Glade Festival '08

[teknorich]

First time I ever saw Mills play, and what a total let down. Loads of mixing errors, but that was to be expected. The Liquid Room mix is full of mistakes, but has such a raw, exciting atmosphere to it that it doesn't matter. Sadly, excitement is exactly what this set lacked. He was frankly boring. Every time he picked it up, and got the crowd into it, he then followed with a ten minute "clever" section - dropping the bass out totally, leaving drum rolls running for 5 full mins (thus killing all adrenalin rushes etc) and noodling around. He got worse as the set went on, and I was literally just stood still by the end, waiting for him to stop mucking about and just put the damned beat back in. Then, to cap it alll off, he totally messed up the VERY LAST TRACK of his two hour mix. Had to re-start it about three times, cos it kept going off and leaving us stood in silence. Admittedly, that might have been techincal issue and beyond his control, but the fact that he kept taking out the beat (surely the most important thing to keep going?!) and leaving us stood, bored, whilst he messed around with the tracks, was a real joke. Not at all impressed, and won't be seeing him again.

Claude Von Stroke was never gonna be Techno, but played a tougher set than I expected, and was good enough. I only caught the last 30 mins of Dubfire, but he was great!! Tougher than I had anticipated, though not Techno as such. More hard edged minimal, but some great basslines in there, and good mixing too. Sims/Surgeon were good, if a little slow?

My set of the whole festival was CJ Bolland. I didn't know what to expewct, but he just played relentless, rough, dark techno all the way through, really pounding the crowd. The room was jam packed, and absolutely rocking! Definitely gonna be downing some of his mixes, was well impressed.

Don't think I'll be going to Glade again though. Pity to say it, but the volume limits have killed it off. I was stodd in the middle of the tent, and could easily talk to a mate without shouting, whilst Sims was playing. This is not right... It was so quiet that the music lost all it's punchiness and just sounded flat and empty. Such a pity to hear what was clearly a good set, but just not be able to feel it properly because it was so pathetically quiet. They have Funktion One soundsystems, but I can still chat at normal volumes inside the tent?!? Something is not right there... The general opinion of my mates, and a few people we over heard was that the music was good, but you still just didn't really get into it, mainly cos the vibe wasn't there due to it being so quiet. Unless they have an official press release to say that the volume will be louder next year then I'm not going again.