Two festivals, two futures

I'll admit it: I wasn't especially excited about Junction 2 this year.

Usually, a couple of weeks beforehand, my group chats are full of lineup debates, logistical planning and people trying to work out who they're going to spend the day with. This year? They were strangely quiet. Most of my friends shrugged when I mentioned it. A few had been before and didn't fancy doing it again. Others just weren't particularly bothered.

I almost wasn't either.

By Saturday morning I'd already told a friend I was thinking of skipping it on Sunday. She admitted she was tempted to do the same. We ended up at Fold instead, and after stumbling out at 6am, I confidently declared that Sunday I'd be sprawled on the sofa instead.

Part of that came down to the festival itself. For its tenth edition, Junction 2 looked noticeably different. Instead of the sprawling three-day affair it's become known for, this year it had slimmed down to just two stages, with the anniversary spread across several weekends instead. The site felt smaller, the lineup didn't quite have the same "how are they fitting all these names onto one poster?" quality of previous years, and there wasn't quite the same buzz surrounding it.

The one thing I did know was that I wanted to see Miss Monique. Enough friends whose taste I trust had come back raving about her sets this summer that she became the thing dragging me out of bed. I pulled myself together, crawled into the shower and headed west.

I'm very glad I did.

There's something about Junction 2 that remains difficult to replicate. Even after all these years, dancing underneath the M4 still feels faintly ridiculous in the best possible way. Concrete pillars, roaring traffic overhead and some of the biggest names in electronic music somehow make perfect sense together. It still has an identity that very few festivals can claim.

And Miss Monique absolutely justified the trip. Her set was everything I'd hoped for: melodic, energetic and effortlessly paced. Even if I'd gone home immediately afterwards, I'd probably have considered the day worthwhile. She was bouncing around with great energy and her set had some really retro tracks that both made it feel distinct but also tickled my never-ending need for nostalgia.

That said, it wasn't without its frustrations. The Bridge was, for me, almost impossible to enjoy. Every time I wandered over it was absolutely rammed. Not just busy, but the sort of busy where you spend ten minutes edging through a crowd only to realise you're still nowhere near the music, but instead wobbling away on gravel. When you were situated, it was fine, but as soon as you needed water or to use a bathroom, you were pulled right out of dancing and finding yourself looking for the quickest way out through the sea of people.

The Bridge is the best of the summer festival stages for Instagram, but one of the worst to dance at. With the uneven gravel underfoot and everyone trying to flow forwards to get a good look at the person playing, it's still a pain in the arse, and despite it being a smaller festival, the lack of other stages to distract people have made The Bridge feel busier than ever.

The Woods wasn't much better. Last year, when it was known as the Bunker, it was probably my favourite stage of the festival. It's still one of London's most atmospheric places to hear electronic music, but atmosphere only gets you so far when you're shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of other people trying to squeeze through the same gap. I spent more time trying to navigate the crowd than enjoying the music.

Ironically, I probably had my favourite moments away from the festival's biggest draws.

The Beatport stage was a genuinely lovely place to spend time. There was space to dance, space to actually hear what the DJs were doing, and enough breathing room that you didn't feel like you were constantly squeezing past someone. I finished the day there watching Avantgarde Tabidot, who somehow got a crowd of tired ravers dancing to an edit of Love Shack. It shouldn't have worked. It absolutely did, reinvigorating a tired crowd who were all festivalled out, but not quite ready to admit it.

I also had an excellent vegan burger, which deserves mentioning because festival food is usually an exercise in managed disappointment. This wasn't. After several hours wandering between stages, it hit exactly the right spot.

Riding the Piccadilly line home afterwards with tired legs and filthy trainers, I realised Junction 2 had surprised me.

I'd arrived feeling fairly ambivalent. The smaller footprint, scaled-back lineup and lack of excitement from my friends had all made it feel like this might be the year the festival lost a little of its magic. Instead, I left having had a genuinely good day. It wasn't the summer-defining Junction 2 of old, but it feels like that version of the festival is long gone. Instead it was comparable to Silvertown, although for most of the attendees, significantly cheaper, with a much more interesting lineup.

It'll be cheaper for most because it also feels like Junction 2 has accidentally trained its audience to wait. Every year, WhatsApp groups fill up with screenshots of heavily discounted resale tickets and last-minute bargains. Plenty of people now expect to pay £20 rather than full price, and once a festival earns that reputation it's difficult to put the cheap-ticket genie back in the bottle. That probably isn't sustainable, especially in a world where independent festivals are disappearing at an alarming rate.

Which makes this new format particularly interesting.

Splitting Junction 2 across multiple weekends instead of packing everything into one mammoth event is a bold shift. It undeniably changes what the festival is, but perhaps that's the point. Festivals can't afford to stand still anymore. Rising costs, changing ticket-buying habits and increasingly cautious audiences mean evolution isn't optional.

If this leaner version of Junction 2 is what it takes to keep one of London's defining electronic festivals alive, then maybe that's a trade worth making. I'll be watching with interest to see whether this tenth anniversary marks the beginning of its next decade or the start of a slow decline.

While writing this, someone sent me Miss Monique's Tomorrowland 2026 set, which seems to have a lot of the same building blocks as her longer Junction 2 set, so here it is.

Come in at 12:10 if you want to feel a significant sense of nostalgia that blew my mind at Junction 2, but from 40 minutes I had to delay writing this description so I could wiggle my butt around the living room. It's a good set and should be perfect for this week's heatwave.

I turned up at Mishanlage, the indoor bunker inside the old coal mine where Stone Techno is held, not quite knowing what to expect. Long concrete corridors greet you when you arrive, and the dance floor is found upstairs. What strikes you immediately is that when you walk in, you find yourself at the back of the stage. Intimate and industrial.

I was running late. I hadn’t managed to make Stone's Saturday daytime event (even though the festival officially opens its doors on the Friday), which I was gutted about, as Gigi FM had curated the entire Eisbahn stage, a lineup that included Fergus Sweetland, Fireground, Efdemin and D-Leria playing live on his own custom-built synth. I’ve been trying to see Gigi for two years. Every time she comes through London, I’m either away or ill. This time I finally managed to catch her for the afters, where she played a b2b alongside Barker, a set so good I’m still struggling to find the right words for what that set did to me.

There’s something ephemeral about Gigi’s presence that translates directly into her music. She grew up as a professional dancer, and you feel it in every production and every set. It’s just something that moves through you. Her b2b with Barker was a perfect balance of two very different energies pulling in the same direction. The crowd was locked in. The room united as we were transported somewhere else entirely. What followed, a b2b between Quelza and Efdemin, kept the energy exactly where Gigi and Barker had left it, right until 7 am. Quelza was even dancing while playing the decks. By the time we walked out, I was already looking forward to the next day.

Sunday was something else. It was my first time seeing the festival in its daytime form and the setting alone stopped me in my tracks. The energy inside was giving me those jittery feelings before the music had even reached my ears. Just the sound vibrating through the ground and the anticipation of it all.

We arrived just in time to catch Luigi Tozzi playing live at the Koksofen stage, the stage curated by Oscar Mulero. The stage was already packed, and was one of the busiest all day, but we ended up listening from the side rather than trying to push into the crowd. We made it closer when Philippa Pacho took over, drawn in by her usual relentless high energy, and then made a deliberate decision to explore the stages where we didn’t recognise the names. That turned out to be one of the best decisions of the day. Connor Wall at the Eisbahn stage was a genuine discovery. Both Koksofen and Eisbahn stayed packed through the day.

Then we found Salzlager. We stumbled in just in time for Bashkka b2b Magda, and it was a completely different world. More shade and a blissful breeze. No small thing when it was over 30 degrees and full sun, even in Germany. The music was more playful, the vibe around us shifted accordingly, and it was here that we picked up a group of people who’d travelled all the way from France. By the end of the set we were all one group.

Closing time almost broke us though with too many of our favourite artists on at the same time, all pulling in different directions. We eventually planted ourselves at Rene Wise b2b D.Dan, and it was the right call, even if missing DVS1's surprise b2b Oscar Mulero still stings a little.

We ended on such a high that we weren’t sure the afters at Grand Hall could top it. Then came the first hiccup. One of my best friends discovered he didn’t have his afters ticket, despite being convinced he did, and everything was sold out with no chance of buying at the door.

The universe, however, had other ideas. While we were sitting in the chill area rolling cigarettes and trying to come back to reality, I heard a German guy doing the rounds asking if anyone needed a Grand Hall ticket. I exclaimed, pretty loudly, ‘us, come here’. After navigating a PayPal transfer (apparently the only way to do anything in Germany), we still had two more friends without tickets. But we got real lucky and found two more people at the entrance who were selling tickets their mates no longer needed. And just like that, we were all in.

Inside, Fold had curated the afters. Voicedrone and James Newmarch set the tone in a venue that lived up to its name. Grand. The sound, the lighting and the sheer scale of it all. Fold outdid themselves this time around. I hit a kind of trance state at some point. Everything aligning so precisely that I stopped thinking about it and just let it happen. D.Dan and Philippa Pacho took over and ran a steady marathon for the full length of their set. DVS1 followed with something more intentional. There was more breathing room. More precision and texture. His own language entirely.

I connected with dancers and ravers from all over the world. I also discovered, much to everyone’s amusement, that apparently I have a very German look, because people kept assuming I was local. We also kept running into Londoners and Fold regulars. We all found each other in the end.

Some things could have been better. Certain stages were overcrowded and hard to move in. A few people mentioned the increased attendance felt like too much this year. And some of the crowd on the outer edges were the kind of people who turn up because they know it’s the place to be, rather than because the music has ever meant something to them. That said, I didn’t notice excessive phones usage. Most people were in their groove. Eyes forward and making their bass face to each other. The occasional 10-second clip and then the phone went straight back in the pocket where it belonged.

What gives me genuine confidence about the future of Stone is that Ahmet, the festival’s founder and organiser, addressed all of this directly and publicly yesterday on their IG profile. He named what went wrong and said what they’d improve. He also gave the community a reason to trust that they’re listening. That shows how much love and care he has put into this festival from day 1. That’s what independence looks like when it’s done properly. Not pretending the problems didn’t happen, but being accountable to the people who showed up.

Mark it in your calendar for next year. Tickets will likely sell out before February. Given the trajectory, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes the way of Houghton and sells out by December. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

I feel like I'm repeating myself saying this each week but it's an absolutely heaving weekend, with great lineups everywhere you look. The best lineup, for me, is the Did Someone Say Showcase, which is a real who's who of underground DJing in the capital. During the day it's a free party but the night, headlined by Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip, promises to be something special too.

Elsewhere you're spoilt for choice. Igneez (and some others) are playing Fold on Friday night, Innervisions promises to be something else (and Selen's Beatport set will almost definitely be something special, go support her for me) and Livid and DVS1 will be at Palais. Peggy Gou is playing on the Thames on Sunday too, if you're into that.

Friday

• somov x Origins: Ignez, STERAC, Wala & Desireè FOLD
• 15 Years of Rhythm Section: Bradley Zero KOKO
• Parallel Play - MUSICKLUNATIC, ADHDJ b2b Hostmigrate, Kittani b2b Mikadose Aaja Basement

Saturday

• Did Someone Say... Showcase - Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip) DJ Set, Benebe, Kafn + more (day party) (free party ((before 11pm)) Signature Brew
• Palais: DVS1 & Livid Palais
• Innervisions LONDON Boston Manor Park

Sunday

• Peggy Gou on the Thames Old Royal Naval College

• Last weekend was Tomorrowland and my friend came back haunted by "Poop Circle," where she claimed to see human excrement hidden under a space blanket and an inflatable lobster. Returning home she was no longer sure if this happened and started to question if she'd imagined it. Then it made it to Reddit, so I regret to inform you that Poop Circle is real.
• This Spotify AI scam has rubbish AI-generated music under misspellings of celebrity names, as if Spotify couldn't get better.
• Resident Advisor has announced a world tour for its 25th birthday, with the London stop taking place at Outernet. They're also releasing a book. Called Front Left. It's really lovely that you're thinking of us guys, we appreciate it.