Having spent an extensive amount of time living out of a rucksack and dining off of paper plates with plastic cutlery, SB&B is proud to deliver a round-up of the pick of the electronic music for two of the summers tastiest festivals. As was hoped and predicted, the third
Glade festival was a veritable audio/visual trip through all the best corners of electronic music, with a lot of love put into creating the perfect atmosphere for the hippies and the rave-monsters to knuckle down to some serious partying. And it was very, very serious.
After p
atchy skies on Thursday, the festival gears slowly worked into action as the sun appeared on Friday morning and stayed out for the rest of the weekend. What better way to start off than with Rob Hall dropping
Aphex Twin's 'On'? After some more nice wholesome electronica, it was time for Warp boy-wonder
Jamie Lidell to work his thang in the main tent. Looking the epitome of the eccentric suave gent in NHS specs and a dressing gown, Lidell proceeded to pummell the crowd with his beatbox/sampling/techno trickery, creating a driving set that bounced the crowd from side to side before schmoothing things out with a few hits of the
'Multiply' LP soul and some hands in the air sing-alongs.
We waited around for the start of
A Guy Called Gerald, who was dishing out some typically pumping house, but with a whole host of tents to choose from, the time machine set for 1995 wasn't appealing. Instead it was much more profitable to head to the Overkill tent to see German nutters
Modeselektor going at it hammer and tongs. Welding the best tunes from their monstrous 'Hello Mom!' LP to some solid European stomping music, the
BPitchControl boys did well to distract people from making bad jokes about Avid Merrion programmes, and by the time French hip-hop mashup 'Dancing Box' was flung out of the speakers, everyone was losing it. An impressive feat for 8 in the evening, but the party-anywhere-anytime attitude of the Glade-goers meant that you couldn't help but get sucked in.
After a brief respite it was time to dip toes into the breaks pool, only to find it disappointingly tepid. Understandably, the free-party nature of the Glade means that concessions have to be made to the council for their licence, one of which must have been the sound on Friday night as the
Plump DJs were barely audible over the noise of the crowd. A breaks dancefloor can be of the most energising, fun places to go raving, but it is music that needs to be
LOUD, and that just wasn't happening.
However, the
big kahuna (or should I say spicy bean) burger of the Friday night, if not the whole fest, was the ever shadowy
Autechre doing a peak of the night set. Live shows are rare enough, let alone seeing them play at a festival, so it was with great expectation that the main tent filled out for a slice of the mangled beat pie. Coming on in their uniform darkness, the boys Booth and Brown started bashing away at their machines with that same
'Untilted' energy that graced their shows last Autumn. Lots of wacky shapes were being thrown to keep up with the beats, and there was a pleasing prescence of a danceable rhythmic structure underneath the layers of clicks and pops. However, things gradually, almost so slowly as to not even notice, descended into repetition and monotony. Many were heard to comment afterwards that one track seemed to last about twenty minutes without changing, and whilst there were subtle mutations, the progression was like that of the
M25 during rush hour. What started as an exciting festival rave-up with some truly attention grabbing music turned into a chin-stroking fest, which is something electronica has been veering away from for the better, in SB&B's humble opinion. There is no doubt that they were playing and making brilliant music, but there is a certain amount of communication between the crowd, the artist(s) and the music that is needed in a live setting. In other words... "Why couldn''t you just play as hard as you did at the Koko?!?!"
The excesses of Friday night see a blanket of chill fall over the sun-baked masses on Saturday afternoon as they crawl for the shady spots while the midday heat rinses down on the Origin Stage crowd. After trekking from our campsite and seeing the furore of psychedelic colours bouncing around to that unmistakable psy-trance sound, it is decided that they must be insane to be coping with hardcore raving at this time of the day. Of course that sort of
attitude won't do in a place like this, so before we can make a bee-line for the shaded temple, we are in the midst of the pink dreadlocks, fluorescent poi and the most crisp, punchy 5.1 outdoor sound system SB&B has ever had the pleasure to hear. Where the Glade excels is in creating enclosed environments out of nothing physical, and any agorophobic could stand next to the Origin Stage and feel like they were hiding under their duvet. Back in the Overkill tent
Jackson's killing the competition with an unmatchable set of house, techno, electro, breakbeat, funk, pop and anything else finely chopped, stir-fried together and served with a very tasty
French dressing. His attention to detail would leave the likes of
Akufen shamed, and he carries it off with such style that you can't help but think that he's been stealing talent from other equally deserving people.
M
aximum credit has to go to gabba/hardcore/dnb nutter
Tim Exile for his utterly ludicrous yet bordering on genius concept of
Bass Boxing (see pic.). It's a simple premise; two sets of inflatable boxing gloves fitted with midi triggers linking them to computers, firing off gabba samples as they get hit. This all gets tied in with an arcade game screen, takes place in a boxing ring and has Mr. Exile playing referee/jester/stand-up comedian. An idea that could only work at festivals such as this one, it's great fun watching wrecked crusties try and batter each other with glorified beach balls whilst the computer game shouts insults at whoever is losing. Brilliant stuff.
Saturday night is a game of two halves: on one hand the main tent sees the unpredictable (sometimes for the worse)
James Lavelle followed by
Nick Warren, for a bit of a
Global Underground themed bash. Lavelle turns out a set that somehow shouldn't work at a festival at 2am, but does incredibly well. Nice n' minimal, progressive house that builds in lush synths and gradually tougher beats, the Mo Wax man left everyone pleasantly surprised. Nick Warren's marginally tougher breaks angle segued very nicely in from this, but suddenly the word 'nice' was being bandied around far too much. And so it comes to the second half of Saturday night, where all the A.D.D fuelled, ritulin deprived toddlers on speed in the world couldn't keep up with the silliness of the Overkill tent, for the rave pirates of the electronica high-seas, sailing on SS
Bangface, were in town.
Luke Vibert certainly did himself proud, pounding out a wildly eclectic set from the spastic-funk of his Wagon Christ guise to rinse-out jungle a la
Amen Andrews. What made it all the more special was the Bangface troopers dishing out glowsticks, smiley-face beach balls, and flashing up ridiculous EastEnders visuals, encouraging horn-tooting, whistle blowing euphoria from all present. Acid relics
Altern-8 dished out more of the old-skool bizness, before it got all breakcore with
Knifehandchop and
Bong-Ra to push the remaining masked nutters into the ground.
Sunday has never felt more like a Sunday than at the Glade. The "turn your body up to 11" attitude of the last three days washes a general vibe of exhausted contentment over the whole site... apart of course from the Origin Stage where it's still the peak of the day/night/festival/ who-knows-anymore-I-haven't-slept-since-Thursday. W
ith this in mind SB&B trudges over to the main tent feeling ashamed in advance for the lack of energy it expects to throw into watching uproarious punk-funkers
!!!, and troubled by doubts over how a soundsystem that has been handling laptops and decks most of the weekend will take to a nine-piece car crash of a band. However, from the second they spill onto the stage, !!! dispell any suggestions that it might be Sunday, that we should get some rest, or that we shouldn't physically have enough energy to blink let alone dance. Launching into 'Pardon My Freedom', everyone present gets their hair blown back from the fireball that is Nic Offer marching round on stage, and promptly the crowd start getting on down in return. With a set comprised mostly of new material, with 'Intensify' and 'Dear Can' being exceptions, the Noo-Yoikers still manage to keep their crowd for the entire set, and by the end there is a sense of disbelief that something that momentous could have happened this afternoon. Maybe it was the excitement of watching musicians who move and shake, maybe the live basslines, maybe the rousing horns; who cares as long as it works?
Jimmy Edgar played the penultimate Overkill set, with his slick glitchy techno sliding down as smooth
ly as the beer did three days ago. In a previous internet incarnation SB&B rather ripped Mr. Edgar apart for lazy mixing (which wasn't his fault) and a boring generic style but since then Edgar has developed into a well rounded electronic craftsman, creating beats at just the right pace to shuffle without the risk of limbs falling off (at this stage of the game, ravers leprosy feels like a very real threat). Sadly however, it's 7pm, the sun is hovering just above the trees, and the final set has to be played out. Again one can only assume a licencing wrangle forced the organisers into ending the music this early, but with the choice infront of us, it seems fitting to end things at the Origin Stage, where the daytime heat has subsided to a comforting glow, and Swedish psy-duo
Ticon are punching out some soft trance at the more euphoric end of the scale (note: not cheesy!) It seems the perfect way to round off the weekend, feeling mildly relieved, thoroughly elated, and wholly exhausted.
So after all that, a weekend of non-stop first-class music with a non-stop, first-class crowd in an idyllic setting, the only thing left to say is "same time next year".
Massive thank you to my gorgeous girlfriend Tash for the photos ;)
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