It’s that time again! Festival season! When all of you – yes, you young people, with your shotta bags and perfect skin – cash in mummy and daddy’s money, or whatever you saved up all winter from your weekend jobs to buy a £200 festival ticket so that you can take ketamine and roll around in some mud while Clean Bandit or whomever shouts in the rain. Good times. Or maybe you’ve already done it – it is August, after all – and now you’re at home, weeping serotonin-depleted tears and picking gnarly scabs from off your knee.
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All of which is to say: festivals exist and people in the UK like them – possibly even more than in other countries. We gave birth to Kate Moss who took it upon herself to pioneer ‘festival chic,’ for god’s sake. We have been the home of Glastonbury for nearly 50 years. We basically invented getting ‘on it’. Festival culture is nothing without us, or at least without Liam Gallagher in a parka with his hands clasped behind his back, whining “because maybaaaaay” into the mic.But not all festivals are created equal. And not everybody who attends each of them are one and the same. So because we like putting things and people into neat, digestible categories, here’s what your favourite UK music festival says about you. Tag yourself.
LATITUDE
BESTIVAL
WIRELESS
SHAMBALA
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BRITISH SUMMERTIME AT HYDE PARK
WILDERNESS
RiZE (FKA V FESTIVAL)
READING AND LEEDS
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Man, I don’t even know how to begin this. The one and only time I attended Boomtown, I saw someone sat on the floor by a stage that hadn’t opened yet, smoking what definitely looked like crack cocaine at lunchtime on a sunny day. Later that weekend, a man I didn’t know handed me and my friend his baby so he could go pick up again. He was gone for 45 minutes. So look, you probably really like drugs, mate. You also may have spent a substantial amount of time in Bristol, listening to a recent graduate explain their vegetarian kitchen co-op business plan to you. Music has to have a wahwahwomp and what you’d describe as “dirty dirty bass” in order to qualify as an act worth seeing. You’ve chosen BoomTown in recent years because “Glastonbury just got too fucking corporate. Ed Sheeran headlining? Fuck that.” Tshepo Mokoena.If this isn't your favourite festival, you probably hate camping, and music, and other people. Fair, tbh. Daisy Jones.Do you own a Fiat 500? Shave your head? Been to Ministry of Sound, or owned one of their CDs? Not really sure some aesthetic maverick out there ticks all three boxes, but if you can check at least two then you’re probably a couple pills deep and four hours away from some kind of domestic argument at Creamfields. Ryan Bassil.This festival is a real one. Genuinely, most people who attend are lovely – bar the children, but that’s just children overall in adult spaces – and the line-up always comes through with some jangly, synth-y, pleasant indie. If it’s your favourite, you’re the sort of person who truly goes to festivals for the music, and alway chooses EOTR because “seriously, they just never book a dud, it’s outrageous”. The ‘festival as experience’ thing is worthless to you, but that doesn’t mean you won’t still enjoy posting one selfie from the weekend during the golden hour where your skin looks sick because you’re drinking a bit of sour beer and not taking any drugs. You’re going to be married before your 31st birthday. You love your family and they adore you. You went on both Women’s Marches in London, and the anti-Trump protest. Tshepo Mokoena.You can follow Noisey on Twitter.