Well after an epic Shambala I wasn’t quite ready to put my festival gear back in the loft for the winter just yet. Maui Waui is a new 2 day event, held near Saxmundham in my home county of Suffolk, so it would have been churlish not to pop along to support it, especially as I didn’t need to expend any more of my rapidly evaporating holiday entitlement and also with weekend tickets being priced at a mere £55.

The festival is fairly tiny, with probably less than 1,000 people attending over the course of the weekend, and is held entirely in a single, flat, tree lined field. The arena is set out much like the original Sunrise Celebration festivals, with all the venues and stalls around the outside of a large open circular space. At the centre of this was a collection of scrapyard sculptures which were lit up at night but otherwise the expanse of empty grass only really emphasised the fact that there were so few people around and the layout could have probably been made more compact and interesting without having to worry too much about the issue of sound bleed between venues.

The main stage was in a reasonably sized, and sofa lined, marquee with a further small stage in the Cabaret tent. The excellent “Crime Scene” tent had a great clubby atmosphere and there were also DJs and late night acoustic sessions in Frank’s Bar which served a reasonable selection of ales from the Green Jack brewery as well as some decent ciders and perrys. There was a good sized kids area where my friends Robin & Dee kept the little ones entertained with their bubbles and there was also, slightly alarmingly, a shrunken head making workshop!

Musically the emphasis of the line-up was geared towards the gypsy swing end of the spectrum but there was a good smattering of other genres as well. It’s not really an event for real night owls with all amplified music closing down at 1am on the Saturday and 10pm on the Sunday but it was nevertheless a great opportunity to relax with friends and soak up some late summer sunshine. I just hope that enough tickets were sold to make the whole thing financially viable to return in 2014 because I’ll certainly be back if it does.