It's rare that you find a festival that has every single element balanced in the most brilliant way. It's not just about the music, nor the people, nor the setting, or anything else for that matter - what's important is juggling all these things in order to create an environment for people to have fun in. The team behind Gottwood festival have done just this, year after year.
What did Gottwood have in store for its 6th year? Move D, Ben UFO, Hunnee, Motor City Drum Ensemble and many, many more. It also had 5000 dancers of all ages who took to the seven different stages until late into the night. After three years of being gobsmacked at Gottwood, I had to catch up with one of the main men behind it all, Tom Elkington.
First of all, did you ever think that six years after Gottwood 2009 you'd be booking the biggest names in the game and in one way, putting Anglesey on the map?
In short, no! The whole festival started off as us purely wanting to throw a party for our friends and it has just massively escalated.
With that in mind, do you think you will allow the festival to grow in terms of capacity? Or will it be strictly capped at 5000ish?
So we’ve grown little by little over the years but this year we hit, in our opinion, the optimum capacity and we won’t be goring any further - every stage was going off all day and there was still space to get away from it all, and the whole operation is now just about feasible from a business perspective.
I noticed as I read the programme at six in the morning, that Steve Aoki had sent in a letter of complaint slugging gottwood as a money grabbing, uncreative environment that snuffed out his chances of pulling off a ludicrous dance move in attempt to neck some girl (or vice-versa, my memory's a little hazy). I'm sure most of the Gottwoodians would like to know if this letter is actually real and, if so, how you responded to the lost King of EDM?
Errrrrrrrm…. yes this was a real letter - we responded by sending some out of date Gottwood cake to him via our private owl jet.
I know it's hard to pick but, if you had to choose one set to see again, who would it be?
Easy… It’s not a repeat but its just something I am gutted I missed - Move D’s disco set on the Saturday afternoon. It clashed with Andrew Ashongs live performance next to the lake and I made the choice to watch Andrew as I am a massive massive fan of what he is doing at the moment. However, when I heard pretty much everyone who was there saying that he played one of the best sets they have ever heard and that he dropped what in my opinion is one of the best edits around right now, I was extremely jealous!
Finally, are there any new acts that will join the Gottwood family next year?
Loads, however that would be giving it all away - we’re back in the office post summer and will start programming then. You also need to keep an ear to the ground for the new work coming out of our label (Gottwax), we’re putting out some new artist series mini albums and continuing the compilations.
