Hospitality in the Park finishes off a summer of incredible one-day festivals in London

by Neil Bennett

For those of us too lazy or busy to trek out of London for Secret Garden Party or Boomtown, this summer has seen some outstanding one-day festivals.

(OK, some of them call themselves two-day or weekend festivals, but they’re not fooling anyone. Each day’s line-up is self-contained to appeal to a certain type of music fan, so few go to both. And unless you’re sleeping there and can have bizarre after-hours adventures, it’s not a true weekend festival. Right, now we’ve got that sorted, let’s move on.)

Highlights this year included the Chemical Brothers and LCD Soundsystem headlining the last days of SW4 and Lovebox respectively – performing blinding sets to super-energetic fans. But the weather has decided that summer’s not over yet – and so has Hospital Records. The label of choice for fans of liquid drum-&-bass has set up its first one-day festival, in Finsbury Park in north-east London – and the line-up looks rather special indeed.

Hospital Records has put on some pretty epic Hospitality nights before – one in Brixton Academy in 2014 lives large in my mind – but they’ve pulled together something rather special for Hospitality in the Park. Highlights include all of your usual Hospital Records favourites: High Contrast, Metric, Fred V & Grafix etc – but label co-founder Tony Colman’s London Electricity project has something special prepared with live singer, MCs and a 12-piece brass band.

Other acts we’ll be checking out include Modestep on the Rampage stage, hot up-&-comers The Erised doing a full live set on Med School and maybe revisiting our misspent youth with LTJ Bukem and Tim Westwood. And there’s a just-announced reggae-focussed sixth stage that I need to look over the bill of.

The quality of food looks as high as we’ve come to expect from major one-dayers – street food rather than rough burger vans – and the beer’s even better. While Lovebox‘s beer choice was Corona or Corona and SW4 was largely Tuborg, Hospitality in the Park has Hospital Records own beer from Signature Brew.

And if you fancy literally flying, you can also take a ride on a tethered hot air balloon.

Tickets are sold out, but if you’re got em already, we’ll see you there.

* One quick note if you’re going – cos this caught a few of us out at a previous Hospitality summer party at Building Six in Docklands – leave the sun-cream at home. Security won’t let any liquids in, whether sun-tan lotion or eye-drops. Yeah, seems weird to us – but them’s the rules.