Annie at The Glade
Annie crosses the continent for two more festivals. Summercase in Barcelona and first The Glade in Berkshire.
Is a pattern emerging?
I’m holed up in a wi-fi hotel room on a Sunday night, surrounded with discarded shoes strewn all over the floor. Each with their own story to tell of countless miles trudged over grassy knolls and airport travolators in the past 72 hours! I seem to have become Radio 1’s roving festival reporter. Two weeks after Roskilde I've got two more festivals in two days in two countries: The Glade in Berkshire, now in its third year, and the very first Summercase Festival in Madrid and Barcleona, the stars of each swopping cities to play on alternate nights, like they do at the Reading and V Festivals.
The Glade first came about as a mini-event within Glastonbury and I for one was delighted to discover the massive sounds of breaks crashing and echoing through the trees and woods in an unmarked and unnamed part of the Glastonbury site... That’s what keeps Glasto fresh: the fact that Michael and Emily Eavis allow people to put on their own new and different music. So with the ubiquitous Biff in charge, The Glade has become a festival in its own right, with its own site.
Madness in tranquility
The venue had to be kept secret because of the licence restrictions, and when I arrived there I could finally understand why. It really is in a glade of a huge country estate, rustling with trees and thigh high in bracken in the middle of this memorable English summer. A pastoral water colour painting setting - until the psy-trancers rocked up in acid colours and in full glow-trouser mode, prancing about like modern day morris dancers...
But this was Breaksday, with our own huge tent, and it was pretty full by mid Friday afternoon. Tom Real and Elite Force were real alright and in… full force! They really played a blinder and you always wonder, if DJing at a festival in the very many hours of daylight that there are this time of the year, whether to chill it out a bit or just go full-on with as banging a set as possible. I chatted this through with Pippa from TCR, who was stage managing, and it took all of two seconds to decide to really go for it, English country afternoon or not. Lots of Bomberman, loads of JMekka... all seemed to go well with the crowd. There was a huge line up to follow. Phil Hartnoll had already arrived, Ableton Live in tow, and I look forward to hearing how the breaks just blossomed in this stunning venue.
I did a tour a around the site (flipflops really didn’t cut it, bring back the Birkenstocks!). There were great looking food stalls - not so much lentil soup and cider; more your smoked salmon and Pimms - the alluring Pussy Parlure, the spectacular design of the chill out area with dragonflies and thistledown motifs hanging suspended between trees, huge neon decorated psychedelic mushrooms (what a surprise) springing out of the ground and all would turn into a fairyland at night., but, I had to head off for Barcelona before dusk.
Annie Nightingale at the Summercase Festival
