overview

Now in it's 3rd consecutive sold out year, The Glade festival seems to be moving from strength to strength which is no mean feat for an electronic music festival. At a time when other dance festivals are having to rebrand or in some cases close their gates forever now that "Dance Music is Dead" as we are repeatedly told, The Glade's popularity just keeps on growing. In 2005 this newfound popularity caused some problems by attracting fence jumpers to the sold out event, which meant a distinct increase in crime and general unpleasantness around the site. However clearly the organisers took this on the chin last year and have done something about it as in 2006 (yet another sold out year for the Glade team despite the new site and line-up being kept entirely secret prior to the festivities) as we heard of relatively little trouble around the festival. Certainly it felt like a welcome return to 2004's loved up vibe, anyway in spite of the considerably tighter security and now personalised ticketing systems.

We began our weekend in the Breaksday tent with Pete Jordan whose diverse set included everything from hip hop to electro, reminding me why his Nottingham-based Spectrum night is as big as it now is. Live music was up next from Milke, the new guitar-based electro-breaks project from Fat! records' producer Friendly and singer Ra Khahn. Live tracks like She Says went down well with the Breaksday crowd, while Tom Real vs. Rogue Element were the next up dropping a tasty remix of Deeelite's classic Groove Is In The Heart that was a storming success.

Next we moved over to the newly-renamed Glade stage to catch hotly tipped Warp signing, Jamie Liddell. Far from your stereotypical soul superstar, Liddell has the voice of someone entirely other than the skinny geeky-looking twenty-something in NHS glasses who took to the stage in what appeared to be a dressing gown. His future funk set was impressive in many places, not least the gorgeously soulful What's The Use, but even his slinky soul funk vocals could not distract me from the sonic disharmony so much of his music was based around. Very interesting, a great voice, the audience were certainly feeling it, but perhaps not entirely my bag.

After a refuelling stop it was back to the Breaksday tent for more, this time from 2004's headliners, The Plump DJs, back in a support slot for 2006. The Plumps are notorious for playing either belters or bores and today was one of the bad days: a dissapointingly one level set from Lee & Andy that left me unmoved. However we didn't dwell on it long as Hybrid followed, exploring the darker, slower, more musical side of breakbeat. Their stonking set was hit with some technical problems, but the crowd hardly noticed and this performance was another highlight. Deck issues were still plaguing the Breaksday stage when Rennie Pilgrem was due to take to the stage, so Glade favourite MC Zander stepped in to provide some live beatboxing action to keep the crowd amused while the gremlins were chased out of the system. The Godfather of Breaks finally got on the decks and banged out some of his trademark hard-edged funk before breakbeat hiphopper Krafty Kuts finished the night for us in some style with his unique brand of bass-driven funk.

The weather seems to be another integral feature of the Glade weekend in that it's always so hot and this year was no exception. Driven from our beds by the heat before we were fully awake, we sought sanctuary down at the ID Spiral chill area which was once again a beautiful place to get away from the hectic crowds, especially with the additional new hammocks this year. We lazed about round here until we realised we'd wasted most of the day hiding from the heat and eventually headed over to the Overkill stage (formerly the LittleBig tent), another refuge from the sun, where we caught Czech export Matkore vs. DJ iKore's bizarre grindcore mash up, UK bleep techno pioneers Unique 3 and French Warp signing Jackson & His Computer Band's brilliant genre-defying live set.

Vitalic were our next stop that night back at the Glade stage, where another French dance export, this time of the techno variety, played a chunky live set to a rapt audience before James Lavelle took over for another of his crazily eclectic sets, taking in music from all points of the spectrum. We finished Saturday back in the Breaksday tent with the brilliant Evil 9 who rounded the night off with a set packed with their own crowd pleasers like Crooked, Restless and Pearl Shot as well as a few other chunky favourites.

Sunday began even hotter than Saturday had before it and once again we headed down to the ID Spiral for most of the day where the atmosphere was as tranquil as ever. Unfortunately we had to leave early this year and only had time to catch a little of Future Funk Squad's party breaks set in the Breaksday tent. Sunday always seems to be anything-goes-mash-up day in the Breaks tent so we were very sorry to be packing up, especially when Future Funk Squad were providing such a perfect soundtrack to the afternoon we should have been having.

Once again the Glade festival have pulled another superb event out of the bag with awesome site decorations which have yet to be bettered anywhere in this country, amazing sound systems, great performers and (most importantly) a fantastic crowd. That's not to say things are perfect, however: there are still insufficient water points for my liking, there don't seem to be any more buses from the train station to the site now that there are 9000 people attending the event than there were when there were only 5000 and the music still ends too early on a Sunday. However this is what comes to me when I screw up my eyes and think really really hard about what might be wrong with this festival and that's really not something I tend to do a lot.

Glade festival is an odd event, a place of weird mixtures and bizarre concoctions but ones that really work. The mix of people is odd enough - psy-trance-loving new age hippies sharing dancefloor space with the street-savvy breaks crowd - but I guess it's really just like the festival itself which often reminds me in parts of a village fete and in others of a rave circa 1991. And that is exactly Glade's charm: it's different. Let's just hope it stays that way.

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