Look everyone, summer's here. The streets smell of tar and bin juice! Your back is sweaty! Everybody's eating lunch in the car-park! Modjo's "Lady" is playing on repeat! And how else do you know summer is here? Well, because you're about to go to lots of festivals, aren't you? You lucky sod.Festival Season—unlike Hunting Season or Ski Seasons, which were cynically cooked up by capitalists to sell rifles and raclette respectively—is the most important time of the year. Those special few months when we set aside our differences and commune over class A drugs, trays of cheesy chips, and the distant rattle of Joy Orbison sets we're presumably missing. The working week might continue to drizzle on monotonously, but who gives a flying Floating Points? Come Friday, you'll be watching that Easyjet check-in confirmation slide out the office printer, your mind frenzied with dreams of ancient forts and swimming shorts, the taste of that first airport pint merely moments away from your excitable gut.
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It used to be that festivals were for rock bands. This was back in the days of "real music" when musicians like Van Morrison and Acker Bilk played actual instruments, instead of just pressing play like modern "DJs". Sadly, those days are over and now electronic music festivals make up a significant portion of the market, with selectors even coming to dominate the bills of many so-called traditional festivals. Typical of a music industry that seemingly values infinite quantity over quality, there are more of these wonderful events every year, creating a Festival Season with more to choose from than ever before. And you—you with your fun lovin' spirit and massive disposable income—will be going to all of them, won't you? I can see you now, pounding clouds of dust into the air during your third Fatima Yamaha set of that month, the wild Sunday 3AM madness in your eyes as you try not to doze off in the half an hour before Robert Hood starts.In anticipation of this, and the other addled-adventures you are going to have, let's sit for a while and consider: Every Type of Dance Music Festival You'll Go To This Summer. Yes? Okay then.What luck: you don't have to leave the country for this festival, in fact, you don't even have to leave the city! That's right, the huge park you've been going to once a summer since you moved here—for a dismal afternoon of hummus, blackcurrant cider, and desultory chat about which Buzzfeeder writer makes you laugh the most—will now cost you and your mates £50 a head to get inside. Wicked!Once you've used all your battery in the queue and finally made it inside, you'll be greeted by a karaoke taco van, a waltzer and DJ sets by every member of Hot Chip scattered across the weekend. The locality will mean that on the second day you get complacent and end up spending your entire day "pre-drinking" at your flat, arriving just in time to catch the end of a headlining Flying Lotus set—a set that is being performed without amplification, in order to avoid noise complaints from the park's surrounding neighbours.
The Two-Day, Inner-City, Piss-up in a Park One
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The "Truly Unbelievable Location" One
The "This is the Next Croatia, Mate" One
The "Relentlessly Innovative" Headsy European One
The Overproduced, Pyrotechnic, Carl Cox DJing Aboard a Fully Operational Animatronic Turtle One
The Boutique "Best Kept Secret" One
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The Big, Muddy, "Let's Drink 18,000 Pints and Watch Fatboy Slim" One
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