Creamfields 2013 Review

Image: Katy Davies

The Summer for many ends on the August Bank Holiday. The final fling for summer, it’s a three day bonanza of party. And it doesn’t get much better than at Creamfields, an electronic orgasm of sound that closes off the summer, and despite only being able to make the Saturday this year, one we were determined to live to the max.

We arrived at about 3pm, completely devoid of issues getting to the site and managed to get dropped off right at the entrance with little traffic, the whole thing well organised. A short queue later and we were on site, ready to get stuck into some ciders (still clinging onto the summer) as well as a few Jaeger bombs – no messing about there.
 
With the weather holding out we headed to the South Stage where Albin Myers was warming up the crowd up nicely for Nicky Romero, someone we were extremely excited in seeing. About 6pm Nicky came on - by this time the crowd at the South Stage had grown much bigger and everyone was getting well involved in the festival spirit of things.

The visuals really enhanced proceedings, and this was clearly an area for which Creamfields had stepped up for this year. Romero’s own track ‘Toulouse’ seemed to go down really well with the crowd and everyone was dancing along, loving the atmosphere and elation he was creating. The atmosphere as that good we decided to stay to catch Avicii (a quick detour to catch the impressive Idirs Elba in the Toolroom tent notwithstanding).
 
Avicii’s set was as typically crowd pleasing, the obligatory ‘Levels’ going down really well before closing out with his other huge omnipresent monster, ‘Wake me Up’. Allayed to the inimitable vocals of Aloe Bacc belting out of the speakers was a huge fireworks display, providing a jaw-dropping spectacle which really took us aback. It felt like it really would be hard to better this.

Our next few moves involved dipping in and out of a couple of tents, catching a little of Duke Dumont in the Annie Mac tent, Hot Since 82 in Pete Tong presents before settling on the place we enjoyed the most, the Size Matters tent. We fell headlong into the set of liable head Steve Angello, who balanced his speaker crushing tracks with his charismatic chatter. He may tell all his audiences they are his favourite, but that didn’t stop us believing every word when he uttered that Creamfields was his favourite place to play.

The eyelash fluttering continued with the music, dropping a bevy of anthems which included the still amazing ‘Don’t you worry Child’ by his much missed group Swedish House Mafia and Sebastian Ingrosso and Tommy Trash’s ‘Reload’, which despite being played by plenty of other DJs during the course of the day sounded better via Angello, and certainly was our track of the day. John Martin's vocals, on both records, certainly encapsulated the festival for us.

Overall Creamfields proved to be really magical, clearly influenced by huge festivals such as Tomorrowland in stepping up the experience and putting it that little bit further ahead of other places. We’ve been a few times before but 2013 was certainly a step up, we’re just gutted we couldn’t have spent the whole weekend there.