SECRET GARDEN PARTY 2016: Beautiful photos from the spectacular, space-themed music festival in the middle of the English countryside
Welcome to the Secret Garden Party — an ethereal music festival that looks and feels somewhat like a real-life version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," set in the idyllic Cambridgeshire countryside. In keeping with the festival's cosmic theme, a giant pyramid — supposedly built by aliens (the SGP crew) — was installed by the lake.
Thousands of music fans travelled across the country — and the world (I spotted a few American accents) — to pitch their tents here for the weekend.
The festival's many music stages are specially designed to fit the year's cosmic theme. On the "Where the Wild Things Are" stage, Amber Arcades, the stage name of indiepop Dutch singer Annelotte de Graaf, performed amid twisted tree barks to a dancing crowd.
Festival-goers dressed up in creative costumes, rocking everything from alien bodysuits and glitter beards, to body paint and LED lights. A few revellers wore nothing at all. This astronaut, who stayed in character when asked to pose for a photo, only lifted his mask to sip his beer.
With a patchy phone signal, the place offered everyone a chance to unplug, and few people were glued to their mobiles. Being cut off from the internet made people connect with each other more.
There were several pianos dotted about the festival venue, indoors and outdoors. In this bar tent, expert pianists entertained the crowd with a play-off.
Smaller venues like The Living Room host up-and-coming talent, like the alternative singer/songwriter Nathan Ball (pictured below), whose Hawaiian shirt and baseball cap belie his gravelly, sombre voice and distinct sound. Musicians who have played here in the past include Ed Sheeran, Eliza Doolittle, and Mumford & Sons.
At The Living Room, audience members can sit on sofas, drink cream tea, and pretend they're at their grandma's house.
In The Next Stage, a mid-sized venue that doubles as a futuristic tent, the critically acclaimed British indiepop quartet Teleman played a fantastic set. This was the best moment of the music festival for me, and highlighted what SGP is all about: enjoying inventive, boundary-pushing music in an intimate setting with a bunch of people dressed in wonderfully ridiculous costumes.
The largest performance area is the Main Stage, where headliners Caribou, Air, and Maribou State played, as well as bands like the German folk band Milky Chance, who were on stage at the time this photo was taken.
In between performances, festival-goers relaxed on hay stacks and enjoyed ice cream. There were plenty of other vendors selling vintage clothes, drinks, and street food, including pizza baked in wood-fired ovens and Algerian kebabs...
...and plenty of bacon to lure those looking for an early morning (or late night) breakfast.
Although the music is the main focus, the annual fireworks show is SGP's visual pièce de résistance. While in previous years, part of the spectacle has involved a sculpture being burned in the middle of the lake, this year, due to health and safety reasons, the pyramid stayed in its place. Instead, it opened to emit fireworks and laser beams that went flying above the lake.
Thousands of people gathered around the lake to watch magnificent patterns of fire and lasers dance in the sky to a soundtrack of space-themed songs including the theme tunes from "The X-Files" and "Star Wars." Sci-fi fans in the crowd heartily sang along.
The wonderment didn't end there. On Sunday, SGP's annual paint party took place by the main stage, and festival-goers launched paint powder into the air, sending a burst of colour into the crowd and all over their clothes and hair — a fitting end to a vibrant weekend in a place that felt like a dizzying utopia, at turns exhilarating and exhausting.
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