Houghton festival delivered another incredible year filled to the brim with the best selectors and technical wizards currently on the circuit. With a stacked line up, it’s really a festival where no matter where you go, you can’t miss. 🧡
The site, whilst dusty this year due to ongoing heat waves, stands as one of the most curated and well thought out festival sites in the UK. From the technical sound management and clarity, through to the impressive focus on stage and site lighting. Every stage, as always, felt unique and thoroughly thought out.
Ourselves and punters alike were over the moon with the revival of the Quarry this year. Housing some of our favourite acts of the weekend: Binh; Z@p (live); Dave Harvey; and a standout from the weekend Lola Haro who came with some of the most sonically interesting selections of the weekend, delivering sets marked with care, quality and curiosity.
Day time programming saw a step up from last year, with Ogazón continuing to cement herself as one of the finest selectors and DJs in the game. She played a blinding set, filled with rolling tech-house, chunky house cuts and an appropriate amount of garage leaning tracks.
Houghton really is a playground for incredible selectors, where they get the rare and precious freedom to experiment, and Pavilion’s day-time line up was the space where they could really lean in. O.Bee & Thomas eased everyone into the Sunday afternoon with some tasteful, wigged-out psychedelic tracks mixed with soul-influenced house, as well as genre-blenders we couldn’t begin to categorise.
It wouldn’t be Houghton without a serious Terminus lock in and on Sunday morning, it was the place to be. We queued for just under 3 hours (not bad innings, seriously) to see Unai Trotti, Craig & Lutz, Christian Ab, Del Garda and Binh. Each with two hours to play with, and all bringing a blend of tracks you’ll never hear again, Jesus Christ.
A special shout out to Kyle Toole & Kian Ok’s Old Gramophone set that had the crowd absolutely jumping with the grooviest, funkiest tracks we heard all weekend. Also Ste Roberts Terminus set and Pariah at Warehouse both brought some of the best electro of the festival, seamless mixing throughout.
Houghton can’t be reduced to an instagram caption nor videos on TikTok. There are so many corners of incredible programming that you really need to experience it to believe it.
📝: Ben Dee
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