We Are FSTVL

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Neo95gt

Well-Known Member
So I'm headed to London for my first time and my week vacation will end at this festival. I'm from New York. Anyone been last year? The lineup is obviously amazing. Any other things I must do while I'm in town - party/food/sightseeing wise?
 
Yeah I went last year it was really good. Going this year but with just one friend so hoping to meet new people.
 
Did you actually say some beach time? You did realise this was in England and not Ibiza??? Hoho
 
The festival was awesome btw. You guys are lucky to live where you do....well except for the weather.....crazy weather. Warm one moment, cold and rainy the next, warm again....wtf? But anyway, besides the great sets....the best part was the crowd. So nice not having to deal with the American EDC/Ultra noobies and bros we have over here. Everyone was cool, up for a party and ready to dance. You crazy bastards dress like it's 26 degrees when it was like 12 at night.

London is a really good good city, I'd take it over Manhattan honestly. Had a chance to go to Fabric...best club I've ever been to even though the pat down at entry was a little ridiculous. Lucky lucky bastards.
 
That's tops mate.

Glad you went Fabric as it is an experience.

Did you got to Egg? as I think they were hosting the we are festival after party..

I love your comments about the weather. It's nuts. You need 3 changes of clothes sometimes here in the Uk. Don't know what lies ahead in the day.

I never got the chance to go even tho I live in Essex. Just got back from Spain.
 
Neo95gt said:
The festival was awesome btw. You guys are lucky to live where you do....well except for the weather.....crazy weather. Warm one moment, cold and rainy the next, warm again....wtf? But anyway, besides the great sets....the best part was the crowd. So nice not having to deal with the American EDC/Ultra noobies and bros we have over here. Everyone was cool, up for a party and ready to dance. You crazy bastards dress like it's 26 degrees when it was like 12 at night.
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Did you go on the Saturday ? Typical British Spring weather - all the Seasons in a single day. I saw the weather forecast (and the line-ups) and bought a Sunday ticket the day before. Since living in this country and hating the rain I never book anything outdoors ahead of time any more :D. It was windy in the morning but then warm and sunny all day from round 1pm when I got there, but not so hot that you end up drenched. Perfect for dancing outside actually.

When I drove up, managed to be directed to pull up next to the local Rockstar dealers, Car full of likelys with their biatch (who couldn't stop sucking on a balloon in the front seat) whilst her bf hollered "Rockstars .... get your Rockstart here" from the open window :)lol:) flinging spent poppers onto the grass every now and again. Think they got freaked when I didn't go straight in / started making calls on my phone and sped off after the 10 minutes it took me to retrieve and devour 16 pieces of raw sushi fuel from the cooler bag - which got boshed with a couple of ice cold cans of Pimms Blackberry & Elderflower :cool:. All I could hear over their stereo was shrieks of laughter and references to "getting nicked".

Was a nice crowd there - very cosmopolitan, actually. Even (gasp ... yes I did ...) the huge VIP area was not full of posing idiots, more DJs and their crew etc. Decent loos and the most amazing sound system in the Circo Loco tent. Black Coffee's set with a jazzy edge when I arrived was a perfect start. Davide & Matty both great to dip in and out of. The 'extras' were totally lacking though and it felt much like the rest of the site only in a separate area and slightly less littered. VFM was all in the music. Solomun on main stage a total disaster (only lasted a few minutes) and the Kehakuma / Luciano tents were empty all day. Even Carl Craig playing to 20 people. The 4-6pm slot was a bit flat atmosphere-wise outside the Circo Loco area.

The real treat was Cocoon. Apart from the sound levels not really being high enough (so was at the front the whole time) and missing Raresh (on too early), Ricardo Villalobos was decent actually (musically) and played some surprises (for him) including Jungle Bros. Some characters in the crowd for his set including some 50-year old nutter dancing wildly in a diving mask and yellow neon shorts who for some reason didn't seem at all out of place. Nothing seems much out of place these days !

Sven Vaeth played a 3-hour blinder of a set. Proper up for it crowd all flocked in, from seriously groovy face-painted girls up for a dance, the inevitable techno crew from Puglia with their shirts off (only the guys unfortunately !) to a load of festy-faithful Brits nursing blisters in wholly unnecessary wellies. I'd had such a good time towards the end of this, decided to cut my losses, swerved Lawler (sadly) and did the 3 hour drive home instead. Was back where I started by midnight. Great day out. Really surprised and very glad I made the effort. Leagues better than Global Gathering, which was the last UK festival I bothered to go to (must have been 2-3 years back now). The £130 bill including cloakroom & parking was steep but the line-ups top drawer, 2 minute queues and MASSES of token machines meant stress-free bars.

All in all, pwoppa decent bruv !!!
 
Saturday sold out well ahead of time. Sunday the numbers were well down on what they needed to be overall, but the best sets were perfect numbers everywhere without a crush. 2 whole tents more than was needed tho' and some stuff had clearly been cut back to compensate for revenue loss. The afterparty on the Sunday @ 338 was still selling Early Bird tickets on Saturday night although the Saturday night was sold out.

I think 2 days of it at those prices with a hotel on top (no camping) was over the top for many - and obvs Saturday was far more hands-in-the-air / sing-a-long than Sunday (so Saturday likely drew the huge coke & booty / Lee Foss/Amine Edge/MK crowd - they were virtually absent on Sunday).

One really good point - mixer drinks were £5 and soft/energys/water £2.50, in and out of the VIP same prices, so only spent £20 on drinks the whole day. Overall, didn't mind the entry fee when I look back on the whole package (only £35 diesel to fund on top, no hotel and a cooler bag full of decent nosh before and after). Wouldn't have thought twice about blowing that much on a night @ Amnesia !
 
A car full of my mates came down from the North and didn't really rate it! Said it was ok but contray to the opinion Neo96gt they said the crowd was poor, not much atmosphere and were very dissapointed with the numbers in the tent luciano played in- said luciano played a good set and some housey women who we saw in Serbia was ok-Miss kitten? Same as Kimajy said carl craig played to about 30 people!

They stayed near brentwood, which they said was pretty rubbish for a beer. They didn't bother with the sugarhut-probably wouldnt have got in ha ha
 
A car full of my mates came down from the North and didn't really rate it! Said it was ok but contray to the opinion Neo96gt they said the crowd was poor, not much atmosphere and were very dissapointed with the numbers in the tent luciano played in- said luciano played a good set and some housey women who we saw in Serbia was ok-Miss kitten? Same as Kimajy said carl craig played to about 30 people!

They stayed near brentwood, which they said was pretty rubbish for a beer. They didn't bother with the sugarhut-probably wouldnt have got in ha ha
 
claretclubber said:
They stayed near brentwood, which they said was pretty rubbish for a beer. They didn't bother with the sugarhut-probably wouldnt have got in ha ha
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:lol: - not in muddy trainers or without a spraytan they wouldn't anyway ! The dress code section on their website is hilarious.
http://www.sugarhutbrentwood.com/dresscode.php

I know what they likely meant about the atmosphere wandering around generally, especially earlier hours. But there were localized pockets of really good fun. Just maybe a bit more "mature good fun" than a rip-roaring time you sometimes get at boozier affairs I guess. Suited me well enough, to be fair, but a wee bit more life in some of the corpses on the grass earlier in the day would have been nice !
 
Just looking at the dress code page and laughed at the I.D bit. They said they walked into a bar on Friday in Brentwood, all four got asked for i.d. 3 walked in, got a few foot in and a bouncer tap em on the shoulder "is that your mate?" yeah, why "he can't come in, his passport is out of date...we know his old enough, but that is the law [sic]" eh!?!
 
kimajy said:
Did you go on the Saturday ? Typical British Spring weather - all the Seasons in a single day. I saw the weather forecast (and the line-ups) and bought a Sunday ticket the day before. Since living in this country and hating the rain I never book anything outdoors ahead of time any more :D. It was windy in the morning but then warm and sunny all day from round 1pm when I got there, but not so hot that you end up drenched. Perfect for dancing outside actually.

When I drove up, managed to be directed to pull up next to the local Rockstar dealers, Car full of likelys with their biatch (who couldn't stop sucking on a balloon in the front seat) whilst her bf hollered "Rockstars .... get your Rockstart here" from the open window :)lol:) flinging spent poppers onto the grass every now and again. Think they got freaked when I didn't go straight in / started making calls on my phone and sped off after the 10 minutes it took me to retrieve and devour 16 pieces of raw sushi fuel from the cooler bag - which got boshed with a couple of ice cold cans of Pimms Blackberry & Elderflower :cool:. All I could hear over their stereo was shrieks of laughter and references to "getting nicked".

Was a nice crowd there - very cosmopolitan, actually. Even (gasp ... yes I did ...) the huge VIP area was not full of posing idiots, more DJs and their crew etc. Decent loos and the most amazing sound system in the Circo Loco tent. Black Coffee's set with a jazzy edge when I arrived was a perfect start. Davide & Matty both great to dip in and out of. The 'extras' were totally lacking though and it felt much like the rest of the site only in a separate area and slightly less littered. VFM was all in the music. Solomun on main stage a total disaster (only lasted a few minutes) and the Kehakuma / Luciano tents were empty all day. Even Carl Craig playing to 20 people. The 4-6pm slot was a bit flat atmosphere-wise outside the Circo Loco area.

The real treat was Cocoon. Apart from the sound levels not really being high enough (so was at the front the whole time) and missing Raresh (on too early), Ricardo Villalobos was decent actually (musically) and played some surprises (for him) including Jungle Bros. Some characters in the crowd for his set including some 50-year old nutter dancing wildly in a diving mask and yellow neon shorts who for some reason didn't seem at all out of place. Nothing seems much out of place these days !

Sven Vaeth played a 3-hour blinder of a set. Proper up for it crowd all flocked in, from seriously groovy face-painted girls up for a dance, the inevitable techno crew from Puglia with their shirts off (only the guys unfortunately !) to a load of festy-faithful Brits nursing blisters in wholly unnecessary wellies. I'd had such a good time towards the end of this, decided to cut my losses, swerved Lawler (sadly) and did the 3 hour drive home instead. Was back where I started by midnight. Great day out. Really surprised and very glad I made the effort. Leagues better than Global Gathering, which was the last UK festival I bothered to go to (must have been 2-3 years back now). The £130 bill including cloakroom & parking was steep but the line-ups top drawer, 2 minute queues and MASSES of token machines meant stress-free bars.

All in all, pwoppa decent bruv !!!
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Does it get warmer there deeper into the summer season? I went on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday was basically perfrect all day until the sun went down it got a little chilly. The rain/mud wasnt that bad on Saturday and Sunday there was no mud at all, felt bad for the people who wore their wellies (new word I learned btw).

What are rockstars and are those ballons for laughing gas? Is that legal there?

I got VIP too. It was nice to have the access to those stages obviously and the nice bathrooms. But I agree, the rest of the stuff was a little silly. The reason why Circoloco was dead from 4-6 is that around that time the speakers cut out for like an hour. I was actually surprised how quickly the tent filled back up after being completely empty while the techs worked shit out. Agreed about Solomun....I took a visit and he was playing some weird stuff for him, dubstep and more mainstreamy stuff....I know it was main stage but, ugh. Thought Ricardo was very good too. He needs to relax on the mixing mistakes too. I know he likes making mistakes, but sometimes it's a little much and ruins the vibe. As for Luciano's tent, very strange. I think that tent was in a rough spot. It was such a nice day and everyone wanted to be outside, so they would just keep walking next door to Cocoon. Once Luciano came on though, the tent filled right up and I couldn't leave. His sound just makes you want to dance and party....a few of those new unreleased cadenza tracks are pretty epic and they matched up nicely with my peak :lol: Missed Adam Beyer though, wonder how that was.
 
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