Words: John Bownas, Vibes: Remi Vibesman
To be fair, Hastings has never suffered from a lack of live music. On any given weekend, its calendar is notoriously over-packed—it’s wonderfully chaotic, deeply fragmented, and completely uncoordinated. But sitting down on the sun-drenched Stade with Remi Vibesman, the mastermind behind the Hidden Beach Festival, it became immediately clear that this August is going to be different. This isn’t just another busy weekend; it’s a joined-up, full-blown takeover, and he hasn’t been waiting around for official permission to throw a month-long party.
Limited Free Passes On Us
Read on for the full details… but if you want to snag a few free passes we have secured a limited number for the two main days… click the links below…
8th August (Hidden Beach Festival)
Experience a day of live music, sound system culture, global rhythms, street food, family activities and seaside vibes. Featuring Aba Shanti-I, Kasai Masai, Prince Tino & Afromotive and more at The Oval, Hastings. 🌊🎶☀️
9th August (Love a sensation Festival)
A soundtrack designed for dancing by the sea. Join Natasha Kitty Katt, Nancy Noise, Lizzie Curious, Ravinder Teji and Hastings favourites for a day of disco, house, soul and summer celebration at The Oval. ☀️🎶🕺💃🌊
Watching the footage of our chat back (video below), you can see the sheer ambition of Remi’s newly minted ‘Summer of Culture‘ spilling out of his enormous smile through that trademark dreadlocked beard. After the success of last year’s Hidden Beach events, his goal was to string together a continuous month-long program rather than just the usual week of free-for-all antics.
But organizing a mammoth town-wide arts program requires a sounding board—and, rather amusingly given Hastings’ love/hate relationship with Alan Turing and his legacy, came from the ghost in the machine.
Hastings has a fiercely traditional, understandably vocal contingent in the local arts community who would quite happily throw a server rack into the Channel before letting a computer dictate their art. So, you have to appreciate the delicate irony that the umbrella title for this massive celebration of human creativity was casually suggested by a chatbot. But maybe this was a hand-me-down from Turing, who spent his early childhood just along the road in St Leonards, that has seen a bit of computational serendipity woven into our local DNA.
“I’ve gone into AI, and I’m giving it my ideas about how this would work,” Remi explained, laughing at the modern absurdity of bouncing his sprawling, soulful vision off an algorithm. “And it said, ‘A Summer of Culture.’ And I thought… I love that.“
From Lagos to London to St Leonards
To understand why Remi is attempting something this massive, you have to look at where he came from. His musical education didn’t start in a Sussex pub; it started at age nine at FESTAC ’77 in Lagos, Nigeria—a month-long, world-historic celebration of Black and African arts that featured 16,000 participants. It was in Nigeria that he saw firsthand how music wasn’t just recreation; it was a tool to uplift people and unify communities experiencing deep hardship. He also inherited a fierce “can-do” DNA from his mother, who sadly passed away when he was just fifteen.
By the time he was back in London, Remi was cutting his teeth in the halcyon days of the city’s acid jazz, funk, and hip-hop explosion. He ran a vinyl store called WaxCity Music, launched labels like Big Cheese Records, and was putting out trailblazing cuts that anticipated the jazz-hop fusions of groups like A Tribe Called Quest.
He moved down to Hastings in 2007 for one simple reason: he recognized the exact same community musical spirit here that he’d first witnessed as a kid in Lagos.
Beating the Government to the Punch
As anyone involved in the local arts scene knows, Hastings has been furiously pushing for the official Town of Culture 2028 bid. I had to point out the elephant in the room: his independent festival had effectively beaten the government to the punch.
“You kind of stole a march on the ‘of culture‘ handle,” I put it to him.
He grinned, noting that his AI-assisted branding happened a few months before the government’s official Town of Culture announcement got everyone excited. But his perspective on the official bid perfectly encapsulates the Hastings DIY spirit. It puts down a strong marker for the town, he explained, showing the judges that we don’t just want the title—we’re already doing the work.
“It doesn’t really matter whether we get that Town of Culture, even if we get onto the shortlist,” he said. “We’re doing it anyway.“
Flamenco Mix-Ups and Poetic Funk
The sheer scale of the August calendar Remi is orchestrating is delightfully ambitious, pulling together spaces that don’t normally host these kinds of events. The Electric Palace is doing Friday film screenings, the Jenny Lind is hosting the opening night, and Joe at the Humble Hub in St Leonards is curating a whole wellness program.
Then there’s the ‘Poetic Funk‘ nights at Printworks. Inspired by the 1980s rare groove and soul train scenes, Remi described watching old videos of outdoor, soul-driven dance parties and thinking: “I need to bring some of these guys to Hastings.”
But pulling all this together independently isn’t without its hiccups. With refreshing honesty, he admitted to completely bungling the scheduling for a highly anticipated Flamenco event which had been scheduled on two dates at Alexandra Park – one in the programme and a totally different with the venue space…
“I’m gonna admit to this… I messed up the dates,” he confessed, laughing about the logistical nightmare of syncing up dancers, venues, and the rest of the massive program. But true to form, they pivoted, turning it into a “One Nation Under a Muse” unplugged acoustic session.
Maths, Nursing, and Key Workers
Perhaps the most surprising revelation of our chat was the career path that has funded this entire cultural masterwork. While many know Remi as a DJ and promoter, his day job is a world away from the turntables.
“In the last ten years, I studied radiography, nursing, and then I became a maths teacher,” he casually dropped into the conversation.
“The maths doesn’t really seem to gel, does it?” I joked.
But he was dead serious. He took on those roles to financially support himself while he built this ambitious, community-driven festival from the ground up—working until 6:00 AM glued to his screen, and even driving ambulances three days a week while balancing a degree in Nursing.
That background in the trenches of the public sector is exactly why this Summer of Culture has such a massive focus on giving back. Recognizing the immense strain on people in healthcare, education, and the armed forces, a significant portion of the festival is dedicated to “caring for the carers.” Hidden Beach is actively offering free complimentary guest tickets to NHS staff, teachers, and frontline workers to ensure the people holding our community together actually get to enjoy the culture they help support.
The Hidden Beach Climax
It all culminates on the 8th and 9th of August with the Hidden Beach Festival itself up on The Oval.
Saturday promises a massive world and live music mashup, while Sunday shifts gears into a disco and dance-led “Love Sensation” headlined by DJ Natasha Kitty Katt.
Crucially, Remi is also paying homage to the deep roots of Hastings’ sound system culture. Acknowledging his own soulful, jazzy bias, he’s making sure reggae and dub have a dedicated arena, honoring a local sound system lineage, The Dub Generals, that stretches back decades.
Looking back at our conversation in the sun, it’s a brilliant reminder of what makes Hastings tick. It’s not about waiting for a massive promoter with deep pockets to swoop in. It’s about a man with an ungodly work ethic, a fierce “can-do” spirit inherited from his mother, and the sheer audacity to declare a Summer of Culture on his own terms.
Remi – Unwrapped
The Hidden Beach Summer of Culture Lineup
Afrobeat Sensation
- Kawson Sacka
- DJ Afrodesi
One Nation Under A Mews
- Light Up The Room
- Serotonin
- Tellums
- Erin Colley
- Betsie
- Tingle
- Vigilante Man
- Claire Brem Wilson
- Monks of Funk
- Poppy Rockett
- Sam Senior
- Huggy and the Geezer
Sound System Culture & Roots Reggae
- Aba Shanti-I
- Dub Generals
- Hastings Veteran Sound System
- Papa Coz
- Selector Debbie Golt
- Southeast Alliance Soundsystem
- Selector Joe
- Gary James
Love Sensation
- Natasha Kitty Katt
- Nancy Noise
- Lizzie Curious
- Ravinder Teji
- Kangbala
- Antonia Deeson
- Arièle
- Angela Colosi
- Cosmic Disco
Jenny Lind Inn (Live Music, Folk & Roots)
- She Plays, We Listen
- Le Beaubo
- Just Landed
- halfneck
- Completely Scuppered
- McNiff’s Folk Sundowner
- Harry Randle Marsh Band
- Los Twangueros
- Property of the Lost Weekender
- Jenny Don’t & The Spurs
- King Zepha
- Massy Ferguson
- The Equatorial Group
- James Lloyd Smith
- Woodpig
- Sky Bar
- The Dandelion Swing Band
- RAGZ
- Iron Men Of The Sea
- The Curst Sons
- Rarity Live
- Basset
- Prince Tino
The Albion Highlights
- Dave Valentine
- The French Men
- The Albion Skiffle Company
- The Return of the Colemanator
- Peachy Jnr
- Juliet Harris
