Glade organiser talks exclusively to eFestivals

As Glade Festival, which this summer runs from Thursday 14th until Sunday 17th June returning for a second year to Houghton Hall in Norfolk announced the line-up across it's main stages, eFestivals spoke to Ans Guise founder and director exclusively.

How did Glade begin?
I used to live in South Africa and run a record label out there, Nano Records, and we did a load of big psychedlic dance parties, and eclipse parties in South Africa, and in Gambia and place like that. I cam back here in 2002 with my partner in crime, Nick Ladd, and Nick did some work with Glastonbury when we first got back. I did DJing a lot, and he worked with Nick and Nark who did the Glade stage at Glastonbury. We did this thing called Psychedelic Sundays with psytrance music at Glastonbury. We became really good mates with Luke and Mark and in 2003 said to them let's do a festival which exploded out the music on the Glade stage which was techno, breaks, and psytrance at the time, and do our own event. Michael Eavis gave us his blessing, and said he was really happy to have it called The Glade, and voila, that's how it began.

Glade's location has changed often over the years, do you think where it is now will be its permanent home?
(laughs) We're really, really hoping it's going to be a permanent home, yes. It's definitely its permanent home, at the moment it couldn't be better. We have had problems with noise, and the proximity of Aldermaston when we were at Wasing (Estate) which was the reason why we left there. We had a few problems which we're going to forget about at Matterley Bowl.

Where we are now we have first and foremost a stunning site with loads of woodland, and aesthetically that's what we're after. It's a really good ground, and it drains miraculously which is what you want.

Also the local area seems very welcoming, the land owner is amazing, the council are amazing, and the police are amazing. So, we've got complete support on every level, and that is just wonderful. We've got a fantastic license there, and as long as we don't screw it up we will be there for a long time.

Are all your stages no Funktion1 equipped?
Not all of them no. All the main ones are, and we work very closely with Tony and Anne Andrews who design all the speakers there, we've become very good friends. We use them a lot, but on the smaller sound systems we don't have Funktion1 necessarily. But they do have a major presence.

Glade has joined the Secret Productions umbrella, what was the driving force behind that partnership?
That was me, I think The Secret Garden Party is an absolutely brilliant festival, and we had a bit of a hiatus a couple of years ago when we were forced to cancel. Some of the team didn't want to take it forward and there was a bit of a 'what shall we do next?' scenario. I knew the guys who ran Secret Garden really well, so I rang them up and asked whether they would join forces with us, and do the Glade together. They were very flattered to be asked to do it, and now it's me with them which is amazing, they are absolutely brilliant.

The three festivals that they have is Wilderness, Glade, and Secret Garden Party. From their perspective it's quite a nice balance because they're party people but they're very into the more 'folky' side of things. Wilderness scratches the folky bit, and family itch, and we do the party side.

How easy is it for a small festival like the Glade to be profitable, and how much has the recession increased the financial risk of holding the event?
It's really hard, especially if, like us, you have a really strong ethos about no sponsors and corporates trying to get involved, which makes it really hard financially. You've got to keep your budgets very tight, and you've got to sell your tickets, and that's where the recession come in.

Our tickets are going really well, but the days where we sold out quickly, in 2005 we sold the festival out in a few hours, I miss them. But, it just forces you to be more creatively thoughtful about what you're doing to ensure your event stands out from the rest.

The market has become much bigger and there's a lot more competition out there. You've got more effort in your marketing and what you decide to do at the event, which is a good thing. It focuses your mind a bit, and when you've been doing the same thing for a few years, it's good to have a bit of a challenge, otherwise there is a danger that you may rest on your laurels.

You mentioned that 7 years ago it sold out in a few hours, do you think that that audience matured and grew out of partying?
I think when we started the Glade we were the original licensed music festival for dance people that had that free party feel, and there was a massive hunger for it, and now a lot of people have jumped on that band wagon followed us. But, of course in 2005, I was a bachelor, and now I'm married and have a kid, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Then again, there's still young people coming through, whilst some of us are getting older, there's new energy coming through.

You always have a gap of 13-17 year olds who are notable to attend, what's the thinking behind that?
There's a few reasons, firstly we think if you don't have that policy in place then your bars have got to use challenge 21 everytime anyone buys a drink. Having that policy at the gate where you've filtered out those young people means you don't have to have that kind of challenge when you're at the bar. Once you're at the bar in that environment and atmosphere you don't want somebody to ID you. It means we can be less officious on site.

Also, you need a bit of maturity, we like to have quite a conscious, aware and open crowd, and you risk having that ruined if you have 15 year olds off their heads - it's just not cool. We want to be more forward thinking than that, and I think it makes for a better party.

The sort of festival we are doing is not poppy, the music that we have is more for people who love their electronic music. It's for serious music lovers who don't take life too seriously, the younger you get with people the more that can get muddied. That's the policy we decided to have, and every year we discuss it.

I just wondered if that resulted in having an impact on having young people coming through?
I don't think it does. I think it makes young people want to come. They look forward to when they're old enough to go. Our demographic is a little bit older, university students upwards, and I think that works really well for us.

Any plans to bring anything new to the Glade this year?
Yes, lots of things. The wonderful thing is we've got Secret Productions from Secret Garden Party on board, and they're quite into their installation and site art, and participation. We've got new stages happening including what we call the Meteor which is going to be epic. It'll be in the forest, and be set up as though a spacecraft has crash landed in the woods, and it's made a crater. You go down into the crater and a stage underneath your feet.

The Pyramid, that we've called the Pyromid is back but this year you're going to be able to dance inside it, obviously not when it's lit, and that's going to be a spectacle. That will be a proper twanging party, and then we'll say to everyone out you go, and blow the thing up, which is going to be wicked.

We've made a psytrance and Goa tribe village, and given it quite some thought in a sense to create a village where that culture has it's own space, and the Liquid stage is back, which we had right up until last year, we didn't have last year, and that's running until after sunrise. So, for the first time ever there's going to be a license to proper ding dong in the woods running through until after sunrise, which has never happened with us before. The police can't stop it anyway (laughs).

We've got some amazing art cars, which are Burning Man style moving Art Cars, and loads more wicked things in store.

Secret Garden Party will also be injecting some of their tomfoolery into the festival like we haven't had. They have the Artful Badgers doing something, and we've got something utterly ridiculous called Bardcore, that's going to be absurd and great fun.

The Glade Twitter feed said you would announce line-ups every Tuesday for a month, will you be announcing again next week?
No, we have got some stuff to announce but I don't know it will be the following Tuesday. We have quite a few more bits and pieces to come line-up wise, but most of the line-up we've now unveiled, most of the meat is on the bone. I think we've had too many rapid big announcements, and I think we're going to calm it down and shut up for a while.

We've got Dillinja, Daedalus, Jimmy Edgar, Bodikka, SL2, Ceephax, amongst a pretty huge line-up. We've got Koan Sound who are going to be playing, who are rocking it at the moment. There's Mosca, Appleblim, Alex Jones, Si Begg, and all that kind of jazz. We've never really gone for the really big names as you probably know.

You have gone for a few big names in the past...
Look, for two years, one year we had Underworld which was in 2009 which I always wanted to book because they're legends, and Orbital were supposed to play in 2010, and we had to cancel, but to me, who I want to hear is the Richie Hawtins, and Sven Vaths, and people like that. That's our kind of top echelon, but they're surprisingly in demand, and as I've said there is quite a few events going nowadays that book artists who we would like to book. The great thing about the Glade is that you do get those artists but out in the countryside with amazing production and sound, and a very open minded crowd, which you don't get really anywhere else, without sponsorship.

Obviously I feel the Glade stands out on it's own as being the original expression of that free party vibe that the UK is so famous for.

Are you surprised how much of a loyal following you've had, almost right from the start?
Yes, and no. Obviously it's amazing how much of a following we've had right from the beginning. But, at the same time I knew that people just wanted to let their hair down and go completely free out in the countryside.

I think in this country particularly it's pretty hard to find, we're a fairly bureaucratic country which makes it very hard to do, and I think people really appreciate we've done it, and I think that's where the loyalty comes from, the realisation that we're not doing it to make money, or anything like that. We're doing it because we want to put on a proper banging open minded concept twanger of a party in the English countryside.

There has always been a fairly high level of animosity against that sort of event by authorities in the past, is that still true today?
I think that's the reason why - all of our issues with it that we've had in the past few years have had to do with that kind of thing. I think that finally we're past that. At the end of the day you will get about as friendly a crowd as you can possibly get at the Glade, with a lot of love and a lot of creative thought, and all the rest of it that makes it so colourful. It just takes the people in authority to recognise that and they've realised it's a very positive thing, that should be supported and not hindered. It's taken a bit of time to find that but we've found it.

Do you think those in authority are happen to let these sort of events happen now?
I think it's council by council, it's police force by police force, and my impression of doing this and having to fight that particular battle over the years, is that the vast majority of police, ambulance, firemen, councillors, whatever it is are pretty open minded, but you do get the odd person who makes a lot of noise, and doesn't like it.

It's a classic thing if you have a party, or a village fete in the middle of Oxfordshire it only takes one person to complain about it, and the environmental health will turn up and it will get turned down. Even if everyone in the entire village is supportive. I think that's a great shame but that is beginning to change, and there is a common sense coming through now. I'm sensing that more and more nimbyism is diminishing.

It was pretty nerve-wracking finding and losing sites, it's a miracle that we have got there. People do recognise that there's something very wonderful about what we're doing, and what other people are doing. Glastonbury I think has that kind of spirit in huge amounts, and our torch has been lit by their torch.

It's going to be a great one, we've just got to allow that sunshine to permeate. The only thing we can't control is the weather, but we've got trees, and as long as it doesn't rain in June. Anyway, it's going to be a cracker! This year is going to be something special.

The Glade line-up includes Dillinja, Daedelus, Jimmy Edgar, SL2, Boddika, Addison Groove, Sven Vath, Oliver Huntemann, Stephan Bodzin, Andy C, Rusko, Vitalic, Pretty Lights, Foreign Beggars, Marc Romboy, Toddla T & MC Serocee, Extrawelt, Tricka Technology (Krafty Kuts, A Skillz & Dynamite MC), Gaudi, Dub Pistols, Killerwatts, Tristan (DJ), Max Cooper, Avalon, Master Blasters, Laughing Buddha, Loud, Allaby, The Commercial Hippies, Screen, Zen Mechanics, Electrixx, Solar Fields, Psymmetrix, Rinkadink, Burn In Noise, Hibernation, Ace Ventura, Dr Alex Paterson, Ans vs Regan (Nano Records 10 Year Special), Dickster, James Monro, Liquid Ross, Lucas, Hedflux, Aliji, Tsubi, IPcress, Gorgo, Naked Nick, Nova, Ade Laugee, Shane Gobi, and more. For the line-up details as available please click here.

Tickets are now priced at £127.25. A campervan pass is priced at £50. The deposit scheme will allow you to spread the payment of the ticket(s) over 2 easy installments (£50 plus booking and then £85 per ticket), the balance payment must be completed by the 14th of May 2012.

Under 12s are allowed into the festival for free but require a ticket. However Glade Festival will not allow anyone between the ages of 13 and 17 years into the festival. Photo ID will be requested if you look under 18.

To buy tickets, click here.

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