Thirteen years of GlobalGathering

Image: Global Gathering

This article was originally wrote in July 2013 and has been amended to reflect htis year's festival.

Twelve years ago on a blisteringly hot day in July, Godskitchen announced itself on the festival circuit with a gloriously successful event. It was mainly focused on tents that day, with the trance of the main arena bolstered by a headline turn from Chicane.

The other genres catered for included progressive house, hard dance, drum & bass and straight up house music, and ever since GlobalGathering has been one of the most well-loved and consistently delivering events on the festival season.

I can remember, back in my trance loving days, that the stand-out selector to my ears was someone who was only just finding his feet beyond the underground circuit of his genre, Armin Van Buuren. Who seems to have done alright for himself ever since.

As has the video technology - contrast the glossy video at the end to premiere the launch of this year's festival with the grainy insight into that performance from Chicane below.

There’s less than a month left until this year’s edition kicks off, and like Van Buuren the festival has got much bigger and better. The music policy has since snowballed long beyond the flouro hordes that dominated the 2001 party.

A lot of the main players this years have a bassy tinge to their output, with Chase & Status, Sub Focus (who we've just spoken to), Katy B and The Prodigy dominating the upper echelons of the bill, whilst previous years have seen Kanye West, Moby, Pendulum and Tiesto take centre stage.

The depth of the line-up across the two days is now staggering. Saturday sees the trance heritage continued with a UK debut of New World Punx, Ferry Corsten and Markus Schulz squaring off, with chart topper David Guetta playing his only UK dance festival date in the Hangar.

One day later and you can see Pete Tong and Nic Fanciuilli playing back to back in the Essential Mix arena, or Pretty Lights rocking UKF Live. There's absolutely loads on, we picked five top tips here but really there's too much for us to even contemplate telling you what to do.

Whatever your electronic music taste, Global Gathering surely has something for you to appreciate and the pedigree of putting on spectacular events year on year. 

Tickets are no longer available for this event