Global Gathering 2005 - Saturday

Thankfully the rain has kept away and the casualties of last night are re-grouping on the grass while the arenas warm up. The site fills with bright coloured hair and scantily clad CyberDog shoppers. Stilt-walking transvestites and by-planes swoop around the site, while Judge Jules and Tiesto broadcast live on Radio 1 from the outdoor "beach" stage. They may play a poor selection of accessible dance music for beginners and slaves of the dance press alike, but there's no denying the buzz of the Saturday evening Radio 1 kick-start session.

NEXT. The first big thing to take off on the indoor stage are the ever popular Freestylers. Announcing that they have travelled over land, sea and air for twelve hours to reach us gets a raucous crowd further stirred, before they give us a needed injection of live breakbeat excitement as their boisterous MC bellows out "This is the real sound of the underground". It's not, but tonight we'll believe you. TCR labels shiny head Rennie Pilgrem picks up the baton with a kicking set of breaks, even though the air arena has thinned, undeservedly. All because Carl Cox, probably the biggest (in both senses) techno jock in the world, is due to start his headlining set, but it also sees the underrated Tiefschwarz, the overrated Erick Morillo and the masterful Adam Freeland playing at the same time. There's no doubt that Godskitchen have brought some of the DJ circuits' prime players to this remote part of the midlands and this clash has us a little annoyed.

Apparently there have been a problem in the Bedrock arena and Tiefschwarz will not be playing as scheduled. We rush over the other side of the site to catch Freeland kicking the arse off this festival with his typically unpredictable selection of tech, breaks and electro, whilst still showing his love of hip-hop and the need to keep things raw with his musical gadgets. The crowd are open minded and up for it, which is a pleasure to see. We rush back over the site - avoiding the mass queues and peeing against a fence (there are not that many potaloo's here) - to a very bustling Babooshka arena, where Erick Morillo is waving his arms around his freshly bicked head to mass build-ups of popular tunes. Re-worked anthems such as 'Work' and 'Pump Up The Jam' blast out while spangly dancers flank the DJ box. The crowd love it and everyone's happy, which is the main thing. Leaving them to it, it's back across the site to sample Carl Cox. A packed arena with exciting visuals of huge illustrations of the big man play along to a soundtrack of fast but friendly techno with Coxy picking up the mic every few minutes to give the crowd an encouraging "COME ON" or "LET'S SEE YA" to a unison response from wide-eyed ravers...until he stops his set to introduce one of his "friends" who is going to perform something "blindin'" - it's not. A lady comes on stage to sing (agreed, quite well) over a mediocre drum'n'bass track. "Why" echoes around the canvas and we stop our dancing. Cox introduces a few other of his "friends" to break up his set, which could have worked, but unfortunately doesn't.

Luke Fair is playing a fantastic set of cutting edge underground house to a sparsely populated Bedrock; Ali B is keeping the small breakbeat crew bopping; Andy C is bubbling the drum'n'bass arena; the very, very impressive Godskitchen arena is taking the strain of Ferry Corsten's hard trance; Polysexual arena is inflicting GBH to fans of anything harder and faster than your average robot could compute and Gurn.net are allowing no let-up by the burger stalls, with probably the loudest camper van we'll ever hear. There certainly is a lot going on here and now we're excitedly debating Plump DJs, or Josh Wink. We check the first half of Plump DJs and the previously thinned air arena is now bulging at the tent pegs. They are bouncing off their breakdowns and jumping on their kick drums. Playing the biggest tunes in the breakbeat world isn't a difficult thing to do, but the Plumps do it and, do it perfectly, dropping Riton's mix of Mylo's 'Drop The Pressure', again they live up to their reputation and the crowd are electrifying over every mix. The feeling is not quite so intense over in the Bedrock, where Josh Wink is cooking up some very nice flavours of techy acid house and electro from the states, which is always a pleasure, although he really needs to blend his mixes right. A beat clash or two is a major fault when you are a world famous DJ. Seamless mixing and crunching techno is now available from Brighton techno master Dave Clarke, which leaves the crowd begging for more even if they are now looking a little worse-for-wear.

Where last year The Strongbow Rooms provided something different and well needed, this year sees the Aftershock arena, a small arena with a wooden floor and funky house music. It's very busy and you can test your strength with some Fat Slag Sumo wrestling (suits provided!), which adds an element of fun to things. But without the quality of music provided last year by Strongbow, there isn't the right reason to spend much time here...even if there is pole dancing later on! A retreat to the VIP area is just what we need at this time, no queues for the toilets (no really, toilets - like in a pub), seating with outdoor heaters and some nice, funky house muzak from the Miss Moneypenny's glitterati. The promise of hot tubs is fulfilled, however the queues a deterrent. Not so much of a queue to the bar though, which we willingly prop, and take a breather.

Heading back out to the madness, it's evident the past 36 hours has taken its tole, the medical bays are popular and there are people leaving in pockets. But the hardcore are going strong and the Polysexual and Godskitchen arenas are going for the last hour like a Jack Russell on hot coals. The tempo is too much for us, but the Air Arena offers Evil 9 and emotive, dark, sexy breakbeats finish proceedings in style. Some lovely vocals sweep over the rather jaded crowd but things build until we are set ablaze by an explosion of Blurs 'Song Two' which fires the crowd to the top of the roof as though it was midnight all over again.

The end of a marathon weekend, one we're sure we'll do all over again - but please don't extend it any further. That was enough for us!