Slop-fest is Sold Out

An ironic satire set in a metaphor far, far at home.

There's a new festival in town and everyone seems to have invited themselves. Which is odd, as the festival was imaginatively titled 'Slop-fest' and the lineup is dominated by obsequious machine acts with a pervasive penchant for the prosaic. Honestly, it's not so much that they seem to write to a formula of dull—It's more that it's So. Darned. Obvious. In some obscure corner of the Slop-fest site, a muddy field in Hampshire, there's a small patched-up tent with a rickety stage where humans perform. Few seem to go there and the ones that do seem to wear an odd collection of bowties and birds in their hair. It's the Rare Pretty Things Stage. The main stage has reached its mildly throbbing asinine zenith. The headliner is on. The crowd go limp. Or was that the name of the headliner? I honestly can't remember; all the tunes sound the same today. Boring, dull, repetitive. And everyone's phone is out recording it. Art, imitating life, imitating... wait, is that someone crowd-surfing or being carried out unconscious? I can't tell. What were you saying again?

Why is anyone at this festival? It's all just a bit shit. Everything is a rip-off of everyone else's work packaged up into machined formu-vom. Cowellian syntho-slop on every upper known to mankind. Hype has a lot to answer for. Curious minds wanted a peek. Playful endeavour showed up. But critical thinking, critical thinking worked it out and stayed away. Painfully ironic that. This isn't a gig; it's the afterparty of a heist. That fucking easy button, man. It's screwed you again.

How did this place sell out so fast?