typical Halloween theme. How did the idea for the name come about, and was it immediately clear that it would become part of the festival’s identity for years to come?

Zombie Fest was always designed around Halloween, but I didn’t want it to become a traditional Halloween event where the theme was more important than the music.

The music always had to come first.

We originally called ourselves Zombie Nation – a bit of fun mixing ideas about what you might call people dressed in Halloween outfits dancing to tunes until 6am from all over the region memorable and immediately gave us an identity that we could build around. But after a few days of putting the word out, an email stating copyright details of the name so we had to change it and the obvious word to replace was Nation to Fest. At the beginning, though, I don’t think anybody sits there thinking, “We’ll still be doing this ten editions later.”

Over time the name has become much bigger than the Halloween theme. People now recognise Zombie Fest as a dance music brand in its own right. That’s when you realise you’ve created something valuable — when people don’t just recognise the individual artists on a poster, they recognise the event itself.

This year’s line-up looks like a catalogue of the British dance scene: N-Trance, Grooverider, Ratpack, Slipmatt, Dougal, Ultrabeat, Jaguar Skills, Stanton Warriors and many others. How difficult is it to bring artists of this calibre together in one programme — and are there moments when you literally have to choose between “a very good idea” and “another very good idea”?

Constantly! That’s probably one of the hardest parts of programming Zombie Fest because I genuinely love the music.

There are hundreds of artists I’d happily book, but you have to think about the event as a whole rather than simply creating a list of famous names. Each room needs its own journey and identity. The artists need to complement each other, the genres need to work, set times have to make sense and you don’t want every major artist playing at exactly the same time. Have a look at previous ZF events here – www.zombie-fest.com

There’s also the commercial reality. Every promoter has a budget, regardless of how big the ideas are. So yes, there are definitely moments when we choose between two very good ideas — and occasionally I’ll decide I want both and then have to work out how on earth we’re going to make it happen!

Zombie Fest isn’t just booking names from a list; there is a genuine connection with much of the scene while supporting new talent, local DJs, established acts and legendary artists.

Some of the names on the programme are associated with tracks that have become almost musical markers of time for an entire generation. N-Trance will perform “Set You Free”, while Ultrabeat will perform “Pretty Green Eyes”. What role does nostalgia for the 1990s and 2000s play today? Is it a pleasant return to the past, or does the music of that era still sound perfectly contemporary on the dancefloor?

I think it’s both. There is obviously nostalgia attached to records like “Set You Free” and “Pretty Green Eyes”. Someone hears the opening bars of a track and instantly they’re transported back to a particular time or place of their life.

Music has an incredible ability to do that. But I don’t think this music survives purely because of nostalgia. Put some of those records on a big sound system today and they still absolutely work.

What’s really interesting is watching younger audiences react to them. They’re discovering tracks produced before some of them were even born, but they don’t necessarily hear them as “old records”. They just hear great dance music. We’re also seeing modern producers sampling and reworking sounds from the 90s and 2000s, so everything has gone full circle. Zombie Fest celebrates that heritage without trying to recreate a museum version of clubbing.

This year, the festival will feature Triple Threat, who recently appeared on ITV’s *The Voice*. For the group, this is an interesting transition from a television audience to a major festival stage. What attracted you to Triple Threat, and how interesting is it today to observe the meeting point between television and club music scenes?

We’ve known Harry Shotta for years, so he’s certainly no stranger to a big stage or a proper club crowd. Zombie Fest has always pulled something different out of the bag, and the timing with Triple Threat was perfect. They’re a new project, they’ve had that huge television exposure through The Voice, and now they get the chance to bring that momentum back into a club and festival environment that feels much more natural to where they’ve come from.

For me, that’s what makes it interesting. It’s great to see genuine club and underground talent crossing over onto mainstream television, but it’s equally exciting to then bring that attention back into the scene. A platform like Zombie Fest gives them the opportunity to perform in front of a knowledgeable dance music crowd and show another side of what they can do.

That crossover between underground culture and mainstream media is healthy for dance music. It introduces artists to completely new audiences without losing the credibility or energy that made people notice them in the first place. And Zombie Fest has never been about booking the obvious choice every time. If we did that, it would become predictable very quickly.

One of Zombie Fest’s distinctive features is, of course, its date. Halloween practically invites itself into the festival’s name, and you also have interactive characters, photo zones and the corresponding atmosphere. How important is the visual side of the event to you? Should Zombie Fest not only be heard, but seen as well?

Absolutely. If you’re asking somebody to spend 12 hours at an event, you’re creating much more than a sequence of DJ sets.

The moment somebody approaches the venue, I want them to feel that they’re entering Zombie Fest. Halloween gives us a brilliant canvas because people already arrive wanting to participate. They dress up, take photographs and become part of the visual identity of the event themselves.

So we use characters, performers, Halloween decorations, lighting, stage production and different environments throughout the venue. But there is a balance. I never want the Halloween production to become cheesy or overwhelm the music. The aim is for somebody to look at a photograph or a video afterwards and instantly know: that was Zombie Fest.

Alongside the music, the festival offers a VIP format with a separate bar, sofas, toilets and Q-Jump. In the context of a 12-hour event, this sounds particularly practical. What, in your opinion, should a good VIP offering consist of today: additional comfort, a special experience, or simply the chance to sit down occasionally and remember what a chair looks like?

After 12 hours, remembering what a chair looks like becomes increasingly important! I think VIP has changed. People don’t necessarily want to be separated from the atmosphere or hidden away from the main event. They still want to be part of it; they just appreciate having somewhere they can escape to occasionally.

So for us it’s really about making the day easier and more comfortable — quicker entry, a dedicated bar, good toilets, somewhere to sit down and take a break. You can recharge and then go straight back into the madness. For an event of this length, those little things make a surprisingly big difference.

Zombie Fest has been a finalist at the UK Festival Awards three times, including nominations for Best Small Festival and the Grassroots Festival Award. How important are such recognitions to the team, and do they help the festival move forward?

They’re hugely important, particularly for an independent event. We don’t have the resources of the giant festival companies, so being recognised alongside events from across the UK tells the entire team that what we’re creating is being noticed.

Zombie Fest has been shortlisted at the UK Festival Awards three times, and I’m extremely proud of that. But awards also give you credibility when you’re talking to venues, artists, agents, sponsors, media and potential partners.

Ultimately, though, the recognition that matters most is people buying another ticket and coming back the following year. An award nomination is fantastic. Seeing somebody who attended Zombie Fest years ago bringing a group of friends back with them is just as rewarding.

Zombie Fest 9 is still ahead, but you are already talking about the tenth, anniversary festival and the next stage in the brand’s development — ZF-X. What can you tell us about these plans at this point? And how difficult is it to think about the next step every time when the current festival still requires your full concentration?

It’s almost impossible not to think about it. When you’ve spent years building something, your brain is constantly asking, “What comes next?”  But the 10th Zombie Fest is a major milestone, so we don’t want to treat it as simply Zombie Fest 10 with a different number on the poster.

What did we want this time but couldn’t do, so we will look to do that next time. What worked well and we can make even better next time, what wasn’t so good that we can improve on, or remove. What/who do the ZF fans want next? Who’s breaking through that would be great to book, who is touring that good play this year. What new props or production pieces can make this years better than last? We’re currently just calling the project ZF-X, and the intention is for the tenth edition to represent the next evolution of Zombie Fest.

We’re already exploring a new visual identity, new production concepts, artists and ideas about how we can make the event feel different again while keeping the elements people love about Zombie Fest. But reaching 10 editions gives us an opportunity to look backwards and forwards at the same time: celebrate the history of the event and then show people where Zombie Fest goes next. And knowing me, the planning for ZF-X will probably become far more ambitious than it needs to be.

Tickets for Zombie Fest 9 are available at www.zombie-fest.com