Weather Festival 2016 Was the Most Fun We've Ever Had at an Airport

It's just gone midnight and I'm stood next to a young French bloke who looks like he's enjoying himself a lot. Like really, really enjoying himself. He's throwing an arm up in the air over and over and over. He's occasionally throwing the other arm up too. At points both arms are held triumphantly above his baseball-capped head, fingers reaching towards the gods. My attention's switching between our very happy chappy, a leather jacket clad Seth Troxler banging out sleek and sturdy tech-house, and the massive fucking rocket that's hovering in the distance. Welcome to Weather Festival 2016.

Having beamed over to mainland Europe last year for the event I was well aware that what young Parisians seem to love more than anything—more than sacussion sec, more than cheap bottles of plonk sunk on the banks of the Seine, more than Edith Piaf and David Guetta—is techno. They're gagging for it. Imagine a rowdy crowd in a damp sweatbox somewhere in London or Liverpool or Leeds and multiply the crowd by thousands. Then imagine those thousands of massively up for it revelers going fucking nuts for the eternal thump and thud of a flat 4/4 at eight in the evening. That's what the festival's like from the minute the gates open on Friday till the last stragglers stumble out of Richie Hawtin's set onto the alluringly grim high street in Le Bourget, the comfortingly dismal outer-city semi-suburb that Weather landed in this year. To put it simply, Weather's not a festival for the faint-hearted, and it's all the better for that.

With last year's party taking place amongst the endless greenery of Bois de Vincennes, it was initially a little strange to step onto the vast expanse of concrete and steel that is Le Bourget Exhibition Centre. The thing about life, though, is that you've got to get used to what you've been given, and after a few hours of dipping between sets from the likes of Marquis Hawkes and Henrik Schwarz, we'd acclimatized to the basic brutality of our surroundings, and, well, it sort of seemed to make a strange kind of sense. That first night flew by in a whizz of beer, bass, and wallet-punishingly priced burgers, as all good dance festivals should. We retired early, ready for the following afternoon's action.

Which turned out to be a mistake. Only because, somewhat ironically, weather had cancelled play. The combination of thick fog and industrial action within the city itself meant that there'd been a last minute timetable change. Instead of setting off for the festival at 3pm as planned—hoping to catch Huerco S smashing it on a grimy, gloomy afternoon—we ended up banging beers in a hotel room watching old rave clips. A few hours later an Uber dropped us off at the gates, just in time to catch Onur Ozer keeping things incredibly minimal to an early-evening crowd comprising of 18 year olds in French Wavy Garms and an incredibly fucked guy in a foam Homer Simpson mask. A shiver runs down my spine.

After a rejuvenative pit-stop in the VIP bar—where pretzels and Haribo are free and the drinks overdraft-unfriendly—it was time to catch the Black Madonna doing what the Black Madonna does best: running through huge house, techno, and disco records with aplomb. Ending with "Da Funk" was a populist choice, and one that paid off, with the entire crowd singing along to it's wordless chorus. The Egyptian Lover followed but with an opening one-two of "Planet Rock" and Cybotron's "Clear" I remembered that it was 2016 and I didn't ever need to hear "Planet Rock" ever again, so instead we caught Ron Morelli and Low Jack playing a fairly avant-garde set before careering back into VIP for another sweaty palmful of pretzels.

The joy of the contemporary dance festival experience is that, essentially, it's like going to an all you can eat buffet. One of the ones that does everything. You want some lemon chicken/Apollonia? You've got it. Craving sag aloo/Margaret Dygas? Fill your boots. Fancy a generous helping of carbonara/Ben Klock? Make yourself sick on it. You're free to dip in and out at will, to craft a narrative that works best for you. So that's how the rest of Saturday was spent—nibbling on all the wholesome techno that was on offer. And eating real hot dogs too.

Rising on Sunday with a stomach full of rapidly decomposing mechanically recovered meat still swirling around, and stray pretzels littering the bed, there was just enough time for a sad and solemn shower before zipping back down the runway to the festival site for one final blow out. Feeling slightly woozy—maybe it was all the sweets we'd eaten between swigs of beer that must have been brewed with gold—the day passed by in a pleasantly low-key manner. Villalobos and Zip were Villalobos and Zip, the Hessle Audio crew did the Hessle Audio thing, and Richie Hawtin was, well, Richie Hawtin. These are all good things, by the way, and the crowd seemed to have a lot more energy than we did.

The French, it seems, still love techno, and we're still very fond of Weather. See you on the runway next year.

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