Celebrating its 20th year, the festival run by the famed Liverpool club night returns to capture the breadth of commercial-leaning dance music, from 90s trance stars to modern EDM giants.
Ex-professional football player Hannah Wants delivers pumping house on a Friday afternoon, and by the time of Green Velvet’s house and techno-stuffed set, the whole festival is bouncing harder than most manage at 4am. There’s no gradual build up to ease you in, just an on switch and an off switch; beats from breakfast until bedtime. This all-or-nothing approach seems to shed inhibitions, and creates a fiery feeling of hedonism from the audience who throw themselves into the party with infectious aplomb.
The Chainsmokers’ headline set is as subtle as an unsolicited nude pic. They sound like a malfunctioning algorithm, all genres colliding together in an attempt to be all things at once. Thankfully, due to the huge number of stages spanning drum’n’bass to house, it means there are other options than listening to something that sounds like the soundtrack to a frat boy party where you’d be afraid to drink the communal punch. Such as Carl Cox, who plays a pristinely executed and ever-building set of techno that demonstrates why he’s had such longevity as a DJ.
Annie Mac’s pop-heavy Saturday set makes perfect use of the rare blast of sunshine, while the Black Madonna also knows how to slip in a stonking piece of pop music – Pump Up the Jam – into her supremely crafted set. 4/4 beats are very much the festival’s time signature but there are shifts in rhythm with Giggs’s bass-booming rap set and a triumphant, twerk-heavy performance from UK rapper Stefflon Don.
Eric Prydz closes the festival, avoiding big hitters such as his own Call on Me in favour of a surging deep house set, moving the crowd with tempo shifts rather than crowdpleasers – like DJ Sammy’s ultra-cheesy cover of Heaven, which the nearby Tiesto can be heard playing. Prydz is further elevated by a spectacular light show: lasers trigger and erupt in bursts to create an immersive sensory overload that, when matched with a huge beat drop, results in euphoric pandemonium. Even after the music ends, ravers can be found dancing to the hardcore sounds blasting from the waltzers, desperately clinging on to the final beats of the party before normality beckons. But the off switch is finally hit.