Festivals

Once upon a time, festivals were the preserve of the hardcore pop obsessive. The whole process of booking tickets, arranging travel to the middle of nowhere and camping in a field like a filthy vagrant required a level of organisation beyond the will of the average ‘Chart Show’ viewer.

But what a difference 20 years and a cultural sea change makes. These days everyone goes to at least one festival a year, whether they want to or not. There are festivals for every type of fan of every type of music. And the audience demographic has changed so much that it’s surprising easyJet hasn’t started VIP helicopter services to the more popular ones.

One of our favourites – and we’re not just saying this because we’re sponsoring it – is Get Loaded In The Park. This year, the likes of Röyksopp, Pendulum and Felix da Housecat will be lighting up Clapham Common with their sonic magic. But the real coup is a headline appearance from Orbital, who are celebrating their twentieth anniversary with a handful of shows – Get Loaded being a London festival exclusive. Feature continues

Since they’re coming out of retirement for the occasion, the Hartnoll brothers are keen not to discourage the faithful. But they’re pushing the boat out artistically. They’ve even decided to update their bleep-making hardware for the first time ever.

‘We’re changing the brain, if you like,’ laughs demi-Orbital Phil Hartnoll, brother of fellow Orbital Paul. ‘Although I’m not sure why we decided to do it. Seemed like a good idea at the time! It should be fun, though – it’s really, really exciting for us. It’s definitely nice to have a challenge – we are tweaking and updating and fiddling about with the old Orbital favourites. There’s little bits and bobs that we’re trying to squeeze into the set right now – little anomalies that are on records and things that we’re never live done before. That’s why we’re here, fiddling away in a Worthing warehouse right now.’

Orbital are practically synonymous with the modern festival vibe, partially because they were instrumental in creating it. Back in the day, repetitive beats and the endless nights that go with them were seen as festival anathema – only real, larger-than-life rock stars could command herds of such magnitude, or so the logic ran. A couple of nerds in combat trousers just wouldn’t cut the mustard.

But Orbital’s now-legendary headliner on the second stage at Glastonbury in 1994 was a watershed moment that opened the floodgates for dance music to gush ceaselessly into festival-land. ‘The incredible response we got blew us away,’ recalls Hartnoll.

‘Especially as we slipped in the back door with that one. It was a bit of a blag – Leftfield or someone like that was due to play and they pulled out. We heard about that on the grapevine and so we went to Björk, who was playing before us, and cleared it with her first, then went to Glastonbury and went “Go on, Björk said it was all right,” and they went “Oh… er… oh… all right then.” But that really worked well for us, and it did open their eyes – “Oh, it is popular, and two people can carry it off, pushing buttons and twiddling knobs.”’

As well as ushering in a new dawn of bleeps, dance music brought its attendant dusk-to-dawn party lifestyle to the festival scene. In olden days, fans would spend the whole day drinking booze and watching their favourite bands before retiring to their tents to sleep, or perhaps to torture their neighbours with a barely coherent singalong around a stinging bonfire of laminated cardboard cups. Now, though, the real action doesn’t get underway until the headliners are safely tucked up in their Winnebagos, as thronging thousands wander sites searching for extra-curricular activities.

Of course, this is where Get Loaded has a massive advantage over other festivals. If you’re old school, it’s nearer your actual bed. But if you’re not sleepy, it’s in the middle of a city offering endless late-night delights. Indeed, this is one of the things that attracted Orbital in the first place.

‘Get Loaded is quite a fresh one,’ says Hartnoll. ‘And it’s right in the middle of London. It just seems like a rebellious, fun idea – slap-bang there in Clapham. It’s a bit like the old free parties isn’t it? Although it’s not free – it’d be wonderful if it was! But
I like the vibe, and I like what they’re trying to do with it.’

Orbital’s love of outdoor parties stretches back to the M25 raves that gave the duo their name – so it’s high praise indeed that they’d make the comparison. This is only the second time Orbital have played a festival in the capital; the first being in the halcyon days of the early-’90s free-party scene, before it was put to bed by jittery councils and draconian legislation.

‘We played a free festival, down in Peckham, early on in our career. It was quite a punky sort of occasion, and that was wonderful. But the government soon put a stop to that, didn’t they? Can’t be having that! That was round the time they were running around bashing everyone up for having fun in fields and not harming anyone.

‘I actually saw a really interesting seminar, by the guy who was in charge of the Metropolitan Police while they were going around literally bashing people up on the M25. He retired and wrote a book about how completely wrong what he was doing was, and how he hated it. This seminar by him was just unbelievable – all the money that was spent on police time and police resources to stop free parties that generally came to no harm, because there was no alcohol involved. It was all ecstasy and people loving each other. There was hardly any trouble from the parties. And this was the guy who was in charge of going around raver-bashing!’

With the authority-challenging rave scene a thing of the past, festivals are a fine way for us to get together in large numbers, listen to loud music and talk gibberish. But there’s more to them than that. Festivals are brilliant for moments of unfathomable serendipity – like running into lost friends in a mudpool just after your mobile’s died, or finding a new favourite band by accident when you’re too tired and emotional to move from the floor of a tent. Orbital, naturally, are well versed in such moments of cosmic alignment.

‘We were playing a festival in the gardens of Edinburgh Castle,’ recalls Hartnoll. ‘It was the same time the Tattoo was in town, and we were playing a mix of a song called “Style”, which had bagpipes in and was a favourite moment of ours. We couldn’t have timed it better – we brought in the bagpipes, and suddenly we had the piper up the top of the castle at the Tattoo playing his bagpipes, and it all went crazy! And then all the fireworks from the Tattoo kicked off, going off all around us! It looked like we’d planned it. It was amazing! But it would have all gone wrong if we’d tried to time it deliberately.’

Get Loaded in the Park is on Clapham Common on Sun Aug 30. For more information, including the line-up and tickets, visit www.getloadedinthepark.com.