Craig Richards’ vision for Houghton Festival was always one with the scene, the music and its people at the forefront. After a cluster of festivals beset by dreadful luck across the turn of the decade, its recent editions have felt like its final form – the platonic ideal of an electronic music festival, set in ideal surroundings.
In its evening splendour, the site is astonishingly beautiful. Tickets sell out within a few months. DJs themselves regularly cite Houghton as their favourite among an increasingly crowded festival market, and the pull of the Norfolk estate only grows by the year. The soundsystems, crowd and programming are near-perfect. Even the weather in recent years has been wonderful, if you don’t think too deeply about the wider implications of humankind’s rapacious need to torch the planet. It’s a nigh-on perfect festival for those in the know. The rest is up to you.
One of the benefits of attending a festival so completely at-ease with its own identity is that you can be reasonably confident of having a blast at whichever stage, at virtually any time. The 24-hour programming was back with a bang, with Stallions, Giant Steps and Terminus keeping dancefloors moving from Thursday through Monday. The site was largely as it has been since its return in 2022, though Tantrum has fallen off the map, replaced by Armadillo in what could loosely be termed the healing corner. Elsewhere, most of Houghton’s dancefloors sit around a genuinely beautiful lake, punctuated by fascinating art installations. Call Super’s Kardashian-inspired chair installation by The Orchard was one of the more intriguing additions. Reading that sentence back sounds completely unhinged, but I’, at least 40% confident that’s what the sign said.
Speaking of Call Super, he booted the festival into orbit on Friday night at the Derren Smart stage. Just like the bizarre Kardashian wooden chairs, they’ve become part of the furniture at Houghton in recent years. A wonderfully tripped-out, reverbed spin on Jump Source’s “Shattered”, followed by Underworld’s iconic “Jumbo” were two standout selections among many. Midland had already warmed a sizeable crowd in the Norfolk sun beforehand, but it’s under the lights that Houghton truly comes into its own.
From there, all bets are off. Wandering the site on Friday night, we caught snatches of Pariah & Objekt in the Warehouse, Bobby in The Quarry, and Margaret Dygas at Outburst – plus a special mention for Raresh at Earthling, whose set was as smooth and unmistakably Romanian as deep house gets. The technical proficiency across the weekend, at the risk of sounding too heads-y, was phenomenal – relentlessly consistent mixing and track progression as sets moved through their gears. There wasn’t a single note out of place.
There’s really no right or wrong way to do Houghton. Stressing over a missed set is a wasted emotion when something similarly excellent is likely on somewhere else within the hour. Trust your own intuition and follow your ear – certain stages pull certain crowds, and some sets resonate far more than you’d expect.
As something of a Houghton veteran, I’ve only learned this through my own experience. Unexpected joys abound here, and Stallions on Saturday morning with Jane Fitz and Paquita Gordon was one of them. The pair played a sublime set of chugging house rollers, to a wonderfully chaotic crowd – half early birds, half the straight-through crew.
Equally pleasant surprises can be found among the lesser-known artists on the lineup. Facta and K-Lone were a fantastic early surprise on Sunday afternoon, their final thirty minutes bringing a gloriously twisted mix of smooth R&B and their signature, loopy house and garage. Dropping “Pony” by Ginuwine straight into “We Belong Together” by Mariah Carey was a f*cking inspired decision. The lads looked like they were having as much fun too, which is always lovely to see.
The same held true for a thunderous live set from Frank Haag later that day, same stage. The kick of the bass from his own track “Image Exposed” delivered one of those bass-in-your-chest moments that sucks you into a festival set. He closed with a remix of Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” which rattled around the inside of my (largely-empty) skull for the entire journey home. For one of the weekend’s more unheralded acts, his live set was up there with the absolute best.
The flip side of a lineup this stacked is the dozens of artists that you’ll inevitably miss, through no fault of your own – and that’s fine too. The queues at Terminus were slightly prohibitive, allegedly running up to five hours at peak times on the Saturday. But fear not, this is Houghton, and literally everything is happening everywhere all at once. Peach’s Saturday morning R&B set was one of my, if not my outright favourite, of the whole festival – dragging a bleary-eyed crowd to its feet with “1 Thing” by Amerie, “Xplosive” and Outkast’s “Ms Jackson”, keeping the set on the acceptable side of cheesy. Peach was one of the weekend’s players of the match, having also spun a fantastic set of wigged out house music the previous evening. A tremendous DJ, any time, any booth.
Speaking of wigged out, Ricardo Villalobos played an esoteric selection for a suitably strung-out crowd as the Pavilion sizzled beneath the Sunday afternoon sun. Suggesting that Ricardo might be Marmite in his selections is doing a disservice to Britain’s favourite yeasty condiment, but he was coherent & enjoyable here. The IDs were typically niche and unusual, so I’d suggest perusing your favourite subreddit to find out more about those.
A special mention for the returning Quarry stage, which received a serious upgrade. The lighting is absolutely superb, and the additional layers and texture leading down to the excavated dancefloor give it the feel of an amphitheatre. Binh, Bobby and Unai Trotti were particularly exceptional in their revamped surroundings. A completely immersive experience and unique composition brought the stage back with a bang after flooding issues had spoiled the party in previous years. A few water taps wouldn’t go amiss, but it was largely perfect.
The rest of the weekend passed in a typically glorious blur. Highlights kept coming. Even if Francesco Del Garda was somewhat slow out of the blocks, by the time he reached for his livelier UKG selections, Earthling was bouncing, largely thanks to an excellent ID which we’ve since been led to believe is an unreleased tune from Ja.ck and Daniel James.
Freakenstein and Helena Hauff offered something entirely different on Sunday night, their respective live and DJ sets nudging the BPM slightly higher. Freakenstein dropping the pulverising “Got U Like” by CJ Detweiler at the Derren Smart stage is another abiding memory. The “main stage” has also received an excellent visual upgrade in recent years, with Underground Resistance’s live set standing out as a particular highlight. Christian AB is another artist who gained at least one new fan this past weekend, too – his final hour before the Sunday night “headliner” was sublime, dropping Romananthony’s Nightvision’s “Never Fuck (Starchaser remix)”.
The choice for Sunday evening’s closing set was fiendish. Nicholas Lutz, Tama Sumo & Lakuti, DJrum, John Talabot and others all clashed across a glorious three hour period. Ben UFO can make a reasonable claim to being the best DJ in the country right now, and his felt like the obvious pick. The first 90 minutes of his closing Pavilion set was lifted straight from DC10’s main room – unreleased ADMINTi tunes and an assortment of tech-house slammers, before ripping into heavier garage tunes as the set moved up a gear in its second hour. A crippling case of being in my thirties meant I regrettably wasn’t there for the very end. It’s a brilliant, if exhausting, weekend – one which takes a physical, mental and sometimes emotional toll.
All that said, there were some (minor) missteps. The decision to put Calibre in the Gramophone on Saturday night was a puzzling one – the absolute smoothest drum & bass surely deserved a more atmospheric stage with a stronger soundsystem behind it. Houghton’s programming is generally second to none, and truthfully I’ve never successfully organised the best electronic musical festival in the country, so perhaps this one just didn’t quite land for me specifically.
Houghton remains in a league of its own, but it does feel as if its approaching some sort of fulcrum point. The demand for tickets is likely to keep outpacing its expansion – the cat’s out of the bag, the toothpaste is out the tube, and the beans have well and truly been spilled. The changes made in the last few years have brought undoubted improvements, but the real beauty of Houghton Festival sits in its soul – the overwhelming affection for electronic music, and the people who love it, spread across every field. The real challenge will be keeping that feeling alive as the festival continues to change and grow. For what it’s worth, I’d trust Craig Richards, perhaps more than anyone else, to meet it.