Field Day 2025, a review
Field Day wasn’t exempt from any of the Bank Holiday uncertainty. In fact, it took the brunt of it.
Following the revelation that Superstruct, the festival’s owners who owned and operated over 80 music festivals in Europe and Australia, including Cross the Tracks, was a subsidiary of KKR, there were calls to boycott the festival.
Despite an attempt to address the limited involvement in the matter, multiple artists pulled out of the lineup days before, leaving no time to replace them.
To fill the gaps, the DJs throughout the day played extended sets. This, for a track selector, wasn’t the worst outcome.
Starting on the back foot like this made it hard to imagine a comeback.
But they managed it.
We rocked up at around 2 pm. On other days, we’d struggled to get around the park at this point; today, there wasn’t a soul.
Was it worrying? Slightly.
It also felt slightly dystopian as we trudged across a field with thumping music, which otherwise suggested an abandoned festival arena.
There was a bit of life in the tents. It was like the scene in Pinocchio where Pleasure Island was wrecked and deserted, with just Pinocchio playing pool in a dimly lit Number 8 ball building. Y’know… No? Well, it was exactly like that. Trust.
As we contemplated the lacklustre beginning to the day over a cold pint of premium turbo lager (it had caffeine in it, but I’m not 100% sure it was called that), we watched the 3 pm Records sweep up the punters as they walked in like slugs (or me) to beer.
From four awkward dancers to a full tent, people gleefully jumped around to undisputed floor fillers.
It was clear that that day, there was no agenda anymore.
There weren’t enough artists to make you rush around the park for. You had the opportunity to float around like a crisp packet on a still summer’s day.
Yes, maybe your favourite act dropped out, but then you had no pressure.
And weirdly, this worked for the festival.
You’ve experienced it before.
A day with your friends, where, on paper, everything had gone to shit.
So you had to make your own fun. You could try new things. You could give the up-and-coming artists more than a listen. You could give them your attention and let yourself dance with them without the nagging feeling in the back of your head that you should be doing something else.
For me, that was Big Reg.
We’d spotted the name on the app before we went and gave his Instagram a quick browse to see what we could expect.
Never in one million years did I imagine we’d find what we did.
A crisp, flawless use of samples from the legendary rugby league commentary video: ‘A CAN’T SPAYK’.
He then mixed it into his vinyl-only set. My day was made.
Jayda G, Bubblelove, and Folamour each delivered expertly curated summer festival sets with plenty of bops, like a meal so good your head started dancing.
Skream & Benga had a laugh on stage while diving deep back into their dubstep roots.
Jungle drew one of the biggest crowds to one of the smallest stages. I’d seen a DJ set from them before and had told nearly everyone I’d seen since that it wasn’t worth it. Now? I’ve changed my mind.
The energy kept running like a smooth engine. Banger after banger, ‘ayyy’ after ‘ayyyyyyy’, it was a party over at the Bugged Out stage.
We still had enough time to skip over to Peggy Gou as she closed out the festival.
Like Jungle, she nailed it despite having a reputation for going way beyond her production styles during DJ sets.
She finished with Freed From Desire, proving that it wasn’t just the crowd taking it easy that day. The relaxed attitude flowed throughout the festival, making the most of the situation.
For a festival that we considered not attending, it was a fun day where we could discover and support new DJs and collectives.