Avicii wows with an immersive show at Creamfields

So here we are again, another August bank holiday weekend. For me along with 70,000 others this can only mean one thing, the yearly pilgrimage to Daresbury Park for the end of summer blow out Creamfields.

With a huge line up including Tiesto, Avicii, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris, and Hardwell to name but a few, this was possibly the biggest EDM line up assembled on the planet this year.

With an early start this year also in place, the 3 day ticket holders had the choice of two main headliners, Sub Focus delivering a live set and 3 Are Legend, a 3 piece dream team, comprising of Dmitri Vegas, Like Mike & Steve Aoki.

I settled on Sub Focus, and what a huge start to the weekend it turned out to be!

With an MC  hyping up the crowd to breaking point it was obvious that people had come for the weekend of their lives! The roof almost came off the tent with the crowd singing back every line to the chorus of the epic hits 'Tidal Wave' and 'Turn Back Time'. What with a huge weekend lying ahead, we decided to call it an early night in preparation for the impending madness.

After a night of horrendous punishing rain, we needed to make an emergency trip to Liverpool, a mere 30 minutes away. I think the Location of this festival is a real bonus within 40 mins of both Liverpool and Manchester.

When we finally made it back onto site, Martin Garrix was setting the South Stage alight with his signature style of Dutch electro house. The 18 year old has seen a meteoric rise over the last 18 months, and surely it is only a matter of time until he is headlining Creamfields, bringing the field into almost insanity when playing his smash hits 'Animals’ and 'Wizard’.

Following on from the boy wonder was a big challenge, a challenge that was firmly risen to by AfroJack With a hugely impressive big screen show, bringing the behemoth like screens to life either side of the Main North and South stages.

Quoted as the largest festival production in Europe, they really are breathtaking when they are firing on all cylinders, after watching Afrojack for 20 minutes we decided to take in some of the tents and stumbled upon Max Vangeli playing in the Steve Angello curated Size Matters arena. The tent was bouncing, with his sound very much from the Swedish House Mafia school of big anthemic house, it really connected with the crowd.

After Max Vangeli’s set we decided to get some food, with a huge central hub in the middle of the site dedicated to food and market stalls it did not take long to seek out some excellent noodles and tempura, whilst eating that we discovered a stall selling 'rave glasses' called catseye, and I cannot recommend highly enough how much more I enjoyed the light shows, but having said that I was sober, I'm not sure they would be all that much fun if very drunk.

After this meal we made our way to the south stage to watch the opening half an hour of the Deadmau5 headline set, this was one of the sets I had most eagerly anticipated after the cancellation of the Sunday of Creamfields 2 years ago due to extreme weather conditions, and unfortunately for me it did not live up to 2 years of waiting, maybe I didn’t give the performance long enough, but it wasn’t hitting the switch for me.

I decided instead to catch the last hour of Avicii’s headline set on the South stage, Which turned out to be the decision of the weekend, he brought a plethora of huge hits. And then there's the insane set of the full array of special effects at his disposal. This was a truly immersive show, by a DJ at the forefront of the EDM’s rise to prominence all around the world. With big screens spanning as wide as the eye can see and 6 special effects towers placed back throughout the crowd.

It was easy to find yourself totally lost in the moment. 'Levels’ providing one of those wow moments to remember where the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. With the headline sets drawing to a close, many festivals would now be drawing to a close, but not Creamfields this is where the night crawlers come to party.

With the tented arenas staying open until 6am, after Avicii had finished his set, we made out way to the Annie Mac Presents arena to take in the end of Route94’s set before popping next door to check out Steve Angello, yet again the Size Matters maestro delivered another blistering set, really connecting with the crowd he has always deeply professed to be in love with.

We caught only one more act that night, and that was Annie Mac herself taking to the stage in her own arena, and the crowd lapped up her performance, a perfect end to an amazing day.

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