MDLBEAST has been at the forefront of the development of Saudi Arabia’s live events industry since it burst onto the scene with the first Soundstorm festival in 2019, achieving feats of production that have never been seen before (or since), and smashing several world records along the way. Having displayed its capabilities on the grandest scale possible, for the 2025 edition of Soundstorm, the MDLBEAST team redesigned the entire footprint of the festival to a format that was more compact yet no less compelling.
Speaking to TPiMEA on site from the festival’s Event Management Centre (EMC), MDLBEAST Executive Director of Events, Michael ‘Curly’ Jobson, explained the rationale and the methods behind the changes. “The decision was taken after last year’s Soundstorm to make this year’s festival a much more compact event, but at the same time to increase the content output from last year,” he said.
With the new footprint came a new creative concept for the site, with the festival’s 14 stages now split between North, South, East, and West districts, which all emanate from a new central Downtown district. As well as cutting travel time between stages significantly, this new layout is much more conducive to the site being utilised commercially outside of the annual Soundstorm festival.
“Every single part of the site has the ability to be disassembled – from the shipping containers that make up the new West district to the bridges that offer the elevated VIB experience – and we moved most of it this year,” Curly laughed. Even the VIB boxes in the Big Beast Arena were taken down and rebuilt. “We did this to creating a much more intimate environment, and the result was immense,” he added.
Soundstorm has always benefitted from strong creative in terms of both staging and its functional and social areas, and for this year, the smaller footprint meant that there was even more opportunity to elevate this aspect of the festival. Alex Reardon of Silent House again played a major role in the overall creative direction of the site, collaborating with MDLBEAST’s Chief Creative Officer, Ahmed Alammary (better known as Baloo) and his team from the inception of the project.
Also catching up with TPiMEA from the EMC compound, Reardon explained how the biggest challenge this year was the development of the new central Downtown district, which started as “a concept of a feeling” before being developed into the polished product that was presented on show weekend. “Downtown is geared towards the creation of memories through experienced emotion,” he commented, noting that the Silent House team put in just under 600 combined days of work, in tandem with the MDLBEAST creative team, including Azeez Malhas and Issa El Assaad. The build of Downtown was project managed by Alex White.
The result was a space more akin to an urban city neighbourhood than a typical festival site, with everything from food and beverage to seating, access for trucks overnight, trenching, power, data, fibre, screens and more all considered carefully. “It was less like festival planning and more like town planning,” Reardon quipped. “We came at it from a position of ignorance – we weren’t daunted by it because we weren’t sure how big the mountain was until we’d climbed it.”
Another change to the Downtown area was the inclusion of stages, with the Brass, Yard, and Mixtape stages offering a selection of everything from jazz to heavy metal. “It was a brilliantly vibrant area, with the programming all feeding into that sense of discovery,” Reardon stated. “We really wanted to capture that sense of meandering around and being surprised at every turn.”
Now five years into his Soundstorm journey, Reardon shared his pride at how the festival has developed. “Soundstorm is still the craziest thing I’ve done in 40 years in the business. You don’t see anything like this anywhere in the world,” he reflected. “There’s a unique flavour to the festival. The level of detail we’ve been able to achieve has risen dramatically, and the festival has really found its soul. Curly has led the charge here for the past five years and he deserves huge recognition for what has been achieved.”
Photos: MDLBEAST
