Glastonbury 2023: The best moments in electronic music
There were some serious heavy hitters in the dance scene at Worthy Farm this year
Andy Ford
There was a strong electronic music presence at Glastonbury 2023, with some true music production legends gracing stages across Worthy Farm, and plenty of new talent championing today’s sound. A silly number of exciting things happen at Glastonbury, which is part of its global charm, but we’ve managed to collate some of our favourite moments in electronic music – just in case you didn’t manage to catch them all.
Fred again.. delivers a stunning sunset set
The meteoric rise of Fred Gibson – better known as Fred Again.. – meant that his ry performance was always set to be unmissable. And plenty of festival-goers rocked up to the Other Stage to catch him singing, playing piano and triggering samples. In fact, Gibson performed to one of the biggest crowds at Other Stage history.
Gibson truly had the crowd in the palm of his hand. They sang along to the hits, like Billie (Loving Arms), and danced unapologetically to his floor-filling anthems, like Rumble.
The Chemical Brothers drop their classics, reimagined, at Arcadia
British duo The Chemical Brothers have been around for decades now, but their performance at Worthy Farm’s iconic Arcadia stage proves that they show no signs of faltering. After playing some of their newer material, including 2015’s thunderous Go with Q-Tip and two tracks from their upcoming album – No Reason and All Of A Sudden – the Bro’s dropped immense remixes of their earlier catalogue, including Kink’s rendition of Hey Boy, Hey Girl.
Wow💥 what a time @A_rcadia thanks to everyone who came and danced and all the amazing crew who made it happen. here’s what it’s like in the 🕷️ with @eddychemical tearing it up ✌️#chemicalbrothers #glastonbury @glastonbury pic.twitter.com/ZNkvBSWaa4
— The Chemical Brothers (@ChemBros) June 24, 2023
Kenny Beats brings the heat to Lonely Hearts Club
Coincidentally enough, Kenny Beats stormed onto the set of Lonely Hearts with Chemical Brother’s Hey Boy, Hey Girl. Given the prolific producer’s eclectic oeuvre, we were intrigued to hear what style of music he’d be DJing. And following the Chemical Brothers opener, he flew through a ridiculous amount of genres and artists – Skrillex, The Prodigy, Kanye West, Tyler, The Creator, Basement Jaxx, Azealia Banks, Kylie Minogue, Kaytranada, Kendrick Lamar, Daft Punk, ROSALÍA – it was nothing short of captivating. Proving himself as a true tastemaker, crowd pleaser and all-round creative, we’ll be looking for any future opportunities to catch Kenny Beats playing live again.
Jayda G gets the whole of Levels bouncing
Canadian dance producer and DJ may have been playing a relatively early 4:30 set at the Levels stage in Silver Hayes, but it was rammed from the get-go. A huge crowd rocked up to hear the fast-rising artist drop house bangers and disco groovers, all bouncing along in unison. If you didn’t know it already, Jayda G knows how to get a crowd moving.
Skream dominates decks across the whole weekend
Oliver Jones, AKA Skream, was billed for four sets on the official Glasto lineup. But, if you were following his moves closely, you’d know he secretly sprinkled in a few others, including hosting his own Skreamizm party to play b2b with Ewan McVicar, and playing a surprise dubstep set at Silver Hayes on Saturday. Skream pulled no punches across the festival, staying up to play sunrise sets and never letting the party die over the weekend.
He did the thing. https://t.co/oOv8NV02eF pic.twitter.com/lFQ3KXQBUw
— Joe Beasley (@Joe_Beasley94) June 24, 2023
Jacob Collier turns Glastonbury into a choir
Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier brought colourful energy to the West Holts stage on the sunny Saturday, with the crowd out in full force to sing along. This came to a crescendo towards the end when he broke into a fantastic cover of Somebody To Love by Queen and turned the Glasto crowd into his choir.
In the clip below, you’ll see how the talented 28-year-old controls the crowd with his hands, setting the tune and when to sing and not. He manages to keep many of the 30,000-strong sea of faces singing for a while before bringing it to a stunning close.
Collier is currently on tour recording these sections of his show, with the intention of pulling them all together for one humongous choral cover of the song from thousands of voices.
Fatboy Slim goes full 303
Fatboy Slim jumped on stage to headline The Park Stage on Saturday with no shoes on, which was to be expected. His blow-up costume of the ‘I’m #1 so why try harder’ character from the cover of his 1998 You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby album, however, wasn’t. Talk about being hot on stage.
Norman Cook smashed through all of his hits, including Rockefeller Skank and Praise You, both in their original formats and through revitalised remixes, before ramping things up even more.
At one point, a 303 acid bassline ripped through the audience and appeared on the screen behind the Bristol legend showing the Roland machine in use. A true ode to the Roland TB-303, which has been smattered throughout Cook’s releases (Everybody Needs a 303 is an obvious one).
Elkka and Eliza Rose perform secret B2B on a train
There were a bunch of sets shrouded in mystery at Glastonbury this year. One a secret set was an unmissable back-to-back dance musician, Elkka and Eliza Rose, the latter being MusicTech’s winner Track Of The Year for 2022. Taking place on Platform 23, a makeshift tube train, the set traversed through house, garage and techno.
Daphni B2B Floating Points
Arcadia’s towering spider stage, jutting flame balls into the sky from all angles, has become a familiar addition to Glastonbury’s silhouette since 2010. This year, as with every year, if you were walking towards the fiery beast, you knew you were in for a night of thumping dance music.
One of the acts providing those beats was Daphni and Floating Points. They put their individual styles aside and collided for a mashup of UK rave music, bass music, techno and South American dance music. If you were there, you know how good it was.
Folamour brings the funk und
MusicTech cover star Folamour depicts the beautiful chaos that was Glastonbury festival 2023 on Instagram: “playing under the sun, then under the moon and then under the sun again the same day was absolutely mad.” Performing at the festival for the first time, and with a brand new album, Manifesto, up his sleeve, the Frenchman’s two DJ sets felt like a long time coming for house and disco fans.
MusicTech sat down with Folamour in the midst of his wild weekend. We found out who his favourite producer is, what the best piece of music production advice is that he’s been given and his favourite synth.
