Silver Hayes Glastonbury – A Preview With Dave HarveY

Art & Culture

Well, we're coming up to mid-June and in true customary style it's pissing it down again… Let's not even tempt fate discussing mudbaths as the mother of all UK festivals Glastonbury Festival draws ever nearer.

You'd have thought that something of this age and size that sold out before you could say "is that a rain drop I see in the sky?" would have lost some of its sheen but not the mother. It continues to evolve adding new areas of excitement and wonder. Let's face it, you don't often venture to the main areas of festivals like this anymore. The beauty lies in unearthing hidden gems in further corners.

Continuing our quest from back in 2011 we're highlighting some of the more hidden gems on offer and catch up with the people behind said jewels. This week we preview Silver Hayes and have a chat with Dave Harvey, one of the team behind the programming of this ever expanding corner of the Pilton institution.

Last time we caught up with you for Glastonbury related business you were just programming the Wow! stage you're now assistant programmers for Silver Hayes – the area formerly known as Dance Village – How did that come to be?

Yeah we are really pleased to have had a bit of a promotion! We've worked closely with the bossman Malcolm Haynes on booking the overall line up this year and also programmed the full Wow line up again with what we hope is another interesting selection of underground folks. We've been working with the Dance Village team for several years now and I guess they have succumbed to our constant enthusiasm/nagging – plus we're the best in our price range, cheap as chips 😉

How does it differ from the previous DV? Tell us about the various new areas.

Yeah it's gonna be something completely new which is really exciting – Everything except the Wow is fresh this year. There's the brand new Sonic stage, a super high tec, high end mega venue, holds somewhere in the region of 5 thousand plus people so that's gonna be pretty massive in every sense, this will act as the main stage for the bigger names we have on this year. Malc's come up with a whole new area in itself with the Blues and Gully venues – focussing on reggae, roots, the bass end of things across the board – this is a heavyweight production with everything being built bespoke for it, plus a rather special Visionquest takeover on Thursday night. La Pussy Parlure Nouveau is a reworking of the every popular Pussy Parlure – loads of world music, funk, soul that end of the spectrum with some killer names on the line up including the quite simply phenomenal – who we are all really excited about seeing again, he's one of the best live performers we have ever seen and I may even have a little bit of a man crush on him, I snuck into his dressing room last year when he played in Bristol and tried on one of his capes – powerful. We've also got the Igloo back – this fully immersive venue is a large part of the reason we are even at Glastonbury so it's brilliant to have it back there, intimate and having it in equal measure, this is gonna be the spot for those that find it with a killer line up, this one is for the heads but be warned, this is gonna get rammed sharpish so be swift.

"I think The Wow provides a counterbalance to the more established acts on East and West. We really try to pick up on artists who are coming up, pick them out early and get them involved and again this year weve been really lucky to do so with lots of acts like Julio Bashmore, Space Dimension Controller, Lone, Floating Points, Funkineven, Fatima, Maya Jane Coles, Subb-an, Hyetal who have really come into their own in the last few months and our stage is probably the best place for them to be at the festival."

You certainly picked a pretty bang on line-up back in 2011, who should we be looking out for on the Wow! stage and elsewhere throughout the Silver Hayes area.

As ever we are super chuffed with who we have managed to bag for the Wow this year, a combined selection of those bubbling under and those who have just blown up plus a couple of absolute legends, not a term we'd use lightly – we've somehow managed to get Carl Craig as our headliner for Friday night which is bloody great – can't wait to see what he does, getting to put him on at Glastonbury is one of those dreams become reality moments! We've also got one of the loveliest men in house music – Kerri Chandler. He came and played for us at the Futureboogie party at In Motion and we floated the idea in hushed tones and he was bang up for it which made us very happy, he is a true master of the art so this will be special to say the least. Everyone playing is of note but ones we are really looking forward to are Maya Jane Coles, she came and smashed it last time and we're really pleased she chose to come back to Wow as she could totally have done Sonic this year but I think the vibe was so good last time she wanted to get on that again. The one man army East Everything – what a year he has had, a joy to see him doing so well and a part of the Team Love family, great to have him coming down for such a big slot. Joy O, Jackmaster – he's absolutely killing it at the mo and his radio show is one of the best we've been following in a long while, he knows his onions that man, Scuba, Bicep, George Fitzgerald – again totally killing it this year, T Williams, Mele, Monki, Bondax, Dusky – there's just too many to mention but hopefully you get the flavour. Ben UFO will be joining us as well and that is always a pleasure, such a gent and excellent selector, he always makes us feel good about contemporary dance music and where it's heading – he also makes me feel old. We've also got a brand new boat party vibe going on in the daytimes, if we get the weather, this will be heavy – Skream is hosting one day with Disclosure, Eats, Route 94, Artwork, Hospital are hosting one and buzzing to get to have our family in on the Saturday with a big Futureboogie takeover, Crazy P, Maxxi, Waifs, PBR, Outboxx, Christophe and Lukas – I can 99.999 % guarantee some proper tops off action for this one. Jesus, this is becoming an essay now! Oh and yeah, we've got The Pharcyde! Dead happy about that one, Bizarre Ride to the…. was a big album in our youth and the new show is heavy!

We are also well excited to have the one and only Normski hosting for us on the Thursday – it's a big deal for me on a personal note as I absolutely loved Dance Energy as a kid locked in my room, it was where I got exposed to a lot of dance music as a youth so it's well nuts getting Normski involved!

Elsewhere – just so much but a selection: Julio Bashmore, Disclosure, Nas (!!!), Family Stone…

5 people you can't wait to see and who we should catch this year via the power of youtube…

Maurice Fulton – playing in the Igloo on the Friday night, one of our faves and could have picked any off his recent Syclops LP, absolute badman:

Kerri Chandler – Sat night in Wow, massively looking forward to him joining us….

Eats Everything – smashing it this year and well deserved too, a lovely man with a heart of gold and skills on the decks, he's on at Wow on Thursday and it always goes off in there on that night, guaranteed rammed out:

Tame Impala – love this lot, their latest LP is fuckin ace and I've not checked them live as yet, defo gonna try and catch them on the Other stage I believe:

Dinosaur Jr – another one from my youth, really gonna try and make this over at The Park:

Will you be going to watch the Stones? Have you seen them before?

I am gonna do my best to catch at least a bit of them but making plans for that sort of thing on Worthy Farm can be a bit of a futile task – like everyone though, love em and would be really interested to see what they turn out – have they still got it? Who knows!

Am I right in thinking Keith Richards is playing a secret set at the Wow! stage this year?!

Ha, we'd defo be up for getting Keith in for some hospitality but not sure about letting him lose on the decks….

Where else for Team Love this year. How was Love Saves The Day?

I am obviously hugely biased but it was pretty amazing from where I was standing and the feedback has been incredible – we made a few significant mistakes last year which we held our hands up to and managed to get right this year – barring a few technical issues with changeovers on the mainstage it really couldn't have gone better from our point of view – we're already looking at next year and buzzing by the love it's generated in Bristol. We do tend to harp on about it and I'm sure it gets boring to folk from elsewhere but there really is something magic in the water in our little city and we are very proud to be a part of it. Next up we are running the Red Bull Music Academy stage at St Paul's Carnival which is gonna be big – we have managed to secure an ultra rare DJ Milo set, true Bristol legend, Wild Bunch originator and part of the very fabric of the carnival itself, this is gonna be proper! Other than that we have a busman's holiday to Burning Man for research purposes – it'll be our first time and excited would be an understatement.

I was going to ask what your ultimate fantasy festival or rave venue would be but I'm assuming it'd be Glastonbury? Answer that one and try to be diplomatic! 🙂

Can I combine the weather and sundrenched vibes of Croatia's Garden Festival with the raw, pulse of Glastonbury, crossed with a little dash of that Love Saves Bristol family magic and I reckon you're on to a winner…..

5 glastonbury highlights before you got involved with the machinations of the festival:

Jesus there have been so many, so hard to pick a few out of them!
Orbital, 94/95? Can't remember the year now but I do remember the headlights, the butterflies on the visuals and getting absolutely lost in the moment – deep, seminal, early!

Top Cats, an amazing ska band with an incredible front man, Natty Bo I think his name is, in Lost Vagueness – we'd just discovered the area, which has now morphed into Shangri La/Arcadia – it was totally raw as fuck back then, well it still is now but this was next level – like an undiscovered parallel festival within a festival, like a massive site party, all the freaks and the crazies all in one place, carnage, a casino and a load of trannies who took us under their wing. Absolute mayhem and one of the best atmospheres I'e ever experienced. It was like discovering Glasto all over again.

Portishead – think it was the other stage, can't remember the year – incredible, emotive stuff, they were just unbelievable at that time.

Iggy Pop when he had the crowd invasion – amazing scenes!!!

NYC Downlow when the Horse Meat crew are in charge on the decks – any year, this is always an absolute cracker, the production that goes into the venue alone is unreal, the vibe is electric and the mix up of bears, trannies, hipsters, crusties and everyone is one of the best "club" experiences you'll ever get, sleazy and down right dirty. Highly reccomended.

And 5 since you have been

Tayo in the Wow when we first had it – absolutely killed it and did his thing – always a pleasure to have him along.

Stevie Wonder main stage – anyone who was lucky enough to witness this knows just how off the chain this was, absolute living legend, unbelievable performance, unbelievable energy and pure love vibes in the crowd – literally one of the best moments of my life – topped off with Mr Eavis doing a turn on the mic, unreal.

East 17 when we were programming just the one night, we did the Thursday and it was nuts, 10's of thousands of people descended on our tent and it was just madness, they were really sweet as well, kind of made a big noise for us…..

Dave Beer playing The Clash 'Train In Vain' in the Igloo the first year we had in dance village, it had been a really long weekend, hugely emotional and a massive relief that we hadn't fucked up by this point, he dropped this and it went off, I think he ended up stood on the decks with his top off – nuts in all the right ways.

The Igloo in either Block 9 or The Common 4 years ago, can't remember when exactly – we played all night in there with Crazy P and it was electric, the P are some of our fave people in the world so always a pleasure playing with them, they always go for teh big guns on the special occassions and this was one of them, loved it!

Who's more techno and why; your Mum or your Dad?

My mum was once in the old lads mag Loaded, pissed up with her arms around the then editor – so I think she pips that one, but my Dad loves his Basic Channel….tough one.

Are you a kick drum, hi hat or a snare? And why?

Interesting line of questioning Wil – kick drum right?

Best festival headline slot you've ever seen?

Stevie as above but followed closely by the Cure at Bestival a couple of years back, they smashed it and I had a moment, no sorry a series of moments…brilliant.

Biggest festival vibe killer?

The load out…..never gets any easier!

Should festivals ban mobiles?

What??! How am I gonna update my Facebook maaaaaaan!?!

What are you obsessed with at the moment?

Summer – I always forget how much better a person I am when the sun comes out, I think you get about 33% more for your money from this point til about end of September.

Full line-ups for the Sonic, Wow! and Gully stages this year…