I went to SW4 on Saturday, with Dirty Si, Clara and Dave TG.

“SW4? Hang on, isn’t that a post code? Why’s that exciting?”

Well, my friend, it is exciting because SW4 happens to be the post code for (a part of) Clapham Common!

“Yes, but that’s just a park. You could’ve just as well gone to, say, Hylands Park in Chelmsford and saved yourself the need to go into London!”

Ah yes, but on Saturday the aforementioned Common was host to the rather cool South West Four!

“What? Host to a post co-“-Look, just shut up a second.

South West Four is a day-long dance music festival, with such DJs as Paul Van Dyk, Judge Jules, Pete Tong and Matt Hardwick banging out the Phat Beats from 12pm to 9pm.

“Oh. Cool.”

Yes indeed. It was. There was an awful lot of dancing going on and a fair bit of beverage consumption – mostly all done under the hot summer sun that we’d all forgotten about. Without further ado, here’s a Good, Bad and Ugly review of SW4:

The Good

• Weather – Gorgeous sunshine all day, meaning that there was a great feel good vibe to the place… and apparently it meant that there were lots of rather, erm, pleasant sights. I didn’t notice, of course. (*cough*Bollocks*cough* – Squage)
  
• Matt Hardwick – A true trance legend, he played an extended set due to the next DJ turning up late, meaning we an extra 40 minutes of pure unadulterated trance classics. In the words of Dirty Si: what year is it? 1999! (cue cheers and mental dancing)
  
• Paul Van Dyk – Loads of classic Van Dyk anthems – and, oh, the new tune from Filo & Peri called, appropriately, Anthem. It’s fecking amazing.
  
• R ‘n’ B – Following on from an in joke between Dave and Dirty Si at a previous dance festival, which surrounded doing impressions of RNB fans (“Where is the RNB tents, man? I is needing me RNB innit!” and so on), we… er… did impressions of RNB fans. And sang some RNB tunes along to the classic dance tunes that, for example, Paul Van Dyk was playing out. It might’ve slightly annoyed some of the folks around us, but we didn’t really notice through laughing too loud…
• People – Lots of cool people we ended up dancing and chatting with throughout the day helped keep the mood high even when the volume might not have been…

The Bad

• Volume – For some reason, despite the fact that it was the MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON, the powers that be decided to turn the sound in the trance tent down to levels that, frankly, were not good to dance to. This happened half way through Matt Hardwick’s set, which was particularly annoying – although interesting to see what Matt Hardwick looks like when fully fuming! Geniusly, a few minutes after the sound was turned down Hardwick decided to counter the effect by whacking the volume up to 11 (eh? eh?) on his mixer and allowing us to enjoy loud (albeit a little distorted) dance tunes to the end of his set. Alas, on returning to see the Judge later, it was a little quiet and there was feck all bass. Very, very poor for a FECKING DANCE FESTIVAL. Talking to a couple of punters, it seems that it happened last year too and was to respect the residents around the park. I would understand this if, say, kids needed to get to sleep, but given that the whole bloody festival wrapped up at 9pm for that purpose I was left a) confused and b) a bit pissed off
• Weather – Due to the heat it was bloody boiling whilst dancing, which left me needing a bit of a rest after a couple of hours and meant I missed a fair bit of Ferry Corsten’s set.
• Bars – Under staffed, under skilled and under equipped. It took me 30 minutes to get served at one point.

The Ugly

We really should’ve just worn shorts.

On the whole, despite my gripes, it was a really good day – we had a lot of fun and a lot of drink, rounded off nicely by some late-night Dominos pizza.

I really am never going to lose weight, am I?

Toodles,

Pat