Glade Festival's Grass Looks Greener Than Glastonbury (16-18 July)

Nick Ladd from Glastonbury Festival's first ever spin-off event The Glade chatted to Skrufff this week and revealed that they're aiming to create an event that captures 'the true festival spirit of Glasto '72'. The 5,500 capacity outdoor weekender features seven stages and a massive array of DJs and performers though unlike Glastonbury will be entirely dominated by dance music.

"Glastonbury started out as a progressive cutting edge music festival, featuring psychedelic rock and it's obviously grown to become this creative melting pot of every single genre of music and performance and art," said Nick.

"But our generation has different music; dance music, which it's had it for quite a while but people still need a showcase, a festival that reflects this. When we planned the event we thought there are loads of people in England who like dance music and loads of people who are really into festivals, yet there isn't a proper dance music festival at the moment. And what I mean by 'proper' is a three day event as opposed to an overnight rave featuring load of tents with sound systems."

As well as avoiding Glastonbury's pop/ rock musical mix , the Glade will also be a genuinely all night affair with several tents remaining open for the entire 3 days.

"The outdoor stage finishes at midnight each night because it's an outdoor rig, but all the other tents, such as the main dance tent where the likes of Timo Maas and Aphex Twin are playing, goes on until 4am each night, as does the breakbeat tent, the Sancho Panza tent and the Cabaret tent," said Nick.

"Then we've got the Healing and Chill-out areas and the Liquid stage running for 24 hours, with Youth doing a live dub set on Saturday night for example and more psy-trance."

"We already have very strong connections as promoters with both the breakbeat and psychedelic trance scenes, both of which are fantastic genres of music though neither has really broken through into the big time," he continued.

"Two of the partners have been putting on psychedelic trance festivals all over the world, from solar Eclipse parties in Africa and Mexico and a festival called Origin in South Africa, and we've always found psychedelic trance to be an interesting genre," he said.

"It has quite a lot of baggage attached and people have preconceptions about it, though essentially it attracts quite a hippy scene that's similar to the early days at Glastonbury. There are quite a lot of real characters involved who follow hippy ethics and ideas and live their lives like that too," said Nick.

In keeping with the free party ethos that's at the root of the event, he refused to confirm the Glade's location beyond confirming it's somewhere 'south of Reading'.

"It's inside an amazing 2,000 acre estate surrounded by woodlands, there's a lake, it' s a beautiful greenfield site. One thing that we have to be clear about though is that it's going to be impossible to get into the festival without buying a ticket," Nick stressed.

Tickets cost just £68.50 (plus booking fee) though must be purchased in advance ( no day tickets are available either and media reports suggest it's close to selling out).
Tags

• Glade Festival
• Glastonbury