Ok im back in the game so here's a quick rundown of Glade 2011.
Best festival crowd ever. All ages from kids to 70yr olds and a real carefree hippy vibe to it. Hardly saw a face without a smile on. Everyone talking to each other and cracking jokes to strangers.
The psy trance stage is always a big feature of Glade and this year was no exception with a surround sound stack of Funktion 1's (which they used in every tent btw). The krusty crowd were stomping away , bare foot and generally messing around was really nice to see. Token naked-guy-on-acid provided a fair it of entertainment too.
The main 'Glade' stage was an open sided number which when we heard them soundchecking was phenomenally loud but seemed to quieten down the later it got.
Trentmoller was the first headliner i was botherd about seeing and after a 10 min ambient intro I'd had enough. London Electricity earlier in the day had been better although it was abit of a cheesefest but who cares. On the saturday it was a techno takeover with Joseph Capriati , SLAM , Paul Ritch and Adam Beyer. The visual setup on stage was so trippy i couldnt get my head round whether it was real or not. They were all really good tho took myself home as Adam Beyer strted for some reason
I think my favourite set was probs 2 Bad Mice playing loads of old uk hardcore / acid everyone was going bananas.
Its weird , Glade really isnt about going to see anyone particular , im struggling to name 'sets' that i saw , all i know is i went to a field , listened to loads of different types of music without knowing who they were and had a brilliant time.
Was abit worried as the guy who owns the land invited a load of locals down for free to come and check it out so there were these families walking around and i just hope they didnt see anything too illegal going on that might shock them. Glade is the biggest mash up ive ever seen , all sorts of things going around and some i'd never heard of. Unfortunately i fell down the k hole on the sunday night having avoided the wonky all weekend. An unexpected trip of flying through the universe then an out of body experience was no what i had planned but I've def learned my lesson with that one.
I would reccomend anyone to go to this festival. some people have described it as (perhaps abit over the top) the closest thing to Burning Man in the uk which is a pretty good acolade. They apparently have signed an agreement with the venue for the next 3 years so already looking forward to next year!
Next stop , Melt! in Germany...
