Fresh from being crowned "Best Festival" by DJ Magazine in their Best of British awards last year, SW4 returns to Clapham Common this August and they’re certainly not resting on their well-deserved laurels. Now in its twelfth year, the festival has secured its strongest line-up yet for two days of Bank holiday weekend madness. Here are Spotlight’s reasons why it’s a must for the capital’s clubbers...
A brand new arena
Whilst it’s been holding steady for the last few years with the three tents and a main stage format, for 2015 there’s a whole new Main Indoor stage added and it’s being filled with the best of the best. Fatboy Slim debuts his brand new project Smile High Club on the Saturday and on the Sunday is the strongest, deepest line-up ever to grace a London (or anywhere?) stage *deep breath*: Carl Cox & Loco Dice B2B, Marco Carola, Adam Beyer, John Digweed, Apollonia and Joseph Capriati. Wow!
UK exclusive festival performances
Always a treat to see the big guns bring out something unique and SW4 has got an arsenal full of them. Dubfire is bringing his live “Hybrid” show where he’ll be interweaving 3D animation with audio and lighting. Fritz Kalkbrenner is only making one appearance this summer in the UK, it’s here and not to be missed, so is John Digweed in a UK festival exclusive. Perhaps most intriguing though is the UK debut of Armin van Buuren’s Gaia, where the trance master moves into a techier realm.
Big debuts
SW4 has been running since 2004 so it’s hard to believe there are any of the big boys and girls still to debut, yet this will be Luciano’s first bow at the festival. There’ll also be exciting debuts from Bakermat, Hot Since 82 and the darling of DC10: Black Coffee.
Faithless
The Saturday outdoor main stage headliners are a brilliant pick in what will be an emotional homecoming performance. Whilst big festival stages can be a graveyard for acts who can’t fill all that space, there’ll be no such problem for genuine dance royalty.
WORDS | Andrew Fulker PHOTOGRAPHY | SW4
