Global Gathering 2012

So, Friday the 27th July had arrived, I woke up bright and early to make the journey from my University home of Sheffield to my real home of Stratford Upon Avon to attend the much anticipated Global Gathering. Considering I lived 5 minutes away from the festival for 18 years of my life I had actually never attended the festival. However, a journey which normally takes me an hour and a half ended up taking me double that as the usual festival traffic ascended upon the roads. Nevertheless, after a quick stop off at home to stock up on food and camping gear I set off for Long Marston Airfield where two mates had saved me a camping spot for what was sure to be a brilliant weekend. 

I arrived at the festival at around 5pm and we started consuming many beers and then made our way for the main arena to see our first act of the weekend, Jaguar Skills, who provided a stomping set which contained everything from drum and bass, hip hop, reggae and even the Tetris theme tune. Safe to say he set the tone for the weekend, which ended up to, be one of the best festivals I’ve been too.  We then managed to catch a bit of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosours, Afrojack and Andy C before I shot off to shoot Tinie Tempah. 

I’ve seen Tinie Tempah a good few times at various festivals now and he always manages to smash it no matter how many people he is playing too. This being a predominantly dance festival I wasn’t sure how a commercial act like this would go down. However, from the minute he came on stage he completely tore the airfield apart, the way he bounces around the stage and makes everyone buzz with energy is the reason why he can headline any sort of festival and no one will complain. Fair to say by the end of the set I was shattered and needed to re-cooperate before Skrillex smashed the UKF Bass Culture Tent, so off to the beer tent I went.  

After consuming many a beer, I managed to catch a bit of Knife Party who managed to have everyone in the tent eating out of their hands. They were well and truly warming the crowd up for Skrillex. Feed Me, also managed to hype the crowd up even more for the main act and once they had finished everyone was well and truly ready for the oddest looking person in Dubstep. Fair to say, from the minute Skrillex came on to the last note he played everyone was hanging on each tune. However, the moment of the set that stood out for me was when he dropped his Cinema remix and he got everyone in the tent to hold up their lighters. I was stood quite far back and seeing this sight was quite amazing, everyone had simultaneously stopped raving and was in unison for a good minute or so. Then when he finally dropped the tune the whole tent went off. What stood out for me the most though was the quality of set up in the UKF tent, there were more lasers and lights in that one tent than on the whole of the main stage. It really complimented the sound and made for one the best visual set ups I’ve ever seen. 

After what seemed like a fortnight of drinking and dancing we made our way back to the tents to sleep everything off and get ready for the next day. 

After being woken up at 7:30 by a firework being set off I managed to muster enough courage to get up and go and buy one of the most expensive bacon baguettes I’ve ever had the displeasure to buy, however, it did set me up for the rest of the final day.

As regards to who shone on the Sunday, hands down Shy FX was the best set of the day and probably the weekend, playing everything from Jay Z and Kanye West to old school Shy FX jungle. Personally I feel that the DJ Fresh live set was a bit of a let down, it felt like is was all manufactured and didn’t really have much substance to it. James Zabiela however was on fire shooting off every type of effect known to man from his trusty iPad. After we watched Zabiela with the sunset coming down behind us we hot footed it over to the mainstage to watch the almighty Chase and Status. From the off they killed it, with Tempa T coming on to perform Hypest Hype. They played all of the favorites’ including, Blind Faith, Let You Go and Brixton Briefcase. When they finished, the party carried on and we all headed over to the Metropolis and Digital Soundboy Tent to witness Nero who showed DJ Fresh how a live show should be done.  Then finishing off the night Flux Pavilion and Sub Focus gave Global Gathering 2012 the best send off they possibly could.

So we headed back to our tents and woke up the next morning to the compulsory festival blues and a 4 hour traffic jam just to get out of the festival site. All in all, Global Gathering truly showed every other festival how it should be done this year. It can only get better for GG13. Roll on next year.