Music Festival #2- Global Gathering

Now this festival was the first one I camped at and so probably counts as "officially" my first music festival. In contrast to the rather eclectic assembly of styles present at Lovebox, Global is strictly dance music. And then some. It is held on an airfield near to the birthplace of Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon, but couldn't really be any further from his legacy if it tried...

I only bought my ticket and train tickets 2 days before the festival in a spur-of-the-moment, go-with-the-flow type of move that often results in the best moments one can have. This time, my mate Sean was already going with a load of his uni mates in a kind of mass post-graduation celebration. He invited me along at the last minute and I decided to go for it. What a great decision it turned out to be!

I took the train up on the Friday after work and had to queue for ages to get my ticket. As such, I missed all the fun build up stuff. After meeting Sean and then pitching the tent at light speed, we quick-stepped it over to the main stage and managed to catch the legendary Faithless live! I'm not sure if it was me being tired from work or missing the first part of the set, but they didn't turn out to be as good as I had hoped live. However, I would be seeing them later in the summer so I would be able to see if that was just a blip or not.

After Faithless, we caught up with Sean and all his mates and for the majority of them it was the first time they had ever had the pleasure of Mr. Moo Cow's company. After a good dose of house-trance malarkey from Sasha, we moseyed on over to see a young chap called Kissy Sell Out. I had heard of him by name only, but it turns out he was the absolute business! A graduate of Central St. Martin's in London, he has recently been given a regular slot on Radio 1 and I definitely recommend checking his work out. When he plays live he is one of the most "on it" DJs I've ever had the pleasure of seeing! He even has an air-horn which he likes to blast out excitedly to gee the crowd up! His set was the highlight of the weekend for me without a shadow of a doubt.

The next day (finally getting to bed despite 2 hours spent looking for the tent in the pitch black) a few more of our mates from home drove up to enjoy the music. It must be said that I went to see so many acts, it does elude me who I actually saw. I spent a lot of time in the drum n bass tent and think I saw Mampi Swift. We did catch DJ Food and Jungle Drummer, druming the drum n bass rhythms live!! Then a brief visit was paid to the hard house tent to see Yoji Biomehanika, a totally nutty Japanese DJ. Hard house is not really my cup of tea any more though, so the visit didn't last too long in all honesty.

A bit of time was spent in the Minimal house tent, listening to a music style that boasts a bit of bleeping and copious amounts of unending drum loops without any hint of a bass drop. Understandably not a great deal of time, then. However, I made sure that I was present for the whole of Paul van Dyk's set, who boasts the nickname of "God" from his followers. His naughtily-good trance set meant that the Godskitchen tent positively heaved to every new track. Tent here is somewhat of a misnomer; marquee doesn't come close either to describing how cavernous the arena was. It was quite possibly the biggest room I'd ever been in, and still it was too small for PVD and his aficionados. To quote a rather drunken Moo Cow to a load of Sean's mates who I had only just met, "WOW! It's like a cathedral of music!!!!". Suave.

Music Festival #1- Lovebox Weekender

It's been an awesome summer so far: so much so that I haven't had time to write about any of it! But being Bank Holiday weekend I have a lot of spare time on my hands and can afford to spend some time reasserting my dominance on the blogosphere! I'll start at the beginning...

Before this summer I had never been to a music festival. Travesty for a music fan, isn't it! You see the thing is that before this summer, I had never really even been to many gigs. It never really appealed to me to go to see bands live, I preferred to go to the big clubs and see all my favourite DJs and MCs instead. Unfortunately, this means that I haven't really seen a lot of my favourite bands, and now some of them have broken up (Everclear, Rage Against The Machine and so on). In this regard, summer of 2007 has been very good for my outlook towards music.

The two main reasons that caused me to go to more gigs this year are firstly that after 10 months in the music backwaters of Spain, my appreciation for the music scene in England exponentially increased. Secondly, I basically just jumped on the bandwagon with my mates, who have all been busy following their own favourite genres.

However, the first music festival I attended was actually my discovery: Lovebox Weekender in Victoria Park, East London organised by the band members of Groove Armada. I'm not sure if it counts as my first music festival though, as it is not possible to camp there and I only went for the second day of it (but let's not dwell on technicalities). I went along with a mate who knew some of the bands on the line-up that I didn't, so I was going to come away from the festival having learnt some new music, which is always nice!

The first thing we noticed in the festival was a converted Routemaster (the old London double-decker red buses for those not in the know). Upon further inspection it turned out to be a MySpace stage!!! Inside all the downstairs seats had been ripped out and they had a small space for a band or DJ. We saw a band called Tiny Dancers play an acoustic set; quite cool indeed and made cooler by being right up close to them. Definitely a fan of this concept!

Over the course of the day we saw some good new music and some excellent older stuff. Bands like Good Shoes, Adem, Hot Chip (awesome!) and Nouvelle Vague. I must say a personal highlight for me was that I got the chance to finally see Diplo DJ live. In fact, the whole reason I found out about Lovebox was due to examining his tour dates for this summer, as he is American and therefore not always touring Europe. He didn't disappoint, playing a sick little 50 minute set in front of a very up-for-it crowd. I think there were quite a few people who like me had specifically gone to see him, as they really were loving every single tune he put out!

The final set of the weekend was by the organisers themselves, Groove Armada. I'd always liked their tunes, without being a fan per se. However after seeing them live, I have to say I absolutely loved it! They instantly got the crowd in the party mood and have a cracking live sound. Not particularly inspiring analysis I'm afraid, but I'm not a journo, just a mere blogger!