Creamfields' headliners Chase & Status and Eric Prydz as Cirez D bring out the bangers

August Bank holiday only means one thing in my festival calendar over the last few years! And this year was no break to that routine, after seeing the site slowly take shape through incredible social media feeds, and following the introduction of 3 new stages taking place. It was all lining up to be a blockbuster weekend! With the festival now extended to a full 4 day event, I unfortunately had to miss the Thursday due to work commitments, but Friday certainly started with a bang! We started with a big name, none other than the godfather of dnb Roni Size. On the Andy C hosted Ram stage, Size certainly got the blood pumping, just in time for our first foray into what would turn out to be one of the highlights of the weekend! The Steel Yard Stage.

 

A behemoth of a venue, a cavernous plane hanger style building, taking 2 weeks to be built for the weekend, this 10,000 capacity portable arena, housed both a world leading array of lighting and special effects mixed with a ground breaking line up to match! Friday's line up was put together for a live recording for Radio 1's essential mix. Sigala took to the raised stage effortlessly, smashing through a set full of summer hits remixed to perfection with ease! We then checked out Knife Party on the eye bursting Arc Stage, one of the 2 redesigned outdoor main stages, the Arc literally fills your whole field of vision with the biggest screens I have ever seen!

 

Knife Party didn't do the stage justice in my eyes so we soon moved on to catch the end of Wilkinson's set, I really feel like Wilkinson could justify a high main stage slot at many festivals, and it's a testament to the strength of Creamfields line up that they are in one of the smaller tented venues. After entering the Steel Yard towards the end of Martin Solveig's set I was surprised to see how many people were leaving.

 

I asked a few people why they were leaving and most said it was because they had never heard of Cirez D, who was next up, this made me smile, as we got to walk right to the barrier to see Cirez D take to the stage. The huge Steel Yard however soon filled again when people realised it was the alias name of Eric Prydz. With an organ crunching bass heavy set, it would take a huge performance to follow this set! this proved no problem for the evening's headliners Chase & Status. Playing an hour long DJ set packed full of hits ranging from day one of their career up to premiering a couple of tracks from their soon to be released album, a real highlight of the evening, I would love to see them outdoors on one of the main stages with the full band setup. Tonight it was Chase & Status and their formidable hype man MC Rage. Who took the stage by storm, 'Blind Faith' and 'No Problem' proving to be the biggest crowd pleasers from the set. A strong finish to Friday.