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Every year I pick at least one big festival to go to party with my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I love to Dj, but I also love to party stress free, with no worrying about what time I am playing at, what’s the set up like & to travel without dragging my record bag around is great!! Anyways, for years my friends have been trying to get me to go to “The Glade” festival in the UK. But as the music was always predominately Psy Trance & Breaks I was ever too keen, but when I saw this years line up with a good bit more variety music wise & especially when my great buddy Shannon offered me her ticket I couldn’t really say no could I!?

I was really looking forward to it as I’d never been to a full on 3 day festival and most of my best friends were going, plus I really needed a good dance & hadn’t been camping since Dance Valley in 2005.

As the weather has been so messed up this summer ie it’s done nothing but rain…. we were checking the weather forecast and as with my usual festival weather luck guess what… a weekend of planned torrential rain & floods… yipeee! That’s 3 years in a row now of pissing rain festivals, no matter what country I go to it rains!! In 2005 it rained for 2 days at Dance Valley in Holland, in 2006 there was the worst storm in 100 years at the Monegros Festival in the desert in Spain & in 2007… well the sun always shines at Glade… well not when I’m at it… 13hrs non stop of torrential rain & lightening!!! And actually in 2 of those hours there was more than a months rainfall!!

The Glade was held in a “glade” kinda like a small valley in the countryside, really nice. Picture this, all of the camping was on a hill & then at the bottom of the hill was the festival site. It started raining about 1hour after I got to the festival site on the Thursday night & didn’t stop until 3pm on Friday about 1 hour after the festival started. I’ve never seen rain like it… Torrential downpour! …there was no grass left anywhere & it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a river of mud, flowing down a hill right down into the festival site which was a pure mud swamp before the festival even started! Thank God I brought my wellies, 2 of my friends didn’t & after queuing up for about 1 hour to buy some wellies they had sold out in their size so they spent the whole weekend with wet feet… shame. Loads of people gave up and were just walking around bare foot.

Anyway after you got over the initial shock of all the mud, the festival was really excellent. The Glade organisers handled the chaos brilliantly. The sound was the best I’ve ever heard at a festival, every stage had an awesome Funktion One Soundsystem so you could dance right infront of the speakers with no bleeding ears… it was fantastic & the music was crystal clear… soooo great.

There wasn’t many big name acts & Dj’s that I wanted to hear so to be honest there was none of the usual running around “lets go see so & so, they’re on in 5 mins” etc… & my friends were so relieved as I usually drag them around everywhere. So that was great. No pressure, no stress, just find a spot with good music & enjoy it. Funnily enough I enjoyed the Psy Trance area the most as it was outside openair & the music was great & the Psy Trance crowd were really the best party people. Just colourful characters… chilled out party people. Wicked!

Most enjoyable Acts/Dj’s I did hear were the many Psy Trance Dj’s, plus a Dj called Eryan in the Sancho Panza tent… he played some really beautiful house music and after him Ralph Lawson played another wicked set. I also really enjoyed Digitalism’s Live set, but winner of the festival for me was Eddie Temple Morris in the breaks area… wow does that guy have energy… really awesome & he had this really wicked MC with him who could also sing & it was just a full on high energy show with the two of them really giving it everything… They kicked ass!

So after 3 days of mud swamp with each day getting muddier & muddier with more rain here & there, loads of tents including my own got flooded. And I won’t mention the usual overflowing portaloos (Eeeeeek!!) At the end loads of tents & shoes & boots were just left abaonded in the mud & lots of cars had to get dragged out of the mud. It’s was like a survival course trying to leave the festival without falling over.

So my overall view of the festival… it was AWESOME & honestly the best festival I’ve ever been to due to being with such good company! Everything was so well organised, the music was top & the sound was exceptional but most of all the people that were at the festival were tres cool. No attitude, just lots of coulourful hippys & fairies & loads of fun party people. Plus they had such a great variety of music… everything from chillout to drum’n’bass, breaks, house, electro, psy trance, techno & gabba! Even with 3 days solid of dancing in the mud, no where to sit down, & everyone covered in muck… it really didn’t matter as you just forgot about it as everyone was having so much fun and the atmosphere was amazing...

Really really huge big thumbs up from me, like I said it was honestly the best festival I’ve ever been to, I had a ball & I’d def go again next year!