Hideout 2013

Having travelled around Croatia before, I knew what to expect in terms of scorching weather, beautiful Adriatic scenery and lots of Pizza, but as a festival, Hideout caught me off-guard in a couple of key ways that had me hyped from the start. We first got to the beach late on Tuesday (the festival ran Wednesday-Friday) but it quickly became apparent that we’d already missed-out on big events that had gone off before the festival-proper had started - if the festival starts on Wednesday, get there the weekend before.

Like all great adventures, this one started slowly. If you have time and money, I’d recommend doing your research when it comes to travel arrangements. Some of the Croatian transport websites look like high-school IT projects but if you put a bit of effort in you can probably quite easily plan a seamless door-to-door trip with no hiccups, waiting or panic. We didn’t, we took the cheapest deal going at the last minute, flew into Pula – like 150 miles away – and then got a taxi to the ferry, but even that worked. Again we booked it last-minute and so paid for our idleness. The room consisted of a bed with two single sheets on it and a bathroom with no hot water and no air-con or bug-nets. It didn’t matter so much as we spent little time at all in the room. You can’t fit a two-hour round trip in during the day, there was too much going on, but the mosquito bites-hours sleep ratio wasn’t good.

If you want to get anywhere on the island, bus is your best option, albeit best of a particularly bad bunch. For around £30 you can buy a bus wristband which gives you unlimited travel for the duration of your stay on the island. The buses are hot, the drivers are mental and they have that horrible knack of leaving early when you’re late and leaving late when you’re early.

The layout for Hideout isn’t like other festivals, it’s minimal camping, no stages or tents. It’s a strip of permanent outdoor nightclubs, each fitted with pools, bars and toilets. You can tell by the clientele that camping was never an option, this festival definietely caters for those who want an Ibiza-style holiday without the sour, architipal British crowd the Spanish island attracts. No 60° shit-infested portacabins, mud-swamp campsites or 50 year old shamanic druids, this place was cleaner and more precise in what it wanted to be. I’ve fallen in love with a lot of festivals, at home and abroad, for different reasons, I love camping, I don’t mind getting dirty, or relieving myself in a bush, but for all the low-down and dirtyness I’ve come to expect off my favourite festivals, Hideout for me was the perfect setting for a house music festival, in every aspect. Being a strip, you never get lost, it’s easy to reference places when finding your friends and the bars except straight cash. If you’ve got your wristband, you’re generally alright. My only major gripe with the festival was that Hideout somehow managed to pull so much out of the bag, so many great acts spread across pool parties, boat parties and the night venues but it was so hard to manage time effectively because even at a low-key pool-party listening to some of the less reputable acts, it was still difficult to peel yourself from. The pool-parties by day usually featured our flagging faces until they kicked us out to ready the clubs for the night programme, the truth is it was hard to let them go. Oneman, Hot Creations, too many to prise ourselves away from but to be home and to be back in time for the evening line-ups meant in reality we never left. We had the luxury of the 20:20 Vision boat party with Bicep, Ralph Lawson and Simon Baker, a three-hour round-trip and soulful deep house and body-jackin’ techno. I chatted to Andy about a few things and he said that while Parklife was his favourite set of the year so far, his first boat-party mix as the sun slowly set was definitely something special. When I asked Simon Baker what his favourite set of Hideout was so far, he agreed with a unanimous majority – everyone was gassing Loco Dice.

Best sets for me were easy yet numerous. I could have gone to any combination of the line-ups and had a belter of a time, I genuinely believe the line-up was that strong. Aside from the ones I’ve mentioned, Skream’s disco set for his pool party was a smasher. An energetic set full of Skream’s very own brand of half-arsed charm and funk-laden dubplates and my main man of the festival, in fact this season, Scuba, who’s tracks Adrenaline and Hardbody have been themes through my dreams in this haze we call festival season. Bondax set the tone for us first night as well. Hang on, almost forgot the grand-daddy himself, the break-dancing, one-man reggae supremo that is David Rodigan MBE. Every time I go to see him it’s always a case of ‘okay, we’ll go check out Rodigan for a bit’ - a casual, non-committal sign of respect, but when he gets started it goes-off and you can’t help but feed off his passion, and when you think he’s old enough to be half of the other DJs’ dads, pound-for-pound he still rocks it with the best.

The atmosphere for me was perfect. A lot of posing, a lot of beautiful people and people who knew they were beautiful but there was never anything in the air other than good times. You’d be a thousand-deep in a crowd raving, turn around and someone would offer you a cigarette, or they’d stand on your shoe or brush you accidentally and apologise, that was the kind of vibe in there. I went with one friend but left with 20, easily, everyone we chatted to you could tell was full of so much enjoyment and satisfaction that everyone was willing to share their whole experience together.

All-in-all, a festival that wasn’t as dirty or as vast as the other big-hitters but it’s certainly carved a niche in the pristine, sea-and-sun, house-and-tech festivals with added boat-and-pool-parties market. It wasn’t a festival for campers though there was one windswept campsite a short bus-ride away. It wasn’t as broad and wide-reaching, it wasn’t as earthy or charming as some of the summer festivals, but for its exact audience, it catered for them perfectly. If you want mind-blowing sets-on-the-beach and a lively but atmosphere without the sour crowd that has devoured Ibiza, then Hideout is the one for you. Lloydie Lloyd