The triumphant return of The Glade.
Beats or Junk? The Infamous Dance-Off
The very word Glade conjures beats, pieces, glory, wrongness, sunlight through trees, arms in the air, irrespressible ravers in fisherman pants stomping as dust rises over fluro butterflies. During its lifespan it has been massive, muddy, scorching, flooded – and the tunes never anything but absolutely rinsing. It's the ultimate festival for RAVE. Everyone knows it. Its newest incantation is fluffier, smaller and a hell of a lot more ridiculous. I will skirt round the preceding site issues because they're dull. The only thing worth mentioning is that the site they found is a stunner. Beautifully green with excellent drainage, peopled with trees, a neat and natural division between filth and psychedelia and pretty much darn near perfect.
Psy-Meltdown at the Origin Stage
The fact of its existence this year is thanks to the cats behind SGP – Secret Productions (who took it over, as well as starting a new boutique heaven happening this August: Wilderness Festival.) Their fleet of festivals is now three strong; with a nice balance of beats, glam sauna silliness and thought provoking lakeside lushness.
With a tasting menu of breakcore, house, techno, dubstep, bassline, DnB and psy trance to pick at, a myriad of nano-stages, a dance-off arena, a zorbing court (giant inflatable spheres – human hamster balls) and a dome where you can be hooked up to a brain-reader and your brain waves aurally reproduced, there is never, ever a dull moment. Add a 5000 strong gaggle of freaks who are here to blow their minds, a Burning Man style centre-piece on Saturday night and really, it's exactly what you'd want out of a weekend in the country.
Mayhem at The Overkill Stage
There's a jukebox where you can plug and play your own tunes – and it's being run incredibly diplomatically by those who want to bash out beats from their personal arsenal – no queue jumping or wanky spotify DJ politics here (at least that's what it was like on Saturday...). There's a pimp wagon beside a wonderful Emporium of delights to decorate you. You enter the caravan, dull, bedraggled and dishevelled. You emerge reborn: glittered, tittering and bedecked in face-paint courtesy of some professional artists.
My first date of the event is with a certain Kanji Kinetic back to back with Rrritalin. The Overkill dome is curated tonight by The Z-Shed – specialists in the essence of rave. Kanji and Rrritalin swap bassline, breakcore, huge drumstep and junk until Kanji kind of wins by dropping Zombieeez – his enormous, eponymous release on Senseless.
Kanji and Rrrritalin laying it down
Overkill brings the heaviness this weekend. It's always been about the dirty underside – the main stage being the place to house more mainstream tastes. This weekend sees sets from the absolutely impeccable Ed Rush (an actual mosh circle of grinning junglists), Luke Vibert deconstructing the Amen break, 2 Bad Mice – who splash the old skool hardcore and jungle, and Eprom who slickly and subtly moves the afternoon crowd with a glitchy, broken live set of really nice hip hop dubstep crossover.
Saturday afternoon on the Glade stage, the mighty Freefall Collective send the crowd wild with their energetic live breaks. And one of the biggest rigs on site comes from a tiny Ice-Cream van, where the Dirty Au-Pairs absolutely smash it to bits with a little bit of almost everything – both dressed as tigers.
Freefall Collective smashing the Glade Stage
The Dance-Off is the centre-piece of the rave field, smashing out banger after banger and ritually humiliating the game-for-a-laugh dance squad while the crowd are nearly shitting themselves with laughter. 'Beats or Junk? Beats or JUNK?'
Negotiating the lazers in the smoke filled geodome while some really groovy techno moves us very late on Saturday night is bizarre. Tiptoeing like cat burglars through the web of red light is fitting as the sci fi mechanical beats lend even more futurism. The lazers entertain the crowd for hours as people lick them, pluck them, suck and duck them. We skip over to Beta to bounce to DJ Moxie doing her thing. Sexy booty house and underground vibes. Opinion is divided on Mr Trentmoller: his live set fails to sate the desires of the beat-freaks, but Adam Beyer and Tom Middleton more than deliver.
Broken Note
Glade this year was less about the line-up and more about soaking in the utter shenanigans bucking wildly in the fields. The Nano-systems are an awesome addition – skipping between tiny stages with huge systems – each with their own crowd of devoted nutters means that you can dip into a wealth of styles and genres and meet as many mentalists as you dare. Glade – we love you. Thank God you're back!
Photos by the incomparable Bartek Szadura.
Click here to read the irrepressible Alex Martin's review of Glade's Psychedelic Field.
Click here to check out our essential Festival Kit List.
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