Ground Rules Festival was the next logical step for Singularity Uk, who started off putting on nights in a Stoke Newington basement. The festival is a passion project born of a need to recreate the old skool rave scene, and emerged from a postlockdown rave series at Grow Tottenham with Albion Audio.
Located in Deene Park, Corby, a site which previously hosted Illusive Festival in 2024, an undoubtable amount of thought and care went into this first year of Ground Rules. With four main stages and a heavy focus on sound system, the festival was a three day love-affair with UK underground dance music and the cultures that surround it. Most attendees looked around my age (mid-late twenties), but there were enough millennials letting loose to indicate the team definitely achieved the old skool feel they were after.
The days started gently with live dub, funk and soul at Terra Firma, the festivals 2nd largest outdoor stage powered by Firmly Rooted. After having my aura cleansed by The Purificators and watching a heated game of twister with The Clamor Clowns, I bounced between happy hardcore at Crashsite (rig by Shakedown Audio) and jungle at Gridlock. (Scotland Yard and Albion Audio).
I mainly floated between two groups of mates, but every stranger I spoke to was keen to yap and share who’s set they’d loved and who they were excited to see next. I had a few solo side quests to attend the workshops at The Living Room Yurt. My workshop highlight was an introduction to Vinyl DJing with fairy godmother of the scene Louise Plus One, and Singularity’s own Silver Snipa. My set highlights were Chinese Daughter spinning vinyl at Crash Site and Midrib’s smokey set at The Living Room. Tokio Station also cast a bit of a spell on me during their sunday night sunset slot at Terra Firma, before the whole festival reconvened a couple hours later for ‘the last dance’, a final send off and a reprise of the weekend’s musical highlights.
The attention to detail was unmatched; from The Womb Tomb (a tent dedicated to sanitary products and a place to wash menstrual cups) to the range of food stalls and a gluten free pale ale for all the celiac baddies, everything decision from the Ground Rules team seemed thoughtful and practical.
The detailed visual world of the festival, from merch to staging and decor was created by lead illustrator Dani Nova, and harked back to the DIY culture of the UK rave scene. I wasn’t alone in finding the androgynous aliens dotted about the site kinda sexy, and the relentless queue outside the merch tent spoke for itself.
Ground Rules really felt like an exploration of the past, present and future of the hardcore rave scene. It was a marriage of Bristol to London and everywhere in between, with endless energy and love poured into every element.
