It's that time of the year again. Bank Holiday weekend in August. The time of the summer when Ibiza crash lands just outside Liverpool all because of a three-day weekender. We are of course talking about the UK's most sought after dance festival - Creamfields.
With Global Gathering taking a year sabbatical from the festival calendar, Creamfields is now unequivocally the biggest and greatest electronic line up in the isles, boasting huge headline acts over the three-day festival, amalgamating new acts such as David Zowie, all the way through to the veterans like Fatboy Slim, Pete Tong, Tiesto and Paul Van Dyke.
With more festival exclusives than anyone else, whilst impulsively pumping much money into production and expansion, the festival has now firmly cemented itself as the go to premiere electronic-music festival, and will undoubtedly go off with more pyrotechnics and fireworks than a Chinese New Year.
Formerly a one day festival in Winchester, Creamfields was augmented once settled in its new home of Cheshire and follows a similar template to the juggernaut dance festivals of TomorrowLand and EDC. For 2015, Creamfields have introduced a monster new 15,000 capacity tent to reflect this time of change - their biggest yet.
To some, this may be a touch too far, as the commercial and corporate aspect of the genre has now become arguably more important than the music itself. However, though the music has become more popular than anyone could've ever dreamed of, and as the production levels go sky high, so do the performances of the artists - an excellent synergy that the aficionados find very alluring. The nascent festival Friday of Creamfields was originally aimed to allow festival punters to arrive early, relax and set themselves up for the weekend. Now in 2015, the festival has six stages running and booked the former number one DJ in the world Armin Van Buuren as well as the current number one Hardwell for the thousands who now turn up early. Both acts will be spinning sets on other stages throughout the weekend. Elsewhere on the Saturday, fresh with their newly released album is Chemical Brothers, of course headlining one of the two outside venues. Avicii is also on site, as well Annie Mac, Knife Party, Alesso, Laidback Luke, Steve Angello, Gorgon City, trance gods Above and Beyond, as well David Zowie, who recently found his tune 'House Every Weekend' being amplified at all the major arenas, festivals and clubs around the plant. Expect this song to be the most played tune of the weekend.
If that hasn't got the excitement building, there is more to come on the Sunday too, including Afrojack, Tiesto, Nervo, Axwell n Ingrosso, Sander van Doorn, Ferry Corsten, Eric Prydz, Nicky Romero, Duke Dumont, as well as 3 are Legend, a super group consisting of Steve Aoki, Dimiti Vegas and Like Mike, who all will be playing separately too.
With any electronic festival of this magnitude, fingers will be pointed at certain artists using pre-recorded sets, and as the weekend develops, social media will probably help point those criminals out. However, for the 70,000 in attendance, they won't be rumbled, and 2015 looks set to be another classic in the Creamfields archive. Just hope the Liverpudlian weather holds out.
Adam Holden
Official Site - https://www.creamfields.com/
