clearly things had changed, but so far so good for early arrivers at Big Chill

It's been a year of massive change for The Big Chill festival. Back in September 2009 it was reported that the process of planning and running the event had become too stressful for The Big Chill's small team, and a majority share of the festival was sold to UK promoters Festival Republic. The new owners, formerly known as Mean Fiddler, bought the festival out from its previous owners Katrina Larkin & the Cantaloupe group, adding The Big Chill to a portfolio of music festivals that includes Reading & Leeds, Latitude, and some involvement with Glastonbury, amongst others. Festival Republic are in turn co-owned by Gaiety Investments and the global promotions giant Live Nation, who between them control festivals including T in the Park, Download, Oxegen and a major share in V Festival.

Although The Big Chill 2010 was co-produced by the original festival team, with co-founder Katrina Larkin as the festival's Creative Director, I think it's fair to say that I approached this year's festival with a degree of trepidation. Some aspects of the line-up concerned me, suggesting a more populist approach to the music programming that I did not feel was in keeping with the diverse musical ethos of previous Big Chills. I grant you that the allegedly 'retired' Lily Allen had played Big Chill before, but as a new artist who still seemed interesting, not as a tabloid-courting headliner. The presence of watered-down grime popper Tinie Tempah was also a major cause for concern, as was Paloma bloody Faith. Something didn't smell right, here. Would the festival's laid-back, family-friendly vibe remain intact now the bookers were clearly angling for a more pop-orientated punter? Would the festival retain its tradition of strong environmental messages? Would there still be a place for The Arts Trail? I hoped that the festival would not alienate its previous fan-base in a bid to maximise profits by courting a new one.

Arriving after dark late Thursday night for this year's The Big Chill festival, it quickly became evident that large-scale changes were afoot not only behind the scenes, but also around the site. Walking into the arena we found ourselves smack-bang in the middle of the new look Big Chill in the new 'Uptown' dance village, an area boasting an array of smaller, more focussed venues catering for every flavour of late night beats and bleeps. Dispensing with all that had previously been in the northern end of festival arena, including the old Big Chill nights and Media Mix tents, the new Uptown venues for 2010 include the Revellers tent, the new second stage for The Big Chill; the Paradiso, now the main dance tent into the early hours; the Starburst outdoor stage, home to sunshine DJ gigs by day and the Shhh! Headphone Party after midnight; the Chill X big band and caberet tent.

At 11pm on Thursday night, the new-look Uptown area was a visually exciting blaze of lights and flashes, and the Starburst outdoor stage area looked especially impressive, with it's neon colour-change boxes (designed by the team responsible for the Cube Henge installation at this year's Glastonbury) acting as the centre piece. Talking with friends, we all agreed that this new area had considerably more late-night entertainment to offer than the last few Big Chills, and we quickly got involved with some rather splendid electroswing (a new one on me - 20s and 30s music beefed up with some 21st century beats) courtesy of the White Mink DJs in the Global Local tent, a venue offering everything from electro gypsy to Latin remix to heavy metal hoedown over the course of the weekend. Moving on to the Paradiso tent, we found old school DnB whilst checking out the tropical themed inflatable decorations, before heading further into the site, away from Uptown, to see what else we could see.

Back in the heart of the arena, we headed up the hill to the east into the Enchanted Garden, where we found the new Monkey Shoulder Tree House; a lovely little outdoor whisky bar with lots of seating, playing retro pop and disco to a small chilled crowd. We decided to settle there for one last bop before calling it a night around 4am. By previous Big Chill standards, this was a very late night, and especially since the festival had not even officially started yet! Clearly things had changed, but so far so good.

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