The Orb light up Glade Festival

United Kingdom | | 22 July 2008

After the knee deep floods of last year, Glade was in desperate need of some divine intervention to help keep the festival afloat, and slower than usual ticket sales meant some changes needed to be made to the layout to compensate.

But this didn’t stop it from being one of the most satisfying dance weekends of the festival season so far and a far cry from the emergency conditions of 2007.

With an adjacent tent to tent battle on Friday night between Pendulum and Plump DJs, and a rammed line-up right the way through all the tents on the Saturday night, the only issue was trying to work out when you were actually going to find time to get any sleep.

But with much of the camping area so close to the stages, for all those who forgot to bring ear plugs this was never going to be an option anyway.

In true spirit of Glade, the music provided more than enough energy to see the crowd through to the Sunday night, when the licensing hours of the festival forced an early night on most festival goers.

And with the best of the weather arriving on Sunday, most were happy that after a frenetic couple of days the beaming sunshine provided the perfect opportunity to wind down and make the most of the woodland scenery and a soundtrack provided by the likes of Quiet Village and Red Snapper.

But it was The Orb who closed the festival in style, sending their sci-fi soundwaves out of the Glade tent, sailing on a sea of dub basslines and rude boy rhythms.

With the festival reducing its capacity for this year, perhaps its success will see number go back up for 2008?

• Get VF Festival Alerts Direct to Your Desktop