the long opening day of Global Gathering is a feast of music and light

Global Gathering 2012

Friday 27th to Saturday 28th July 2012
Long Marston Airfield, nr. Stratford on Avon, Warwickshire., CV37 8LL, England MAP
£105 for weekend, Saturday £65

Daily capacity: 55,000

This was my second visit to Global Gathering having attended for the first time in 2011. My first experience had been a good one with wall to wall sunshine and meeting some friendly people with some great dance music thrown in for good measure. It was now time to see if 2012 could match up to its predecessor.

For those who don't know, Global Gathering is one of the two big dance festivals held each summer in the UK, (The other being Creamfields in August) so ravers from all over the country descended on this old airfield in the middle of Warwickshire to party till they literally can't party any more. Because it only lasts for two nights, its straight in at the deep end here rather than at more conventional festivals where you get a couple of warm up days before the real action starts.

Having had a summer of festival mud baths, I was relieved to see the sun finally come out to play in time for myself and Olly to head north up the M40 from our base in Oxford. Not only was the sun out, it was scorching hot and this got us in a good mood for the weekend ahead.

Having been caught out by the 'no alcohol' on site rule last year, we armed ourselves with cash instead of cans and made our way into the festival which was slightly later than anticipated after hitting heavy traffic on the motorway.

and I bought a lanyard for a wallet busting £8 which was an essential piece of kit for the weekend as it was the only way you could see who was playing where and when. I do wonder how long it is before other major festivals catch onto this and start doing the same to maximise profits.

I also had another motive for this purchase as I quite tragically keep every lanyard from each festival I visit (now 41 and counting) to hang on the back of my bedroom door. I tell myself this is so I can remember everything I've seen (or missed) and reflect back in a few year time when I'm an old man and not running around to music festivals each summer. In reality I've kept the tradition going for so long I'd probably go mad if I came home from a festival without one.

Last year we bounced around the tents trying to catch a little bit of everything we could, whereas this year our approach was to watch full sets of each act, although if you do this it leads to seeing a lot less acts. We first went to the UK Bass Culture tent for a triple header with Jaguar Skills, Zane Lowe, and Andy C.

Jaguar Skills who was up first played to a massive crowd behind his trademark ninja style mask and battled his way through mixing up a string of hits over the last 20 or so years. No genre of music was left unturned with Motorhead, Dead Prez, Prodigy, Pendulum and many more all featuring during his hour on stage, and anyone who can get a tent full of ravers (including most of the bar staff) singing in unison to The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' deserves a round of applause.

Hot on his heels to the decks which were made to look like a giant old 1980's boom box was Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, who predictably played a similar sort of set by mashing up current and old hits and throwing in more samples than a supermarket cheese counter. There was then a 30 minute rest before Andy C, where we had time to grab a drink each.

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that the drinks at Global Gathering are vastly overpriced, a can of 500ml Tuborg was £4.50 and a 440ml can of Gaymers was £4. This hits the wallet even harder when you consider you aren't allowed to take your own alcohol from your car to the campsite, and they then charge £45 per crate in the campsite, which in turn you can't bring into the arena. I didn't even bother looking at the price of any spirit and mixer drink for the fear of having a heart attack.

We headed back into the tent for Andy C aka 'The Executioner' where I bumped into a friend of mine and we decided to watch the set with him and his friends. Despite being three quarters of the way back in the huge tent it's still pretty busy and as Andy C hit into thumping drum and bass the tent bursts into life with each person gazing towards the front in their brightly coloured sunglasses moving as fast as they could to the music.

We then took some time out for a toilet/drink/food/rest break whilst the younger members of the crowd ran to the main stage for Tinie Tempah and then made our way to the Electric tent for Annie Mac. Unfortunately Ms MacManus decided not to play ball with the press and refused anyone from the media coming into take photos of her set. One's head up one's own arse perhaps?

So with that we headed over slightly earlier than anticipated for the star of the late night attractions in the form of Dutch superstar trance DJ Armin Van Buuren. By that point I'd done my traditional festival thing of chatting to strangers as the usual groans from my friends of "Stu just leave him alone" is ignored yet again as I added 54 year old Chris from Bicester to our ranks, plus two friends of ours (Rachel and Lewis) who we've met up with from home.

Chris seemed to have even more energy than the four of us put together, and is great fun when he himself starts chatting to anyone he meets, and the next thing I know I'm having a conversation with a girl called Clare about the Foo Fighters and not paying any attention to the music or laser show that is on in front of me.

Suddenly it was 3am and the show had finished, and after a nightcap drink at my friend's campsite I found myself staggering towards my tent in near daylight and crashed out just before 5am.

review by: Stuart Watson

photos by: Hayley Edwards / Olly Pickett