overview

Now let me get things straight. The majority of my festival experience involves trailing through mud infested predominantly rock surroundings, whereas all my knowledge of dance events and its corresponding music has been built purely on hazy nights spent in the cheesy nightclubs that plague my hometown.

Basically, I’m no expert in this field and would struggle to tell you whereabouts a dance aficionado’s house is separated from their garage. Luckily I had done a bit of research and brought with me a handy dance expert to point out what exactly constitutes a ‘banging’ DJ set.

Arriving at the pill popping pilgrimage that is Global Gathering was relatively easy. No ten mile tailbacks, No touts attacking your car like those irritating monkeys that steal your windscreen wipers during a trip to the zoo, and even stewards that at least pretended they knew what they were doing.

Getting into the arena wasn’t quite as easy though. Passing through the first security check was hard enough and my dance expert was stripped of his bottles of water after being told that bottles that had been previously opened were not allowed on site. They were quite happy for me to cart through my crate of Carlsberg though – just a definite NO to that potentially life threatening substance H20. They have their reasons.

Just round the corner we were greeted by a friendly, if rather over exuberant spaniel that showed particular interest in my dance expert. A short while later I was left sitting outside a police van while he was taken into a small booth, strip searched and anally probed for illegal substances by a pair of burly policeman.

Drink free, drug free and one of us dignity free we finally made it onto the site. The arena itself was pretty huge; there were 8 main stages and plenty of smaller areas tucked away, decked out with turntables that were attracting small crowds of people by the minute.

Central to the arena was the ‘information train’, bucking the trend of shoving information in a tiny tent next to St. Johns and using the shell of a disused train carriage instead.

There was a big road that ran through the middle of the site too. I say road but runway would be a tad more accurate and would certainly explain the glut of aeroplanes dotted around the perimeter of the site. The amount of tarmac meant that Global was definitely lacking grassy areas where you could just take a break, chill out, and lie down in the sun.

The area leading from the main stage was covered in sand – creating a makeshift beach. It was a nice little touch, but in Friday’s heat a beach without a sea to take a quick swim in is just teasing really.

To the immediate left of the stage was the VIP viewing platform, adorned with massive VIP letters just to let the majority of the crowd know that these people were of course, very important people. In actuality the whole VIP concept is a farce in itself – spend an extra 50 quid and you’ll be able to stand on a platform raised about 10ft in the air. Alternatively save 50 quid and you could have climbed up on a free platform of sorts, right next to the VIP one – and get just as good a view.

But you get better toilets in the VIP area surely? I have no idea actually; the queues were far too long. But there’s a separate tent hosted by Hed Kandi playing great music? Yes, there is – but what’s wrong with the music on the other eight stages around the arena. So what are the advantages of paying the extra 50 quid? Ummm...you feel more important, you get to stand on a platform a few inches taller than everyone else and you get to wear a shiny pink wristband!

VIP wannabes aside, the atmosphere at the festival was great. It was different to what I was used to in the way that everyone was lost in their own individual world and quite happy in the knowledge that everyone around them was also lost in their own little world. Crowd dispersion was also different with less emphasis placed on bullying your way down the front so you can enjoy an hour and a half of being repeatedly crushed against the crowd barrier whilst in desperate need for the toilet. Instead, people seem to cluster in the middle of the tent, dancing in small groups or on their own, occasionally being bothered by someone on a mission to buy/sell/steal drugs.

By Friday evening I was thoroughly confused by the stage names. The small map I had acquired from the information tent, sorry train, was indicating that the stage I was stood in front of was called one thing, whereas the sign was clearly not. Intoxication coupled with a newfound phobia of Spaniels was rendering my dance expert also completely unhelpful and after stumbling across a ton of people bearing the same level of confusion we finally worked it out…

The Live Arena, sign posted Electric Arena – was only the Electric Arena/Live Arena until about midnight. Where it became the ‘Godskitchen Arena’ – a piece of vital information that we completely missed and forced us to spend the next hour or so trying to find where the hell the organisers had put the Godskitchen Arena. According to the huge digital screens in the Electric Tent Daft Punk were now playing later on in the Goskitchen Arena. Which – if you’re managing to keep up – is exactly the same place. By Sunday afternoon all the stage names had actually been removed from outside the tents – presumably ripped down by some irate festival goer who hadn’t been told the Electric/Live/Godskitchen arena was the same bloody thing.

Daft Punk were playing their first live UK show in almost ten years, as part of eight worldwide shows. Although I was still a little vague as to what a ‘live’ set meant to someone like Daft Punk. How can you not play live at a live event anyway? If it meant that Daft Punk were playing instruments then I couldn’t see much evidence of it – granted it was pretty dark and I was quite a way away.

Famed for their global appeal and mixture of techno, house and electro styles, Daft Punk have something of a huge following. The French duo responsible for Daft Punk (Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter) have pretty elusive identities and only ever appear in the shape of robots – according to them it’s the result of a freak accident.

I’m not sure if it was because I had just downed pretty much all the alcohol we’d brought with us in little over an hour but Daft Punk truly were awesome. For starters the light show was nothing short of spectacular and easily surpassed last years Fatboy Slim Glastonbury visuals.

The band managed to mix in all of their hits at one time or another, kicking off with 2005’s ‘Robot Rock’, and incorporating everything from Discovery’s ‘Harder, Better, Fast, Stronger’ to the earlier hit ‘Around the world’. There was a fantastic fusion of ‘Aerodynamic’ and ‘One More Time’ that went down a storm. Certainly one of the best sets I’ve seen in a while and atmosphere wise reminded me of watching Faithless a few years back. Great stuff.

We ended up retiring to the tent afterwards, with vague memories of a discussion involving us catching Justice after restocking on alcohol – but if we did go I certainly don’t remember it.

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