Back in 2004, a new festival made an appearance in the UK. Glade was a name known to some from Glastonbury, where they had hosted an arena since 2000. I was one of the lucky few who attended that first festival, with a capacity of only around 3000, on the grounds of a country estate near Reading.
In amongst a field of tents featuring various takes on trance music, there was one which hosted three solid days of breaks; the Breaksday Stage. This was the reason I found myself there, having seen a poster slapped up on some hoardings at Tooting Bec a few months earlier. I had an amazing time, met some fantastic people and heard music that kept me dancing for pretty much the entire, hot weekend, spending hours upon hours in that breaks tent dancing like a loon.
There are many memories which stay with me from the first Glade (too many to list here), but one of the those that really sticks in my mind is the set I saw from Jay Cunning, Atomic Hooligan and MC Xander. From memory, I think it was on the Friday, the first day of actual music, in the daytime. It was epic.
As Jay Cunning manned the decks, mixing up the tunes, Atomic Hooligan and MC Xander took centre stage, with Atomic Hooligan scratching like a madman over the tunes and Xander doing the MC business, but with a lot of beatboxing and vocal scratching of his own. At one point (it felt like the whole set tbh) the two of them had a scratch battle, with Xander laying down vocal fx scratch after scratch for Atomic Hooligan to ’emulate’ on the decks, each time drawing approval from the crowd as the sound was replicated in detail. They pretty much raised the roof of the tent for those who were there and transformed a set that was already a break from the norm, into something truly special. The combination of the three, on the day, went down a treat.
Every now and then, you find yourself in a space and time that you kinda know will never be repeated and as the years have passed, this has proved to be one of those memories that instantly takes me back to a time where I was lost in the moment.
I’m yet to find a recording of that set, but my attention was grabbed when I saw a link to this mix, also from 2004, featuring Jay Cunning, Atomic Hooligan and MC Xander, only this time from a gig in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It’s a snapshot in time, filled with huge tunes of the day, great scratching, the cut up vocals of Xander, and it’s the closest I’ve got to reliving that humid day in the summer of 2004.
Atomic Hooligan / Jay Cunning / MC Xander – Udar Festival St. Petersburg, Russia 2004 by Terry Hooligan
Please check out the artists to see what they’re up to now.
Atomic Hooligan: www.facebook.com/atomichooligan
Jay Cunning: www.facebook.com/JayCunningOfficialPage
MC Xander: www.mcxander.com