A gloomy 1960s multistorey building looms ominously over you, its gray facade punctured by the small matter of a full-size train carriage smashed into the fourth floor. Opposite, a dilapidated 1970s New York street scene unfolds, with neon lights flashing on hookers, transvestites and a sea of worse-for-wear revellers. Music is thudding everywhere; smoke is pouring into the sky. Good grief, you wonder, sod Jay-Z — what would Noel Gallagher have made of this?
For this, too, though it might shock the purists, is an integral part of Glastonbury. In fact, it’s the festival in its purest form, and two fingers up to anyone who doesn’t like the thought of anything unlike Shed Seven dwelling in Michael Eavis’s kingdom. This, as our special picture gallery attests, was the magic of Block9 — a distant descendant of Lost Vagueness and Trash City. Much more than the fair-weather friends who pop by for the odd guest shout-out, or the bevy of T4 presenters visible at every turn, this was the true spirit of Glastonbury: creative, open-minded and endearingly weird.
Block9 created the NYC Downlow — the aforementioned 1970s disco — for Trash City three years ago. Now Block9 is in a field at Glastonbury too, and this year it fulfilled a new ambition, creating the biggest-ever set for the festival’s post-performance revels. The London Underground is the Downlow’s darker, weirder cousin, dwarfing it in size; that London Tube sticking out of the front tells you where it’s from. Throughout the festival, it played a selection of dubstep, deep house and jungle, while Downlow catered to those who prefer classic soul and disco. Between them and the field’s other attractions lies the explanation for the near-permanent jam at its entrance. (It also helped that it was next to Arcadia and Shangri-La, night-time’s other hit venues.)
If you want to sample it for yourself, you’re partly in luck: the Downlow, by now well established, will be at the Lovebox festival on July 16-18. As for the London Underground, already packed up into several large vans after its giddy debut, Gideon Berger, of Block9, tells us it won’t return until Glastonbury next year. All the more reason to get yourself a ticket: kick-off is June 22, 2011...