Tiesto and Pendulum fly the flag for dance music at Victoria Park

On a pleasant Friday afternoon, London (and most of Holland) descended upon a sun-scorched Victoria park for a day of dance music and block rocking beats as Australian drum and bass outfit Pendulum support perhaps the biggest DJ in the world, Dutch record spinner Tiesto. If anyone had ever thought that dance music was dead, this event was a great eye-opener that the genre still has a lot of support.

While waiting for the headline acts to get started up, there was plenty to keep the revellers amused in the form of three separate themed tents, including the Mixmag-sponsored tent, alongside plenty of bars and eateries scattered around the park. All this extra entertainment was perhaps unnecessary, as most of the festival-goers went straight for the main stage to take in the sun and listen to the warm up DJs. To say that the DJs and acts in the tents were overlooked was, to say the least, an understatement – in particular the Future Disco tent struggled to attract more than a dozen people inside and the Mixmag tent deserved a lot more attention than it got on the day.

However, audience attention was instead on Pendulum when they came on stage for their live set, with Rob Swire and co providing live drum and bass with guitars, keytars and drum kit. Complete with MC playing up to the crowd, Pendulum expertly worked the expectant home crowd. Their set list covered firm favourites and hits from their back catalogue, including Fasten Your Seatbelts, Slam, and Blood Sugar as well as more recent material such as DnB stomper Salt In The Wounds and the electro-breaks of The Island.

The backing band were impressive to watch, particularly the high energy drum solos and dancing guitarists, all backed to Swire's flat singing and the MCs freestyle rapping. There's was a great 60 minute set that got the entire crowd fired up into a frenzy for the main event – even the guys who had come to see Tiësto who were stuck in the crowd looking a bit bemused joined in. Admittedly, I could have watched a longer set, but as they were supporting only, I would recommend you check them out when there are the main headline event.

In the interim between main stage acts, we dashed over to the Mixmag tent to catch the bulk of the South Central DJ set, a pair of DJs in hoodies armed with a keyboard sampler, laptop and plenty of other technological goodies matched with great enthusiasm as they played up to the crowd. How to best describe these two: a riotous mix of electro mash ups, live mixing and manic sampling that cannot fail to bring a smile to your face. Certain highlights included a live mashup of Harder Better Faster Stronger, a mega Muse glitch track, Pon De Floor plus whoops and horns, and a gnarly dubstep version of Kurt Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit as a send off. As the tail end of their set coincided with Tiësto going on stage, the tent of around 50-100 people quickly evaporated to leave around 20 hardcore fans behind. This is just an example of what happened in the other tents, where equally good talent was overlooked in favour of the headline event and as we exited the tent after the South Central set, the scene in the House Rules tent was one of a bare dance floor. I can definitely recommend South Central, they are barrels of fun and I hope to see them in a discotheque near me soon.

Into the dying light of the day, Holland's biggest export Tiesto came on stage to kick off a massive 3 hour live DJ set, complete with trademark psychedelic light show on big video screens. The entire park had gathered around the main stage to see him spin his tracks and judging from the crowd response, he was more than living up to his reputation. His selection roiled on from bongo beats to dance, electro, trance and more old-school Tiesto classics that got the crowd into a rolling mass of body paint, designer rave clothes and dance moves as far as the eye could behold.

Clearly he knew his trade and was easily able to cover a mammoth three hour set, however I have to question why he is quite so big for just playing records. The answer comes from his reputation as a long-time dance DJ and his ability to pull an audience comprising of people from London and all over Europe, including a big contingent of Dutch fans, to this singular UK date and putting smiles on the huge crowd that had gathered. Kudos should go to whoever is managing his brand and his set was a great atmosphere and a varied selection of records old and new that didn’t get boring, even after so long a set.

In short, a great day out – a shame that smaller acts didn't get more attention but with Pendulum and Tiesto delivering bucket loads of great music, it was time well spent and a great day/evening for dance music.

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