Reading Festival has to be one of my favourites, and that’s mainly because of the eclectic mix of music, and them always being at the forefront when it comes to supporting Grime and UK Rap artists such as Giggs, Fekky, Sneakbo.
Arriving on the Friday in the early evening, we only got a few hours to see some of the acts left on the first day. Entering the arena from behind the main stage we watched producer duo and brothers Disclosure who were on the main stage and opened with their hit ‘White Noise’. They went onto play their own tracks ‘F For You’ and ‘You & Me’ saying that “Reading Festival was the first festival me and Howard went too, that’s why I think this is going to be the best crowd we’ve ever played too, am I right?” The crowd were quick to scream their answers of yes adding to their excitement. As the sun set and we were in darkness, the lazers appeared across the sky from the stage with ‘Bang That’ being played out to the huge crowd.
As we passed the Dance Stage there was some heavy tunes and dirty basslines coming out of it, so naturally we entered and discovered the sounds of DJ/Producer duo Jack U also known singularly as Diplo and Skrillex. They banged out some heavy-duty tracks that you couldn’t help but skank out too, including their own track and one of my personal favourites, ‘Take You There’, Disclosure’s ‘You & Me’ (Flume Remix), and Skepta’s ‘Shutdown’. The energy in the tent was insane and they definitely did shut down their headline set on Friday in the Dance Tent.
Wiley was last up at the BBC Radio 1Xtra Stage and I managed to catch most of his set, he entered onto the stage spitting “I done a lot of tracks in the manor, E3 you can get the loud pack in the manor.” Scratchy then joined him on stage flowing over a classic grime instrumental ‘Creeper’ by Danny Weed bringing more energy to the stage with this track. Wiley moved onto ‘Can’t Go Wrong’ and more commercially known track ‘Wearing My Rolex’. Flowdan was brought out where the three went back to back over Preditah’s ‘Circles,’ and Rebound X ‘Rhythm N Gash’ where JME bounced out onto the stage also joining in on the mic. As the end of the night appeared and Wiley’s set was drawing to an end he announced, ““They said to shut it down, you know what we’re gonna do,” and left us with renditions of Skepta’s ‘Shutdown’ and BBK’s ‘Too Many Men’.
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