Every Single Person I Saw at Lovebox Was Having the Greatest Time of Their Life

I have a long held theory that UK day festivals were secretly created by the Church of England to provide sinners with a quick glimpse into hell on earth, and thus scare everyone into repentance and conversion. Luckily I’m Muslim, and therefore immune to the clergy’s wily ways, so I had a great time checking the infernal carnage at Lovebox 2015.

It goes without saying that the most unanimously accepted trend at Lovebox has consistently been shuffling, the greatest UK export since dubstep. It’s banned in many clubs across the capital now, probably because London is becoming increasingly allergic to people having fun, but Lovebox is really into fun, and it earns the (unofficial) title of London’s premier shuffle-friendly festival. By the time Annie Mac had dropped David Zowie’s “House Every Weekend” on Saturday, the air had become thick with dust kicked up by Huaraches moving at the speed of light. As far as the eye could see, boys and girls dressed in revealing vests and snapbacks sang along to this summer’s Malia anthem, and I felt like I was 52 years old.

But aside from the shufflers, Lovebox 2015 had a brand new hot festival trend to report on: men wearing bindis. Yes, you heard it here first, I saw it there first, I really fucking wish I hadn’t. No longer willing to let cultural appropriation be their girlfriend’s hobby, the meninists of #festiefash have arrived at the problematic party.

Pretty soon after turning up at Victoria Park, I was convinced there must have been MDMA gift bags being handed out at the door, which I’d clearly missed out on. I'd never seen so many people buzzing this ecstatically before the sun has even considered dipping. Either that, or the sniffer dogs had hayfever, because every single person I laid my eyes on had a jaw swinging like a two ton wrecking ball.

I spent most of my time at the Noisey stage (obviously), where Danny Brown played a signature set that involved a lot of jumping around and shouting the word “MOLLY!” over and over again whilst the crowd went completely HAM. There were no shufflers here, but there was a dude wearing an open button-down shirt with flames on it doing an incredible experimental dance that involved him getting on his knees into the foetal position and then leaping up in the air and straight into some lunges. He got the gift bag.

By the time Bonobo brought his one man band of organic electronic goodness to the stage, everyone was higher than Kate Moss on an EasyJet plane, and when it started raining halfway through his set the crowd took that as the pathetic fallacy cue to lose their fucking minds. For reasons that intrigue me, one girl spent almost the entirety of his set standing still and giving him the finger with both hands. She kept this up for over an hour without leaving. Maybe they used to date? Maybe it was some sort of abstract interpretive dance, and we’ll see photos of it at a Barbican exhibition next year. Or maybe she was so high, her brain had started incorrectly translating Bonobo’s complex basslines as sentences, sentences that were taking the piss out of her directly, and the only way to save some face was to flip two birds. There were some touching moments in the crowd too, like when a pair of ginger strangers spotted each other and celebrated their minority status by gesturing at each other’s hair and then hi-fiving.

Like many festivals, Lovebox was defined by a mixture of hedonism, queuing and wandering around feeling overwhelmed by the maximalism of it all. And Snoop Dogg’s performance should have been at the top of this turnt pyramid. Instead, the superstar of the line-up churned through his back catalogue of hits in unsatisfying minute long snippets, with a bored look on his face, like he’d rather be in bed watching Netflix with one of those four quadrant dip trays you get from Tesco. By this point I was feeling the same way and decided it was time to call it a day. I wasn’t alone: a man dressed in a full canine costume called ‘Snoopy Dogg’ was also seen heading for the exit just twenty minutes into Snoop’s set. One can only imagine the sorry scene of the mates-less Snoopy Dogg on his early tube home, disappointed and humiliated.

In recent years, day festivals in London have become a mildly intimidating combination of Wavey Garms trolls and people up for the weekend from Essex, but to give Lovebox credit where it’s due: absolutely every single person I saw was having the time of their life. Between the acts, fairground rides, skate bowl, food trucks and the Bump roller disco - which saw a lot of wobbly-legged girls in very little clothing skating around like a low budget version of Beyonce’s ‘Blow’ video - Lovebox delivered hard in terms of concentrated debauchery without the quagmire of actually camping over. Just need to make sure I find them gift bags next year.

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