Why is it that people use festivals as a place to live out their scatological fantasies?
Whatever the reason, and depending on who you talk to, after some reshuffling, evolution or regression, ‘The’ Glade is back, after a fallow year, at its new site: Houghton Hall in Norfolk. The contract is said to be for at least three years, but who knows? Maybe the juxtaposition between the neon-coloured cacophony of the UK’s premier experimental dance music festival and its idyllic new Brideshead Revisited backdrop (which neighbours on Prince Charles’ Sandringham estate) will prove to be too great. Glade seems to be passed around by venues like a bit of a smelly leper, presumably because they always make the mistake of giving the owners of the site a free ticket—I was told by one of the organisers that the current owner, David George Philip Cholmondeley, 7th Marquis of Cholmondeley, was staying in one of the boutique yurts. Heaven forbid that he should leave the relative safety of the yurt … though there was almost certainly a friendly reception for him.
Each year of the festival posthumously develops its own moniker, its specific characteristics and fingerprints. ‘The one where it rained’, for example, went down in meteorological history. What would this one be? Well, security was unprecedentedly tight on entry and every single person was sniffed by sniffy daags and searched for booze. Spirits and anything over 12 cans per person was confiscated, and although many people used technical and complicated pint to volume ratio maths to confuse the security, many more still had to leave many supplies in their transports, sitting in the carpark to get smashed all weekend, before stumbling back in to hear some music off louder systems than their car stereos.
Another characteristic conversation of the weekend was that of the topography of Norfolk: ‘My god it’s flat and windy’ says a giant penguin to a purple girl in a wheelbarrow. ‘Yes,’ she megaphones ‘It’s also very sandy, which is good for drainage.’ It wasn’t all physical and human geography though, Glade, as we have come to expect, means a great deal to its loyal followers and boasts more musical insanity than you could ever consume in one, now significantly reduced, lifespan. This was aided this year by the introduction of ‘Nanosystems’, smaller rigs showcasing yet more DJs and fun gimmicky concepts like ball pools, organised dance offs and interactive laser shows.
Although the psytrance-worshipping consciousness-expanders down in the ID Spiral may want to fly in the face of postmodernism and reassert a universal objectivity which all enlightened spirits can tap into once on the correct spiritual or chemical plane, I will try and review from a slightly more gonzo perspective, seeing as I only saw what I saw and heard what I heard (…I think). That, and I’m sure that Mr Thompson could’ve certainly found some of his own specific type of craic down at the Glade.
On the Friday, down that there Overkill stage, I saw Warlock play one of those quite dry dubstep sets which are all too common these days. Even more so since in other places, dubstep is really diversifying and finding its dancing feet in things like ‘Rave Bass’ and appealing to a wider audience than just the hoodied little soundheads who want to sexually assault the speakers. Fortunately, these vibes mutated into a joyous little evening’s epoch of the kind of evolved garage that pokes about these days. Droid vs. Squire of Gothos had the crowd bouncing to the piles of extra clicky snares they’ve managed to squeeze into garage beatz; but the real killer of the night was Kanji Kinetic vs. Rrritalin. I’d seen Rrritalin back in Winter 2010 following Scotch Egg in Bristol and knew to expect no lack of musical gusto. Breaksy tempos abounded, but the ever-cascading basslines and phenomenal drops caught everyone by surprise.
Next artist of note was the beautiful and voluptuous DJ Donna Summer, who is actually a bit of a fatty baldy yank. Luckily for him, his pounding breakcore was the best of the genre I caught all weekend, even though his naive little American appeals to the crowd to shout louder (‘I still can’t hear you’) were a little silly.
The disappointment of the night came in the form of Broken Note. I had high hopes after seeing ‘em pretty much rip a hole in the earth’s crust last year, this time however, with a live drummer, the whomp whomps fell on deaf ears. It’s really the kind of music which should be played in the pitch black while people attack each other with glowinthedark knives, but the emphasis on the tippy tappy dread-headed percussionist took away some of that necessary evil. Saying that, I did enjoy the AV display: a calculated montage of massive insensitivity, which showed brutal pictures of the Arab spring interspersed with George Osborne’s face and slogans to the effect of ‘ENEMIES’, ‘ATTACK’, and ‘KILL KILL KILL,’ in a feat of psychological programming similar to that scene from The Parallax View.
Seeing as Current Value’s genre is also affectionately known as ‘pots and pans type’ drum and bass, it was fitting that just before, I was treated to a display of spoons by an old dude in a wide-brimmed hat on his stag do. The tippy-tappy on his knee built up like any good rhythmic tune would before the complicated flipping around and back of the spoons to his other thigh. This was the perfect gentle warm up to the tech-stepper Current Value who presented us with a massive wall of noise and <<ping>> of hollow snare, from which we were supposed to hack off a chunk and have a rowdy little mash with. This all happened, and I lost my footing a couple of times. Well, I was wearing two left wellies and by then, my right hoof was starting to ache.
It was then daylight when the stages finished. Perhaps something to do with the festival’s timeslot being bumped to a month earlier...
Saturday’s Overkill warmed up with loads of style and chilled spacey dub noises. Anxst was new to me but could be my favourite discovery of the weekend. Plonky electronic with the odd bits of Flying Lotus off beats, but never too much to throw your bobbing head out of time. He also even managed to slip in a bit of ‘Everything in its right Place’ without it sounding cheesy, maybe there are some good Radiohead remixes out there after all, I had pretty much given up on them. Goth-Trad too warmed our desires for chilled steppiness and treated us to his own brand of spacestation elevator music with arpeggios, gameboy snares and sampled tablas.
We scranned on catfood style packs of pineapple provided by the Kindness Offensive and pottered on.
After some disappointingly mediocre sets from the likes of 2badmice and London Elektricity, things improve. Shitmat makes it all ok. ‘HIT ME WITH YOUR GABBA STICK,’ he screams from behind his mankini. No longer a laptop-spewing waster and every promoter’s worst nightmare, Henry Collins’s antics are now chaotically polished into a firm crowd favourite. If only all speedcore had this much high pitched and autotuned vocals, then we’d hear more of it sodcasted, and the world would be a much better place.
Warning: Shitmat is to be taken very, very seriously.
Sunday was somewhat of a Sabbath due to the massacres of the days before. The Nanosystems dutifully picked up the slack when the big stages closed early. Thank god for the lifting of Glade’s unspoken DnB embargo a few years ago. Enough people still had legs left over to bob about for Eskmo. Another refreshingly ungimmicky adherant of the live MPC-etc-bash-button-gizmos which he uses to make techy dubstep. He most stands out because of his live sampling: ripping pieces of paper to add to loops as reverse snares, jingling keys for highend fuzz. My favourite of his props was the glorious amplified *clunk-click-fizz* as he opened a can of coke into the mic. The amassed fans were orgasmically refreshed before he then structured a glitch break from it.
The main casualty of the weekend was the loss of a latex horse mask by our crew. She answers to the name of Whinnie. She was last seen hanging out in the toilets with the door unlocked, providing the service of scaring the tripe out of people. Even International Rescue’s attempts were in vain. Personally, I am racked with guilt - similar to the first scene of Antichrist - because on said festival Sabbath evening, while most people had given up and the dark clouds blew over, I could hear from the safety of my tent, a stirring rendition of ‘My Lovely Horse’. “Whinnie must be there,” I thought, “Galloping around, frolicking with the robot men and the pixie wenches, munching on sugarcubes.”
It’s ok though. Shitmat makes it all ok. Although I might have shed a tear wishing Whinnie had spent more time with us, you cannot keep a good horse mask tied down. I suppose that however much we loved Whinnie, and however much she was our friend, the beautiful country estate of the Glade’s new home, full of safe people and mind-smashing music, is a perfect place for Whinnie, and her kind, to roam.
Whinnie is dead, long live Whinnie!
ReplyDeleteExcellent review Leo x