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Fabio & Grooverider reviewed!
Safi Bugel
Other stage, 11.30
The pairing of classical music and rave nostalgia seems to be in vogue at the moment. The Hacienda Classical, Back to Basics with the Orchestra of the Opera North and the hilariously-named Cream Classical all reinterpret club classics with a full ensemble and guest vocalists. Representing the trend at Glastonbury 2025 are drum‘n’bass legends Fabio & Grooverider, who today open a packed-out Other stage, accompanied by the Outlook Orchestra.
“We’re gonna take you through time, we’re gonna give you a history of jungle and D’n’B!” bellows the guest MC, GQ, while Fabio and Grooverider take their place behind the decks in the centre of the orchestra. And indeed they do: the gun finger-poised, bucket hat-clad crowd are treated to an hour of old favourites, beefed up by live amen breaks, big horns and soaring strings.
The set is structured in parts, starting with early nineties jungle to present-day D’n’B. We hear countless beloved tracks like We Are IE, Sweet Love, Super Sharp Shooter and the real sing-along-inducing Ready Or Not. Between a string of guest vocalists, Fabio & Grooverider occasionally pause to pace the stage, asking who was there the first time round and running through their history, which began at a wine bar in Streatham. “To see this is amazing,” says Fabio.
Naturally, there’s a tendency for the set to feel a bit corny: the glowing love heart graphic laid over timelapse clips of London, the pairing of brass and bass, the nostalgia saturation. But there’s no denying that this is a high-energy, heart-warming affair for everyone involved, from the old ravers to the kids on their shoulders.
Horsegirl reviewed!
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Park stage, 11.30
“Do you like camping?” one of Horsegirl asks their audience, to a chorus of assent. “Cool. We’re staying an hour away in a hotel.” There’s probably better stage banter to get everyone on side, but thankfully the Chicago indie trio’s actual music is far more endearing.
There’s a Stereolab-ish motorik chug that underpins a number of these tracks, at various tempos from indie-dancing to mopey wandering, including on cuts from utterly superb Cate le Bon-produced second album Phonetics On and On. The bass notes ring out clean and bright, adding crossbeams to the sturdy structure. But all this steadiness is offset by beautiful, tuneful wordless hooks, like the kind a child might idly sing to themselves while fingerpainting – affectingly naive but really tricky to write well. The repeated lyrics are strong too: “And I try / and I try”, they sing on In Twos, quite moving in how they doggedly trudge onwards. As Lorde no doubt takes things straight to 100 over at Woodsies, this set gently eases us up to speed.
Four Tet and Floating Points’ B2B set last night – at Floating Points’ Sunflower Sound System, in Silver Hayes – was one of the most transcendently fun things I’ve seen in a long time. The Guardian’s David Levene snapped some great photos of the space – a bespoke 360-degree soundsystem featuring six gigantic speaker stacks, inside a gigantic dome – last night, although a photo can’t capture the delirious feeling of hearing the beat whizz around you like you’re in a spaceship, as it periodically did last night.
It seems like CMAT’s set on the Pyramid stage this afternoon is one of the weekend’s most-anticipated – more than one of my friends has emphatically declared it the Summer of CMAT. In addition to her powerhouse voice, the rising Irish star is just great for a quote. Check out Alexis Petridis’s interview with her from earlier this month:
Best way to avoid the crowds? Be an A-list musician, it seems: Elle has spotted Charli xcx watching her friend Lorde from the side of the stage, and Safi just saw Carl Cox checking out Fabio & Grooverider.
The intrepid Elle Hunt has identified a few cases of WFG (work from Glastonbury) out in the field.
Of course you’d assume that everyone at Glastonbury today has taken annual leave, but there surely must be some gadabouts who are “working from home” and logging into Gmail to periodically refresh their status. Good on them I say. After all many more will be on leave but obliged to be “on email” from the field. I glimpsed a young woman in the crowd for Lorde furiously responding to messages on Slack. It never rests ...
Welcome to Glastonbury 2025!
Shaad D'Souza
Hello from Worthy Farm! It’s Glastonbury’s final outing before taking a fallow year in 2026 in order for the site to recuperate, and if Thursday night’s merriment is any indication, the crowd will absolutely be making this one count – here’s hoping we’re not all burnt out by Sunday evening. Today is starting off with a bang: Lorde, who released her fourth album Virgin today, just confirmed via social media that she’s the “TBA” artist opening the Woodsies stage today – and, naturally, that tent is already at capacity. We’ll have a review of that set – and the rest of the day’s acts, including the 1975, Alanis Morrisette and more – very soon.
