Roundhouse Rising at Underage 2011

This summer the Roundhouse is hosted its first-ever festival platform - the Roundhouse Rising Stage - at the Underage Festival 2011 on 5 August at Victoria Park, London.

Building on the success of Roundhouse Rising, a festival showcasing the hottest new musical talent, the lineup for Underage featured electric performances from fantastic up-and-coming acts including Out Like A Lion, Mz Bratt and O. Children. Throughout out the day, our team of media reporters - all aged 14-18 - brought you live updates, photos and audio highlights showcasing the best of the festival.

Listen to Roundhouse Radio and our Underage Reporters' podcasts from the festival field:

Ginika's blog

Yo I am Ginika Mereni AKA @ladyadeleray

I got the chance to go to the Underage Festival and be a Roundhouse Underage Reporter and  interview the  latest and upcoming artist around and watch their performance too,
artist such as Giggs, Labrinth, Devlin, Roll Deep, Yasmin, Midnight beast, Janelle Monae, Mz Bratz and many more.

This summer I've been getting ready to record some covers and produce some of my own songs. So when i got the chance speak to Ms Bratz in V.I.P me and her discussed about how she got involved in music and being involved with the Roundhouse. She gave a lot inspiring advice for me on how to get my music  out there to people and how to improve my songwriting and focus on my education too and never give up on my dream, she also explain to me making music is like speaking up and expressing how you feel to world and getting them to understand your music  and relate to it in different ways. Mz Bratz is so down to earth and amazing artist to me and young artist out there she as inspired me to do more with music and I am happy to have got the chance to talk to her and take a pic with her.

After the chat with the lovely Mz Bratz I got to see and meet the amazing , kind hearted , talented music producer , singer/songwriter Labrinth. In just two years, multi-talented musician Labrinth has experienced an extraordinary career trajectory. As the producer, writer and vocalist behind Tinie Tempah’s massive hits, Pass Out and Frisky, and future hits for Professor Green, JLS and Devlin.

It was of course Pass Out’s genre-defying, tempo-twisting smash hit that saw Labrinth rise above the realms of other UK producers; it also became another defining moment in UK urban music, propelling it in an entirely different sonic direction to the ‘electro-pop-grime’ sound in which it had become stuck.

Put simply, we rarely see such an incredible amount of creative output emanate from one person. Gifted to the point of genius, Lab is also stylish, smart and, importantly, incredibly likeable. With an ability to think in a way that is truly, genuinely unique, his potential is limitless.

He’s already created hits in the past and has others out presently, but for the future, it’s Labrinth the solo artist we should be most excited about.

He performed on the LAST FM Stage he made me feel like was on the top of the world, his music connected to me and made me dance and sing with him  throughout his performance.The vibe there was  so freaking crazy and amazing, I gotta say everyone was just rocking it out loud and proud.

When Labrinth finsh his amazing  outstanding performance at LAST FM, I got the chance to take pics  with him  and do podcast interview  with him backstage on what advice he would  give to young people who want to do music producing  and what he thought about performing at Glastonbury Festival with Mr Tinie Tempah.

He explained performing  Tinie was just amazing and outstanding, the audience were just crazy and loving. The advice he would give  to young people who want to get involve in music producing is be unique, be true, be inspired, be confident  and look for course involving music producing around your area and get involve.

Finally, I was so to watch Giggs give out the hardest, best performance at TOPMAN CTRL STAGE  and do a quick podcast interview with me.

In this podcast you can catch me do an quick  interview with Giggs backstage at TOPMAN CTRL STAGE explaining to me what he think of the vibe in the festival, what he thought of the collaboration with Tinchy Strider - game over and giving out advice to people who want to get involve doing grime music.

Giggs isn’t just another rapper… Not many street artists can boast sales of 100,000 mixtapes over two years, and none can lay claim to owning their own shop in order to keep up with merchandise demand. But since 2008, Giggs (so named because he used to giggle all the time) is the only name that’s mattered where British rap is concerned. …. It was in this same year that the south London bred rappers debut, ‘Talkin’ The Hardest’ freestyle, became the unofficial anthem on road. With mixtape sales going through the roof, Giggs’ debut album Walk In Da Park (which he made in just two weeks and has notched up over 20,000 sales of to date) sold out nationwide, within just hours of hitting the shops. He also beat the likes of chart topping artist Dizzee Rascal and Chipmunk to win the BET Award for Best UK Hip Hop Act at a star-studded ceremony in Atlanta, USA.

I hope you guys enjoy listening, reading and watching out to all the blogs, podcasts and videos on Roundhouse website. Holla at me on TWITTER on what you think of Roundhouse covering the Underage Festival and for the links on how to get involved at the Roundhouse.

Demi's Blog

Heyy its Demi here, you know, the one with the stuffy voice who interviewed Devlin, Your Girl Likes Us, Mz Bratt and Crystal Fighters. Noo I'm not showing off :) I didn't even take pictures :( But the fact that I've met them and had a chat with them will stick with me forever.

The underage festival was awesomeee. There was so much to do and so many acts to see, the line up actually catered for everyone and it was clear that everyone who came had a GREAT time.

I had a good time too and learnt looaaadds about radio, believe in 5 days I went from a hopeful to a pro :D well not maybe a pro but I'm getting there. I'm just really proud of myself and now when I listen to radio I'll be able to know how they did it instead of wondering. In factt! Catch me up there in a few years B-) the jingle will be - Demees Radioooo, Keepin It Real ;) Or Orrr! Bow Chicka WowWow, Bow Chicka Wow, Chick Chick- OooAhh XP  Loooool I'm just jumbling now so imma close off :)

This has been Demi Daniel, writing for Roundhouse Underage Reporters

Olivia & Manny's blog

We were fortunate enough to get a place on a Roundhouse Underage Festival Radio Course, which gave us the chance to interview performers and members of the public at the Underage Festival 2011, using equipment and skills we learnt in preparation at the Roundhouse by our two mentors, Amy and Kwame. We were given VIP access throughout the festival. We interview big names such as Labrinth, Roll Deep and Maverick Sabre – to name but a few! For us, this course has been a chance to get quality radio experience and meet new friends. What a week!

Aithne's blog

The Underage Festival is my best summer holiday experience to date. Following my GCSEs, I had 2 months to kill, so decided to join on a radio course with Roundhouse Studios, which involved reporting on Underage Festival in Victoria Park. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity.

Following two days of getting to grips with recording devices and interview technique, we all took the tube Victoria Park, grabbed our VIP passes and got to work interrogating the crowd. However, my first radio interview was with hit band Bombay Bicycle Club, which was initially a bit of a culture shock! However, the band members were really friendly, and gave some excellent answers – even to my weirdest question: "If you could be any type of pizza, what would you be?", to which one replied: "I'd be an extra-large Meat Feast. Because I'm big and... meaty."

Once the audio was uploaded onto one of the laptops in our media tent, I ran around the festival interviewing festival-goers, while the other Underage Festival reporters began talking to other bands. Everyone seemed buzzed to be at the festival, which was attended by around 10,000 teenagers, and told me excitedly what brought them there. These ranged from the general ("Great music") to the more specific ("Labrinth, Crystal Fighters, oh, and Miles Kane of course!"), but the overwhelming feeling was of utter elation.

The Underage Festival is obviously different to others due to its crowd – it consists solely of 13-17 year olds, and no adults are allowed to attend. The acts themselves talked to me about the audience when I interviewed them, and the Crystal Fighters said that "It's brilliant playing to a completely sober crowd... everyone's here for the music."

I am immensely grateful for being given the chance to interview both high profile acts and the general public, all while getting to visit my first ever festival! The experience I gained was invaluable, and the techniques I learned will be vital to me if I'm lucky enough to pursue a career in radio.

Julia's blog

I'm Julia and I had a VIP pass at Underage festival. I was able to interview some of the amazing acts such as Cocknbullkid, Maverick Sabre and Labrinth which is what you'll find on this blog. I was working with Roundhouse in London, Camden taking us to Underage festival to interview the acts. We used specialised recording equipment suitable for radio and edited them successfully with garageband and audacity. It's great working with the people at the Roundhouse including learning how to edit the recorded work and learning how to use the equipment. We used Olympus Linear PCM Recorders. We were taught how to use and edit the equipment with Amy and Kwame was teaching the video and photography side of the work. We were the 'Underage Festival Reporters' and we had our own media tent at Roundhouse VIP as we were uploading live recordings and videos of the Underage Festival onto the website at 2pm, 5pm and 7pm on the website such as and were constantly tweeting from @roundhouseLDN and @underagefest which were the official websites for Underage festival.     

I had fun at the festival, and I loved that we got VIP tickets to the festival.  As it was underage festival and we were underage was great as the music suited the music we listened to. I was a big fan of the midnight beast and I was glad I was able to meet and take photos with them. I was able to go on stage, backstage with them and Labrinth. As it didn't rain the weather was lovely. I loved what everyone was wearing. The weather also meant many people were happy and cheerful. We were able to get free tote bags to remember the day by which was lovely. Being a VIP meant I had access all areas which made me feel like a celebrity. I think the park is a great venue for the festival.