When I talk to people about Houghton I pretty much always say the same thing. It delivers on all fronts. Location is beautiful. Music curation is spot on. Crowd are super friendly. Perfect size. You might have noticed over the course of this week documenting the festival that I haven’t really had a bad thing to say about it and that’s because I don’t. Yes it was crazy hot so the ground was super dry which meant the site became a bit of a dust bowl but that’s not the fault of the organisers (you could blame those responsible for climate change but mebbe let’s not go there now shall we?)
Where the festival excels for me is the carefully curated line-up. It feels like djs are booked because they are great djs and not just because their name can sell tickets. And they are given good chunky sets, sometimes 3-4hours so they can really get into the groove and do their thing and take the crowd on a journey. Just like the good ole days. The reason for this due care and attention is that Houghton has a dj at it’s helm and so it is music first above and beyond everything else and that always makes for the best festivals in my book. And no not all festivals seem to prioritise the music as the most important factor. For some it’s the food or the fancy dress (yes Bestival we are talking about you) which is refreshingly in short supply at Houghton. People are there for the tunes. And you won’t really hear a bad tune all weekend. And it’s not all just beats. There is a wide range of music on offer, all dance music but genre wise it is right across the board.
Over the course of the weekend we heard everything from funk to jazz, afrobeat, happy/acid/hard house, 80s/90s dance classics, disco, broken beats, all techno variants and there was even some 50s rock ‘n’roll and 60s soul provided courtesy of my alternate existence with my partner in crime as dj duo Double Agent 7. Having been a punter for the first two years was a joy to have our vintage sounds be part of the musical proceedings. When we play at festivals we are normally one of the few playing vinyl but I have never seen so many djs playing records which was very refreshing, altho all of ours did get caked in a fine layer of dust. Still was absolutely worth it.
And so I don’t really have much more to add other than to show you loads of pictures of people having a great time which tells you all you need to know. These were all taken at Derren Smart main stage during Optimo’s epic gig on the friday afternoon which was probably my favourite set of the weekend. Everyone was already in the groove and up for a major party and the atmosphere was amazing. As you can see it’s just a ton of people having a ton of fun. For me it just encapsulated the joy and the freewheelin anything goes attitude that sums up Houghton completely. They played such a variety of tunes but there was this beautiful line throughout and the crowd stayed on board for the whole journey.
We had all waited 3 years for Houghton to return but it was oh so worth it. Roll on 2023!
(p.s soz very late again today. was finding it difficult to cut down the shots and as you can see I haven’t done that well as there are loads but when you see so much happiness captured it’s difficult to cull them down)
