Secret Garden Party 2014 Review

Sunshine? Check. Silly costumes? Check. Barely anywhere to camp? Check. Welcome to Secret Garden Party 2014.

We were completely blessed with the weather this year at Secret Garden Party. The blazing temperature saw the lake brimming with sweaty, drunk bodies desperately trying to cool down – but due to the state of the now swamp, BBM’s team adopted the pouring valuable drinking water over your head method instead.

The Secret Garden was packed full to the brim with entertainment, from fairground rides, to clothes/trinket stalls and a huge variety of food and drink trucks, there was so much to see, even before you made the trek up to the Temple of Boom, and The Great Stage.

On our first recce around the festival we popped passed The Living Room and caught a pretty good performance from up and coming band; Coco & The Butterfields, but then it was time to get going to The Temple of Boom.

Noticeable this year was the mammoth amount of people. The festival seemed a hell of a lot more crowded than last year, and if you wanted to get to the front of any stage, then you were sure to risk either being crushed to death, or queuing up early to hold your position. Simply dancing big wasn’t an option. The highlight of the Friday night had to be Gorgon City – as the Dance duo literally rocked the Temple of Boom to epic proportions. You could barely get near the stage if you had shown up to the party late, luckily for us, we’d already been rocking out to Garage legend DJ EZ.

As Gorgon City played their already classic tracks such as ‘Real’ and the epic ‘Ready For Your Love’ featuring MNEK they sent the crowd into a europhic state when the well known bass line dropped.

There was no topping their performance, so then it was time to head to one of BBM’s favourite parts of Secret Garden Party – the tents. The tents is where the silly shit goes down. From hilarious piano accompanied story telling, to winding and grinding to ‘Grease Lightening’ – by the time you reach the tents, you’re going to either be waiting for a tequila slammer, or have already done five sambucas – so you will be open to any suggestion of music – we assure you.

When Secret Saturday dawned, BBM were up and at ‘em early to catch the Dub legend, Mad Professor, who was playing at the now nearly empty Temple of Boom. Playing to a small crowd of people that either hadn’t been to bed, or who hadn’t lost their minds the night before, he played through all his tracks whilst soothing the hangovers of a couple of hundred people and getting them ready for the day ahead. It was then onto the Pagoda Stage to really get into the party mood and feel like you’re at Spring Break.

As the day rolled on we caught Morcheeba who played a flawless set, bringing old classics out of the bag such as ‘The Sea’ and ‘Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day,’ with lead singer Sky Edwards appearing to have stood still in time, not aging one bit.

Next up was an energetic performance from Dub Pistols, who gave the Great Stage Crowd all they got, getting the whole crowd moving uncontrollably with their infectious music.

Later it was time to head over to the Gay tent… A.K.A ET Phone Homo, and we have to say… this was pretty much the best place to be. After a purely awesome set from Frank Music playing an epic selection of RnB and Garage which had the podium full of people taking full advantage of the expertly selected set, we dashed to the Bearded Kitten’s Colo-Silly-Um for a quick rave. Finding it hard to resist the allure of ET Phone Home we headed back later experienced the genius Rap stylings of Feral Is Kinky – bringing her cheeky rap to the stage alongside amazing drag queens performing the most impressive moves. Her mixture of cheeky Dub Pop/Reggae is not to be missed so seriously keep one ear out for this girl! Not to mention her amazing wardrobe – she was rocking an awesome KTZ two-piece and her signature mask hiding her identity at SGP.

True to form Secret Garden Party remains a brilliant festival to catch up and coming artists. You can lose yourself in the wild imagination of the organisers, but with numbers increasing each year, it’s slightly losing its original ethos and festival spirit. Nonetheless you’ll undoubtedly have fun due to the brilliant line ups they manage to pull in.

View the rest of the pics on our facebook page.