06 Jul 2011, Posted by admin in Chris,Thoughts, No Comments. Tagged festival, rave, The Fam
Glade
So the dust has settled on Glade 2011 and now it’s time for some reflection. After a year of will they, won’t they after the unfortunate cancelling of the 2010 festival the gates did open this year and to much fanfare.
This year the festival was striped right back to it’s roots. Only 5500 tickets went on sale but unlike some smaller festivals there was a serious line-up to contend with. The headliners were Trentemoller, Drumcode Records and closing the weekend Global Comunication (DJ set). Among all the big name acts were resident DJs and club nights from around the country hosting tents. The music ranged from disco and house to psy-trance and some real experimentations over at the Overkill tent.
I jumped on a train straight from work on Friday afternoon and was greeted at the gates by a thick ominous fog and a distant rumble of bass. After two location changes in the build up to the festival Houghton Hall in Norfolk was the final location. Swamped in the mist the old stately home on the festival boundary couldn’t look more out of place. The increasing intensity of music on the walk up to the festival entrance sounded anything but the soundtrack to the ‘garden of the year award’ for the 5 acre walled garden on the same site.
With more effort than there should have been our pop-up tent was popped-up and we decided to have a quick walk around the site to familiarise ourselves with our surroundings. Just ease ourselves in nicely then come back to the tent, have some food and get stuck in. I’m not fully sure what happened to this plan but we didn’t get back to our tent until some time after 6am the next day, shadows of our former selves. The Friday night was Trentemoller’s turn to headline the Glade stage and with all festival planning we missed him. I saw him play at Glade a few years ago and was the highlight for me but the consolation of missing him this time round was some serious grooving House music at one of the smaller tents. With the scaled down location it was really nice to stroll between tents. If you weren’t feeling a song it was no effort to get a change of sonic scenery.
When I went to Glade in 2007 I got sucked into psy-trance. Not something I normally go for but it all just seemed to make so much sense at the time. Psy-trance is where Glade started out back at Glastonbury and the festivals Origin stage was host to pretty much non stop psy madness. Once again I got sucked in and loved it. I mean where else are you going to see a skinhead wearing fairy wings dancing with a speaker? The stage really embodied the spirit of the festival – no pretence just people having fun.
The musical highlight for me was the Drumcode take over of the Glade stage. Slam, Paul Ritch and Adam Beyer rolling out nothing but pounding pounding techno music out of one of the biggest Funktion-one stacks I’ve ever seen.
The only issue I had with Glade was not with the festival but one of the camping supply vendors. Now I know camping doesn’t have to be a hardship, and we all like luxuries when away from home but can I ask who the Jesus fucking christ wants to buy a half litre bottle of extra virgin olive oil at a festival? This incongruity was not a one off in this shop, even the oil it’s self was stocked multiple times. In a tent no more than 5m wide where space was at a premium why would you fill your shelves with baking flour, anchovy paste, jars of artichoke hearts and vanilla extract? The mad list went on. On the other side they did stock some fruit juices, but they sold out on the first day. I started to question if the shop was a performance piece, critiquing the rise of middle class amenities at festivals. The whole shop a savage, deeply cynical attack on where most festivals have ended up, nothing more than corporate sponsors more concerned about people charging up their fucking iPhones than if the sound is any good. This could have been the case (probably wasn’t) because the whole of Glade bucked the usual festival trend. There was no sponsor and the ticket money went into making something different. Even the tents that could only hold around 50 people had Funktion-one systems. There were bespoke lighting set ups with one tent having this hand built LED matrix behind the DJs. By far my favourite tent was a small dome with a tiny door which led to darkness and thick dry ice only illuminated by the thin red streaks of loads of lasers. On the Friday we stumbled in there and were met by some of the most pounding acid techno I’ve ever heard. It blew me away, no idea who it was though.
On leaving, the Alice in Wonderland location really made sense and I hope they go back there. Glade is a festival that appeals to all the senses and I recommend it to anybody who likes electronic music and having a good time. Lets hope the 2012 Glade will be more of the same, build on the scenery and installations but keep the intimate vibe.
