Essential Festival - Brighton
Just outside of Brighton at Stanmer Park and had LOTS of dj's from allsorts of genres and various other entertainment things...
26 Jul 2000
Essential Festival absolutely rocked - held just outside of Brighton at Stanmer Park and had LOTS of dj's from allsorts of genres and various other entertainment things...
A lot like the Gathering really but on a much larger scale - for those who want a better look, try http://www.essentialfestival.com ... I dont know if it has been updated yet, couldnt take my camera in so i borrowed a friend's, haven't developed them either so who knows what i got!
Anyway...there were six tents:
'NME stage' was all live acts including Coldcut, Laurent Garnier, Ritchie Hawtin, and Herbaliser... 'Big Beat Boutique' included Fatboy Slim (of course), Les Rhythmes Digitales, Luke Slater, James Lavelle and Freq Nasty...
'Legends Arena' had the likes of Grooverider, Fabio, Hype, Randall, Mickey Finn, Ed Rush, Andy C, Bad Company, Doc
Scott, Storm and Bailey... (!!!!! Guess where i was??)
'Pussycat Club' had...well, the name gives it away really! cheesy house stuff...sadly, also the biggest soundsystem, guys with the BIGGEST moves and girls with the biggest heels!
'World Dance Arena' had DJ Rap, CJ Bolland, Kenny Ken, Kosheen, Ray Keith, Bryan Gee and Nicky Blackmarket...
'Experiments stage' included Vadim, Dave Tipper, Cakeboy, Subtropic and Luke Vibert....
so, as you can see i had a fair bit of missioning around to do! The thing about this festival is, that all these guys play in Brighton regularly so it's more like a day out for everybody rather than a "i've got to see all these dj's" sort of affair...
Security was extremely tight, alcohol was sold too which made everything look real grotty real quick and of course the weather was lovely...didn't matter where you were because all you could hear was the banging cheese that was coming out of that one elusive tent!
Some of my highlights were:
DJ Rap!!! This woman's amazing and she's got a huge following...I watched a jam packed tent applause her SO loudly at the end and constantly plead for an encore - not to sound sexist but for a female she seems to have done fantastically well in the drum n bass 'scene'...
Storm playing Kosheen's 'Hide You'
Storm! (don't need a reason really)
Kosheen playing live!!
Les Rhythmes Digitales....crazy french electro band stuff...interesting....
about 6000 people packing in a tent to see Fatboy Slim's closing set...
Hearing 'Champion Sound remix' on a BIIIIG soundsystem...
CJ Bolland doing a drum n bass set!!! crazy, lots of Renegade Hardware and DJ Reality coming through and mc-faceoffs at the same time!
Seeing thousands of pairs of hands-in-the-air for Judge Jules' set (don't ask me why I was in that tent!)...
Dancing to Tall Paul! (once again, Don't ask me why I was in that tent!)
Cakeboy...crazy!
Randall...as always!
Laurent Garnier live - lots of 303 squelchy stuff...
Freq Nasty playing Josh Wink's "Higher State of Consciousness" and then mixing it into Joey Beltram's "Energy Flash" - watching crowd go mental...
Walking back to Brighton Town centre at 1am along a major motorway that was closed off entirely for this festival!
Plastic beer bottles!...yes yes i know it's a silly thing to say...
The crowds! soooooooo many people everywhere and still you couldn't get lost at all.
I wish I could have gone to the 'Roots day' but I couldn't afford to :-( The only highlight however, would have been James Brown (!!!).
Oh well...I hope you've all enjoyed my little report...I don't know if I'll be going to any more outdoor festivals while i'm over here - missed Glastonbury so who knows?
Take Care, look after yourselves...
