Out of all the dance events hitching a ride on the increasingly competitive and over-burdened festival bandwagon, Sheffield's favourite fluorescent superclub is the one offering fewest concessions to yer hardened festival punter. No novelty afternoon acts (unless you count Judge Jules), no audience-friendly live shows (apart from the football), and, crucially, no crusty festival veterans. For all the festival hyperbole, the All-Night Dance Festival is nothing more than a cunning vehicle for sneaking a rave in by the back door, so it's no coincidence that the Gatecrasher event is the one that can truly be said to be carrying on that spirit.
The irony is that its identity as a 21st-century version of yer classic early-'90s rave proves to be something of a turn-off to many, rather than becoming something to celebrate. Even the club themselves balk at the comparison. Demonised by both the dance and indie press, the adrenaline-triggering percussive thump of trance and hard house is becoming increasingly ghetto-ised. 'Drugged-up music for drugged-up people', the cynics sneer into their real ale, before debating the finer points of deep house or the symbolic syntax in Thom Yorke's lost lyrics. They are missing the point entirely.
An event like Gatecrasher isn't about sitting in, smoking yourself into a stupor and philosophising over the finer points of drum programming. It's about getting dressed up like a loon, discarding the shackles of the nine-to-five existence and throwing yourself around to very loud and very stupid music. So, when Gatecrasher resident SCOTT BOND throws out an afternoon set of pumped-up, head-banging hard trance, the tent is heaving with Day-Glo space cadets, the messy, primitive return to childhood of hardcore combined with the sassy, dressed-up energy of club culture to riotous effect. Dummies are interchanged, hair is died, faces are painted. Everybody really has a lot of fun. JAMES LAVELLE plays his chin-stroking trip-hop to an empty tent.
It's all about context, you see. You hear Judge Jules on the radio driving to the pub, you'll probably sit there thinking, "What's this shit?" You listen to JUDGE JULES on a blazing summer's day driving into the site he's broadcasting from, the surrounding cars filled to bursting with gyrating, beeping, E'd up ravers, and it sounds like the perfect soundtrack. Similarly, as the final seconds of the England game tick away, and the DJ on the Radio 1 Outdoor Stage pumps out the opening bars of Darude's hard house anthem 'Sandstorm', the sun setting, lasers sweeping over the site, you can't help but get caught up in the party.
And this, perhaps, is the most important thing. All the wizened old crones going on about the summer of '88 are as out of date and irrelevant as old Sex Pistols fans moaning that Nirvana weren't genuine in the early-'90s. Time has moved on, and for the three lads, arms held aloft in pure, irony-free adulation during PAUL OAKENFOLD's set, now is all that matters. That's not to say that it's all cheese, either. The house-flavoured Bed Arena is packed to the rafters for most of the day, as the likes of ROGER SANCHEZ and CASSIUS prove that house music is still as vibrant and pertinent as its harder counterparts, while GOLDIE's pumped-up jungle proves an equal hit in the Metalheadz Arena. It's all in the beats, you see. 'One Nation Under A Groove' was the slogan all those years ago; it's nice to know that some things don't change.
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