Just got back today, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did – I was thinking it would be along the lines of V festival, or Leeds/Reading, full of corporate sponsorship and pissed up wankers but there’s actually a really cool vibe to the place. I didn’t see any fighting all weekend and everyone there seemed to get into the spirit; people were sound to each other and mostly cleaned up after themselves. And no sponsorship product placement bullshit (the only ads were for Wateraid/Greenpeace). Compare that to V fest, which had random spinning Nissan Qashqais in the middle of the audience. A few people I chatted to said it got a bit shit about 10 years ago, problems with aggressive security, fights and all the venues closing at 12pm, but now there’s loads of dance music and trippy shit in Block 9 and Shangri La until about 7am and this year they stopped using Mean Fiddler for security (who are horrible cunts) and replaced them with a bunch of hippies who were helpful and sound. It is mind-bendingly big though and I’ve probably walked about 30 miles over the last 4 days!
