How often does torrential rain genuinely put a damper (pun intended) on your festival day? For me it depends on a) who is on the bill and how well they’re playing, and of course b) how drunk I am. After all, it’s not every year you get the boy from Brighton (famous for his outdoor parties) headlining your local festival.

Unsurprisingly the moment I walked through the Good Vibrations’ gates, the clouds opened for the first time. Aside from girls in bikinis, it seemed that many had come unprepared for the weather, or just didn’t care. To my delight the cleaver cookies at Good Vibes had pre-empted the weather and sheltered the entrance (complete with drug searching of hats) under a large shed. This allowed people to gather and protect themselves from the skies for before making a run for the next sheltered pit stop.

After a break in the weather, I made my way to the Mr J tent. In doing so I noticed that there were plenty of facilities cleverly located around the partitioned eastern edge of the Parklands. The outdoor Good Vibes stage was at the heart of the setup, with the minor stages all within throwing distance. This meant that quick stage hopping could overcome any perceivable set-time clashes. On the J stage Wolfgang DJs were doing well to warm up the undercover cocktail bar. Mixing a good blend of lounge-tech house, the boys did well to kick things off for the day. Mike Relm followed picking up seamlessly from his predecessors but with an audio-visual display, which was enticing. However, in search of different corners of the festival I skidded in the mud over to P-Money and Guests on the main stage. It was here I heard House of Pain’s Jump Around for the first of five times throughout the day. It was a superb mix of electro and hip-hop using vinyl and even though ducking off stage at intervals for sound adjustments and the like, still kept the crowd on toe.

Eager to maintain the quality to date, I moved over to Laundry, which could have been mistaken for a pigpen with people enjoying the physics of mud. Kid Kenobi sporting a beard looked adequately beyond the years his name suggests but still as cheekily entertaining. MC Shureshock at the other end of the stage was at his usual energetic best, spending most of the set atop the deck table. They played a solid set of commercial house, which included some surprisingly older tracks and the fourth spin I was to hear on the day of Soulwax’s Kids remix. At times I found it a little cliched (and yes, the word itself is also a cliche) and I struggled truly engage with it. Nonetheless the crowd seemed to enjoy it and left the set with what they had come for – recognisable tunes to re-charge them through the afternoon. The Laundry stage failed to clean out the mud that had built up, but it was still inviting enough to demand I stay for Micky Slim. In what was a high point of the day a big beat progressive house, his set was sprinkled with dirty electron – the main ingredient being his dirty remix of Jump. Luckily this was enough to entice my less informed friends to stay and groove.

London duo The Stanton Warriors followed Micky and performed a late afternoon blend of break beat and electronica including Pop Ya Cork. It was a consistent set, but failed to show the shattering bass lines and garage manipulation that they’re famous for.
I was keen for a change of pace so I moved via the Good Vibes stage when the rained stopped to the Roots tent. I walked past Sam Sparro on the main stage who, with his metro styled band, was entertaining a decent crowd. I arrived just in time to hear an extended version of Black and Gold, which resulted in a dynamic listening experience. He is extremely musically talented and his tracks are worthy of their accolades, but his persona makes it difficult for a male punter to openly enjoy him – so I moved on.

Over on the Roots stage for my first visit I found the drum n’ bass pioneers Roni Size Reprazent. The trio were bouncing about the stage, towels in hand and entertaining a modest yet loyal crowd. I was eager to hear how far they had come over the years, but I found it difficult to involve myself having arrived late. So I returned back the main stage to settle for The Presets. Initially their revolving pyramid mirrors spelt Persets (sic), but that was quickly rectified towards the end of opening track Talk Like That. Over the past 12 months their setlist has changed little, but that’s because it works – or so I thought. Much anticipation was felt among the festivals for the ‘local’ lads but the dreary start cut short (Girl) You Chew My Mind Up because of little crowd response. A quick progression onto Eucalyptus worked much better and triggered a increasing rhythm. Down, Down, Down, My People, Are You The One and the usual I Go Hard I Go Home finished the set, which to the boys credit meant for a brilliant end.

It’s been two year since I first heard a Deadmau5 track and instantly became obsessed, and my dream to see him was finally realised when in the Laundry tent he began the set with Ghosts n Stuff. Initially mixing from under his reflective pink mouse headm it was soon removed to allow for practicality and the comfort of his baseball cap. Joel then moved onto the Reward is Cheese, which erupted the tent into rapturous cheers. Brazil, Hi Friend and Not Exactly all got a spin, as did Faxing Berlin. But it was difficult for the Mau5 to give the set a beginning, middle and end. Rather it was a display of all his best work in some form of tempo order. It highlighted his genius producing abilities but didn’t quite accentuate his DJing skills. Nonetheless, it confirmed him as a brilliant electronic music mind and it was by far the highlight of the day.

That is, until I moved over to the main stage for the start of Mr Fatboy Slim. The opening track of Praise You was expected but still the opening bars tasted as sweet as the first time I’d heard it in ‘99. And then as if somehow the gods of Good Vibes had their techies wire up some sort of mammoth unprecedented special effects, the first note of Right Here, Right Now bought with it rain which hadn’t been felt since about 2pm earlier in the afternoon. His trademark blow horns, shirts that are louder than the music and hand written messages on his vinyl covers give added production qualities. The granddaddy of big beat and trip-hop forced us to ignore our mothers old safely advice; stay out of the rain and don’t listen to ‘doof, doof’.

Rockefeller Skank was mixed with The Rolling Stones I Can’t Get No Satisfaction while Christopher Walken did his Weapon of Choice routine on the big screen. On the side screens we were reminded of the fat kid from You’ve Come A Long Way Baby with his arrogant t-shirt slogan ‘I’m #1 So Why Try Harder’- somewhat appropriate for Fatboy given his success. However, the slogan breathed some negative air when mid set (like in Sydney) the sound cut. To his credit, short of throwing a rock star tantrum, he and his techie fiddled about until the music returned resulting in a festival wide audible sigh of relief. The set was scattered with some basic mismatches and general schoolboy continuity errors, and it proved that while he may have been #1 he still needed to try hard. Still wholly undeterred by the storming rain and the ‘hiccups’ the crowd insisted on pounding out the puddles along to In Heaven (complete with token lyric “FUCK” written on the screen). Green lasers pointed out above the crowd, who were mesmerised by the rain that had now also turned green. Ending the set with my third helping of Micky Slim’s Jump Around remix, Fatboy used the hand written vinyl covers again to thank us for staying to party in the rain.

The value of a destroyed phone, note taker, shoes, hat and wallet were no comparison to that of the set I had just seen. It proved that if you’re at a festival and feeling a drop of rain, all the festival needs to do to keep you is drop a great DJ and for that DJ to drop a great track.