X-static Summer Festival 2014
I felt grim as Lee and I woke up in our little tent on July 28th, memories of the gruelling 8 hour motorway drive from cornwall (cheers Glastonbury traffic for your part in our horrible journey) and of the weather whilst setting up camp on our arrival in Swadlincote the previous evening. But as I lay half drenched in my tent the reason I was here came to the forefront of my mind. X-static summer festival. The biggest gathering of its kind in the UK and a paradise for hard dance music lovers. Despite the still hammering rain outside I felt the excitement coarsing through my veins. Although we were no XSF veterans, somehow I knew this was going to be special.
After a quick freshen up and breakfast at camp we donned our raving gear and sped off towards Catton hall, the event venue. We rounded a corner of some little country lane, starting to think we had took a wrong turn when suddenly the big tops came into sight. What a site it was to! The place was huge.
It was now about 20 minutes before the event opened and as we were shown to our parking the skies suddenly brightened casting an awesome glow across the festival grounds. From that moment the weather cleared more and more. Lady luck had literally shone upon us. Nothing was going to rain on this parade.
We sat in the car for about half an hour waiting to meet up with friends on their way. As we sat there we took note of how quickly the queues were going down. One of the aims of X-static this year was to reduce queue times and they certainly had managed this, both at the gates and at the bars as we were soon to find out. At 11am the speakers kicked into life in the Trancecoda tent close to where we were parked. We were literally itching to get in there and start partying so we necked the last of our pre drinks and headed inside.
Once in we purchased our drinks tokens and ran straight back to trancecoda where we spent at least the 1st 2 hours raving and socialising before exploring some more. The rest of the day is really just a blur of insane fun, stomping, heavy beats and chatting total tripe with strangers. The atmosphere here was electric. We bounced around from arena to arena taking full advantage of the VIP bar and its no queues to maximise raving time. Every single arena was amazing. There really was something for all tastes as long as its HDM of some form. It's hard to remember who played when and where because it didn't matter where u were, it was banging!! Highlights of the day were definitely Rat Pack in the Fantasia arena, Dark by Design in the buckled arena and a period I spent in the Illuminaughty arena. I'm not sure who was playing at the time but he was epic. I struggled to leave this tent when egged on by my mates. And of course Jag skills put on his usual wonderful performance to end the night. Seems like Jag is everywhere I go. Good thing he got those skills.
So how would I sum up X-Static. This event was one of the best I have been to in a while. Really well organized (apart from a lack of press packs for us), not a bad attitude in sight, epic sound sytems with epic DJ's playing epic tunes. This festival had it all and then some. Even a cocktail bar serving really nice fresh fruit cocktails at not bad prices for a festival and the cleanest loos I have ever seen at a UK event. I only have one question. Why is this only a 1 day event. They hold bloodstock at the same place. Please X-static go on longer. Leaving at 11pm was killer. 3 days would be so X-treme.
Experienced and reviewed by
Keiran Dunne-Davidson
And
Lee D Simpson
Published on 09 July 2014 by Keiran_D-D
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