Gottwood 2018: Intricate, Intimate, Idyllic

Festivals

Kieran Mallon

14 Jun 2018

The 5,000 cap forest party proves once again that there's more to life than mega festivals

If you cross the border into Wales and just keep driving, eventually you'll hit an island called Anglesey. Cross over into Anglesey and keep driving some more; once you've driven as far into rural Wales as you possibly can, just before you plunge off a cliff into the Irish Sea, you'll find Gottwood. We recommend that you stop here.

Celebrating its ninth year, Gottwood is a delightfully cosy festival in an absolutely stunning part of the world. From the campsite you'll be able to see miles of rolling hills in one direction and the sea in the other - perfect landscapes to sit and discuss at 5am after a night of partying in the wilderness.

In terms of stages, there were 10 - which is quite a lot for a 5,000 capacity festival, but it meant that, like the site itself, almost every stage was an intimate affair. Ricky's Disco offered a sheltered euphoric dancefloor, The Mother Owl, a 30ft handmade wooden structure provided floaty beats with your street food, and The Lawn provided an idyllic outdoor space by the iconic lake to listen to sun-drenched groove. With numerous options at your disposal, the musical offerings were always varied - the only time size became a problem was when one of the world's elite DJs took to the decks.

As expected, Ben UFO's Saturday set at the Trigon Stage was the busiest of the weekend, but even so, if you really wanted to catch him, you would have been able to. You might not have had a tremendous amount of room to throw your wild shapes, but the overcrowding was far from a night-ruiner (or worse, dangerous).

A tough thing to review at any festival is the crowd, obviously you're not going to speak to everyone (even if the festival is comparably tiny) but we can confidently say that the crowd at Gottwood was one of the best we've ever seen. That is to say: everyone was up for a good time and nobody was a dickhead. Even security, frequently a thorn in the side of your good time, were extremely friendly. They had a presence on site that was such that you didn't see them until they were needed and at that point they were deployed quickly and efficiently.

The best set of the weekend undoubtedly went to Bradley Zero b2b Bufiman on the Curve Stage. A four-hour afternoon set to a dazed but lively Sunday crowd, grooving in the shade to a breathtakingly elusive back-to-back set. Chopping and gliding between breaks, techno, and an extremely memorable didgeridoo track, very little of the music played into the evening would fall under traditional genre tags - exactly what folks have come to expect from Zero.

Other artists across the weekend that delivered stunning sets included Zip, Maxxi Soundsystem, Axel Boman, Craig Richards, Palms Trax, Arran O'Neill, Move D, and an absolutely astonishing closing set from Hunee. 

The music is arguably the most significant part of any festival, but even if you get the music right, the festival experience relies on so much more. Thankfully, after nine years on the job, you can tell that Gottwood appreciate this - it showed in the level of detail and care on display across the board.

From camp to stage, beats to booze, Gottwood looked after its patrons from the moment they stepped through the gates to the moment they left, and if you're worried about the North Wales weather - we didn't see a single cloud for the whole weekend.