Over 70,000 festival goers were drawn to Shakespeare’s home town last weekend to witness the UK’s greatest Dance music weekender.
Global Gathering Kicked off on the 24th July at Stratford Upon Avon’s Long Marston Airfield to a surprise break in the relentless rain surrounding it. As the clouds continued to clear, the vast camp sites began to fill with the welcome sight of tents and their excitable owners, making friends with their ‘neighbors’ like it was the first day of school.
Fridays music roared into life across the eight stages, with the Spectrum tent playing host to an awesome set by Magnetik Man ft. Skream and Benga, before the Count (Hervé) and Sinden drew a few thousand more into the crowd. The Legendary Stanton Warriors headlined it, mixing some unusually dirty tracks in with their well loved breakbeats! The Global tent saw Digitalism pave the way for Erol Alkan who stunned several members of our camp into instant love for his bleepy dancy electro tunes. Tiga followed before Pendulum worked the stage with their infamous Drum n Bass tunes getting the whole tent dancing to their own drum.
Friday Night was headlined by the Prodigy on the Main Stage. Breathtaking pyrotechnics heightened the fully charged hour and a half set where the trio delivered favorites including Breathe and Firestarter, before crowd surfing to Warrior Dance!
Walking through the fairground rides and hordes of ‘hardcore’ party girls the various tents blasted out their individual but equally appealing diversity of sound including the Gods Kitchen arena, with the ‘you had to be there’ Boombox, over 16 metres wide and 8 metres high it is in a class of it’s own and certainly went down well with the ‘chemically enhanced’! David Guetta and Paul Van Dyke were two of the heavyweights in the boombox that night, stunning the 15,000 strong army of ravers for a back-to-back 4 hours. Euphoric trance anthems filled the arena and left hundreds lying on the floor at 2am!
After a well planned amount of down time for the knackered multitude, Saturdays stages kicked off around 2, the addition of several new tents including the Tuborg Live Stage were well received by even the most intense ravers and word was ‘Does it Offend You Yeah?’ and ‘The Whip’ were just a couple of the live bands making an impact next to GodsKitchen.
With the new day came 20,000 new music lovers, their energy infectious and fresh faces quite a contrast to the day-old face paint of fridays troopers. Temperatures soared to above 30 and smiles abounded as among the stellar line up were some of the worlds top DJs including Eric Prydz, ATB, Above and Beyond, John Digweed, Carl Cox, Sascha, James Zabiella and Orbital!
I was brought back to memories of last year with my heart racing to some of the most powerful music I’ve experienced. Armin Van Buuren played THREE HOURS to a full capacity tent, soaring female vocals and what felt like hours of synth build up came to a crescendo of sheer ecstasy for the elated sea of people, moving as one to tracks such as ‘unforgivable’, ‘Love you More’ and the amazing ‘In and Out of Love’.
Random Concept presented the best DnB from 2pm till 4am, banners and hundreds of cards reading ‘TUNE’ waved about what seemed like every other song as epic DJs Grooverider and Fabio, Subfocus, High Contrast, Andy C, DJ Marky, Friction, Chase and Status and Hazard all made Saturday one of the greatest festival experiences ever. Again!
Global Gathering has yet again shown why 70,000 people flood to Warwickshire for the best weekend of the year. It is incomparable to the host of alternative festivals you can find in the UK, and at £115 for a weekend you simply can’t miss it next year!
Article & Photography: Richard Blanchfield
