Trying to describe a dance festival without the lingo for a predominantly live music audience is an interesting task for one reviewer when there are 4 stages full of DJs playing snippets of songs, many of which have already been reviewed by Fasterlouder, -when they were being played by the bands that wrote them. What you get here, is not an analysis of the music, such as you would read in a dedicated dance site such as InTheMix, since their contributors are eminently more qualified to comment on different dance styles and beat definitions. Rather, here you will get a collection of reactions, thoughts and random imagery as they occurred during the day whilst wandering from stage to tent to stage and back again, writing cryptic notes to try to describe what the music was like..

In the Frisk tent, Aston Shuffle had an awesome sound going; like hitting an electric fence with a stick. Later, Feadz seemed to be mixing for attention-deficit dancers; as soon as it was possible to predict the direction of the next beat, (and therefore begin to wonder what was going on elsewhere,) he changed it and drew the stragglers back in again. Of all the DJs, Feadz was the most mesmerising because his distinctive hand-waving, head-waggling dance was silhouetted in black against the colours on the screen behind him.

Despite several attempts at enjoying the Ministry of Sound tent, the only set that was even remotely impressive was The Orb. True, it may have been a case of poor timing, but every other visit to MoS was met with a lot of commercial sounding pap. The Orb, on the other hand, were superb, they had a real drummer on stage, and a real singer, whilst the beats and samples were mixed according to the reactions of the crowd, instead of to a pre-formatted plan. Their music seemed to reflect life in all of its vividity, making no secret of life’s ugliness, but encouraging you to dance through the pain. They have been likened to Pink Floyd in numerous reviews and bios, but it is unclear where the similarities lie, unless it is in the subject matter both bands are willing to address.

The Orb took the tent on a journey through the band’s changing styles over the years, with a little ambient chill, a dollop of dub and a hint of Little Fluffy Clouds, before dipping into some more ambient trance and then bringing the crowd out again, trimming down the odd noises they are known for, until they left us with a straight 4/4 beat ready for Sasha to take over. The contrast between the two was jarring, and highlighted just how far we had adventured with The Orb, that Sasha’s prog trance and breaks could now sound so jangly and pop.

Gods Kitchen stage was going off at each visit, and the clouds reflecting off the mirrored windows of the building that loomed behind it created not only a beautiful backdrop, but a striking contrast between the immediacy of dancing and the distance of the view. At times the beats absorbed all consciousness, and switching between being the most-important-thing-in-the-world to watching the big world reflected in the buildings, and becoming the least-important-thing-in-the-world was entertaining. Kazu Kimura brought something different to the day, (that is, different to what everyone else played all day) with a minimalist tribal beat that had the very alternative looking crowd jumping, stomping and passing the dutchie.

ATB’s two hour set was long enough for people to pop in to all the other stages and have a little dance, get bored and return to the GK stage at least three times. So the crowd was transient, but always jumping. ATB spent a lot of the time celebrating the awesome music he was mixing, which at first looked like he was celebrating himself, but it became clear after a few minutes of watching him, he was really giving kudos to the original artists.

Above and Beyond promised big things, but aside from a Radiohead remix, were somewhat disappointing since they didn’t offer anything particularly cutting edge.

Early on in the day at the Future Stage, Micah Vs Damien John had the grass vibrating with an undeniable bass. That is, the kind of bass beat you simply must move to, and return to, after visiting the other stages to find nothing more compelling. Despite the intermittent rain, a decent sized crowd for so early in the day wriggled and bounced together in front of the stage.

Following on from them, after an easy crossover, was Dirty South who were adept at distracting a reviewer from other things going on around the festival which may also be worth paying attention to. Felix da Housecat also played a set on the Future stage, but in comparison to other options, his set was uninspiring. He did have some very nice graphics to go along with the music though.

Mark Ronson has been lauded as some kind of god-producer with an apparently unrivalled skill for putting sounds together that make people dance. Actually, all he had was a large band to play covers of commercial pop songs and the obligatory Beatles cover, and a shouty American who kept yelling greetings to the city, and demanding that the crowd make some noise. Isn’t that what the music is for? The only time the music stopped at the Future stage all day, was at the faux-set-end when Ronson went off stage to wait to be called back for an encore.

When it was time to choose between the two big names, Kraftwerk trumped the Gorillaz Sound System, being actual people, with actual robots, oh, not to mention being one of history’s most influential bands. (Other publications have given adequate testimony to the shemozzle that was the GSS set, it does not need to be repeated second hand here) Opening with Die Mensch-Maschine, Kraftwerk went on to play, in no particular order, Tour De France, Computerwelt, Autobahn, Das Model, Die Roboter, Musique Non-Stop (Boing Boom Tschak.) Aerodynamik and Radio-Aktivität.

Their four severely suited silhouettes evenly spaced on the stage controlled a few hundred people’s world for 90 minutes. With old fashioned footage of countrysides and trains interspersed with retro computer graphics and stern environmental warnings, they weren’t the usual dance festival headliner, but an excellent choice both from an electronic history and an entertainment perspective. They replaced themselves with robots for the duration of Die Roboter (The Robots) creating a surreal view of robot torsos using computers to create music for people. Returning to the stage in laser suits for the second half of the set in which their heads turned purple and the suits looked like something out of the Matrix, the people seemed to have finally figured out how to dance to it, and started jumping around and cheering until the end, when one by one the band members walked to a spotlight, bowed to the crowd and left the stage.

Finally, a word of congratulations must be given for Mellen Events’ festival management. Having attended a number of festivals on the Esplanade, and in similar outdoor spaces, Global Gathering was easily the smoothest run of them all. There were no queues for anything, not for entry or drinks or toilets. The tents were positioned to minimise the amount of sound bleed between stages. Sometimes the sound cut through in a quiet moment, but mostly the music from the other stages was unnoticeable. Whilst inside the tents, there was almost no sound intrusion from the outside. Sound quality was exceptional, considering the weather and the location, and the security staff were awesome. Often festival security is made up of fascists and fanatics who relish every opportunity to use physical force and bully people, causing a fair amount of agro among the punters.

The security staff at Global Gathering were visible, alert and available to help if needed, but they were content to leave the punters alone to have a good time as long as no one was hurting anyone. It was a welcome change, and completely unexpected considering the number of police and customs officers crawling all over the train station, searching anyone wearing fluoro. This was a more seasoned audience than your usual candy ravers however, and so by not glowing, most punters flew in under the radar, avoiding police intimidation as well.

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