Having decided to go to Nozstock: The Hidden Valley on little more than a whim, I didn’t really know what to expect. What I found blew me away.

Running for 25 years, Nozstock is a festival with practically everything worked out just perfect. Nestled amid a beautiful, well-managed site, with a diverse and exciting lineup and a wonderfully friendly crowd, I feel like you can ask for little more from an event.

Given Nozstock is still, at around 5000 people in attendance and with £150 tickets, considered one of the smaller more reasonably priced festivals, the production quality across the event is absolutely phenominal. Beautifully designed sets and stages covered the entire arena, with essentially no area left undecorated. It’s reminiscent of a smaller Boomtoom.

Featuring legendary acts like Grandmaster Flash and The Wailers, even heavy rain didn’t dampen folks’ spirits as the crew worked above and beyond to keep the event running, despite the inclement weather.

As my team and I arrived on site late on Friday we entered the arena and immediately caught sight of the Grandmaster himself, playing old-school A-grade classics with a heck of a lot of pizzazz. Everyone in the crowd loved it, with Flash taking us on a trip from the heady days of the 1970s all the way through to today, scratching and sliding the whole way. While the sound quality for this performance wasn’t perfect, the energy was, and for us late arrivals, it was a particularly fantastic start to the festival.

After Flash my gang and I wandered deeper into Nozstock, but immediately became caught at the second stage. I dubbed this stage the monster mouth stage, on account of it looking like a giant sea serpent’s mouth, fangs and all.

Actually called the Garden Stage, it was playing host to a band named Mad Apple Circus. While the first song of theirs led me to believe they were a pop punk band with ska instruments, their horn section soon started pumping out proper, bouncy ska tunes, with some neat Balkan influences. It was enough to get my knees high into the sky dancing, and many of the crowd joined me. They are a proper festival band.

With the time now close to 1 am, my team and I pushed further into the festival, emerging past the main stages onto a sizeable green slope, with the strangely dulcet sound of clashing dance stages booming in from every direction. In case we’d forgotten where we were, the vista of the slope looked onto another slope, decorated with a lighthouse and NOZSTOCK lettering. After soaking in the view and letting the music lead me, I soon found myself walking through the trees into the Coppice stage.

Featuring, as far as I could tell, neverending psytrance, this stage was a haven for people indulging in circus tricks, and certain mood-enhancing chemicals. While I greatly praise the presence of psytrance at any festival, I wish the organisers had booked some DJs who play slightly more elaborate and varied examples of the genre. As it was, while the Coppice was well decorated and vibesy, I feel a slight increase in the variety of the music on offer could have elevated this stage substantially.

After leaving the Coppice, we moved on to The Elephants Graveyard. Now, The Elephants Graveyard is a beautiful venue, with an almost nightclubesque feel to it, but I never once found myself particularly vibing with the music. Some of my companions disagreed and thought that the intimate dance stage felt akin to a festival easter egg. As I looked around at the people, they had their hands in the air. A good sign, even if I wasn’t too into the vibe.

After an interlude at Elephants, we journeyed across the centre of the festival’s compact site, and found ourselves passing under giant wooden mushrooms and past what appeared to be the trojan horse into a somewhat calmer area of the festival. Lined with closed exhibitors’ tents, I assumed this was the craft area and kept going until I saw lights and heard music.

Entering into a seemingly solid structure to the sound of intriguing, clearly eastern inspired music, I discovered the Cabinet of Lost Secrets. Made up of four different areas, this bar come stage included a submarine entrance (in which Sean Connery made a cameo appearance) and even a secret garden. I learned that the lineup was chosen by Kate, who has the honour of running the stage and has been a Nozstock veteran of 12 years. Her choice of acts typically revolve around groove but can encompass anything as long as it fits her desired vibe. Playing host to some of the most interesting music on offer over the weekend, this venue, which reminded me of Boomtown Fair at its absolute best, was my home for the rest of the evening.

On Saturday, the weather lightened slightly, and allowed my intrepid party an opportunity to rest their tired feet, before I finally managed to coerce them out of bed at 2pm to go see Gaspar Nali. Touring the UK, Gaspar, from Malawi, played a homemade instrument called a Babatong with incredible skill. Sporting a long wooden neck, a single tire wire string, and a drum for its body, Nali’s gigantic Babatong enchanted the crowd, while his fantastic melodious voice simply bowled us over. Soulful and meditative, this performance was a perfect fit for a festival still recovering from the previous night.

Next up was Funke and the Two-Tone Baby. While from the name, you would expect ska, what we actually got was potentially more interesting. Funke runs a one-man band and uses loop pedals to achieve an incredibly varied, broad disco-esque sound. Very groovy indeed.

After Funke, my party ventured into the maker’s area, searching for exciting things… and soon found them. One of my companions heard a recognisable sound and saw an unmistakable hat, and led us towards the Slippery Slope stage. The hat and music belonged to a guitarist who goes by Fukushima Dolphin who one of my friends had previously seen busking on Brighton Beach.

Dolphin’s music made me think of Russian doomer rock, or perhaps The Cure, but on a beach holiday. Playing a homemade resonator guitar, and using a lot of loops, Dolphin had an otherworldy, mirror-dimension vibe that made him almost irresistible. It felt as if he had broken through the veil from a world in which there are Berenstein Bears and not Berenstain Bears- and brought some magic with him (one song aptly named ‘Talking with the Bears’). My party was totally entranced.

However, as hard as it was, I had to resist, as it was almost time for Beans on Toast in the Garden. Now, I expect a lot of the people reading this have heard of Beans, or at the very least will know his song about MDMA, but for those who don’t know, he is something of a legend on the festival scene, with his deep raspy voice belting out simple, political folk songs, deeply suspicious of any bullshit.

He was joined on stage by a young poet, Stacy Gracey, whose ode to courageous women resonated very well with the whole performance, and festival in general. After she finished though, Beans had yet another trick up his sleeve— helping one of the audience members propose to their girlfriend (thankfully she said yes).

Quickly regrouping and indulging in some delicious curry goat from one of the food stalls, we made the very short amble to the main Orchard Stage to see My Baby. Recommended to us multiple times beforehand, My Baby is a female fronted dancy funky tour de force who makes use of a variety of traditions including gospel and blues to deliver a show with an impressive punch.

Following My Baby, we settled down to wait for the headline act, the legendary New Zealand dad band, Fat Freddy’s Drop. Playing a heady, heavy, difficult-to-describe strain of bluesy dub (or is it jazz?) Fat Freddy’s intricate music merged with the rain to create an atmosphere so thick and swampy you could feel yourself sinking into it. As a pre-existing fan, Fat Freddy’s Drop was absolutely my highlight of the festival, and I would recommend all of my readers to see them at the first opportunity, regardless of whether they think they will like them or not.

After Fat Freddy’s, my crew and I ventured towards the Bandstand, looking to see a woman we met earlier in the crowds performing live. The Bandstand stage itself is worth describing: a large wooden stage structure sits in front of an open circle, surrounded by a roofed bench. This setup is incredibly comfortable, and flexible, allowing seated crowds when the venue is quiet, and busy crowds plenty of room to stand and dance.

As a home for singer-songwriter Kitty Bella and her band, it was incredible. With a voice reminiscent of a younger, more innocent Lilly Allen, her smooth jazzy performance was just a little spellbinding and kept me firmly in my seat throughout its entirety.

Sunday, while slightly less jaw-dropping than Nozstock’s amazing Saturday, still played host to a stonking great variety of acts. The first thing I saw was an artist going by Drifta. Extremely hard to categorise, this project features traditional drums, guitar and fiddle, with inspirations from around the world, particularly West Africa. Drifta is a very interesting project, and I’d wholeheartedly recommend people listen to this strange, eclectic body of work.

The next act I took note of was Roving Crows. As a Celtic Punk band, I immediately fell a little in love with them, their pulsing folk fiddle leading me and the crowd into an involuntary jig. While the lead singer’s on-stage banter was a little awkward, I feel like that may have been the point of it- as it was very funny from a certain point of view. Songs of note from their set included ‘Bury Me Naked’ and ‘That’s Business’. Overall, a great performance, especially Kaitlyn Barret’s eccentric dance moves as she played the fiddle to perfection.

Near the end of the Roving Crows set I made the difficult choice to leave the Orchard and make my way to The Balkaneers, in the Cabinet of Lost Secrets. The Balkaneers are quite possibly the most festively festival band to ever exist, a seven-piece, complete with accordion and clarinet playing silly high energy Balkan-inspired Folk. With an incredible amount of energy and great musicianship, The Balkaneers attracted a surprisingly large crowd, filling in and heating up the little venue they were housed in minutes. Despite a wandering member of the party lauding Roving Crows’ encore homage to Avicci in their own sound, I felt justified in the decision to come and see The Balkaneers due to the sheer amount of energy I felt coursing through me at the conclusion of their set.

Following Balkanise, I made my way to the Garden Stage to catch some of the Beatles Dub Club. While absolutely achieving what they set out to, and very good fun for about ten minutes, Beatles Dub and Drum and Bass remixes aren’t actually as much of a winning idea as I (and I’m sure a fair few other people) first thought they’d be.

I took this opportunity to head on back over to the Orchard stage, and catch Bristol’s Bloco B. Faithfully recreating the sound of Brazilian carnival music, and accompanied by a beautiful dance troop, halfway through the set Bloco B brought their drums into the crowd, turning an already good party absolutely riotous. It looks like a lot of fun to be a member, that’s for sure.

Finishing the festival was the legendary Wailers. Known for being the band that played alongside the mythic Bob Marley throughout the sixties and seventies, I’ve heard almost all their songs a billion times, both recorded and as covers… but they simply hit differently when performed live by a band which has collected talent from across the reggae world. Speaking of, I like how, despite all the original members being long dead, the band lives on, continuing to play its amazing music. While you aren’t seeing Bob live, the Wailers are definitely more than a tribute act and were a perfect headliner for the Sunday evening of Nozstock.

Sometime after the Wailers, and a degree of exploration, it was clear that the festival was winding down and to my chagrin, my favourite stages seemed to be the first to close. The result of this was that, following the closure of the main stage, a mass crowd gathered to see DJ Markey and his MC at the garden stage. It was a good vibe, despite even heavier rain, and a sea of hands in the air…. but nothing lasts forever. At the stroke of 12:30pm, DJ Markey’s set ended mid-song due to a licensing requirement- a tease, but they announced they’ll be at Nozstock next year.

As the crowd dispersed and members cut their way through the rain, a not-insubstantial amount of people ended up at the teepee bar near the festival entrance. Most had clearly had the same ideas as me that some chai and a cheeky shisha would be a great way to round the evening out. Vibey speed garage blared in the teepee and people seemed to naturally form into circles. It was packed, but a hell of a vibe and was a welcoming environment to end the night in style. The line for chai, perhaps inevitably, became an impromptu dance floor before I braved the rain for my tent.

Beyond the music, for a festival of its size and type, Nozstock’s “Extracurricular” activities were amazing. Walkabout showswere numerous. This included the incredible ‘Insecurity Guards’, a charismatic trio who patrolled the festival entreating people to deposit their insecurities in a portable safe to be burnt. This performative activity allowed to could be introspective in a silly safe manner, in a place where you might not normally be so.

The comedy stage had a well-packed schedule, although, perhaps as is normal with comedy, some acts were definitely funnier than others. In addition, there were dozens of craft stalls, ranging from blacksmithing (although punters were, perhaps sensibly, not allowed near the forge) to a community-operated clay bread oven. I’m still not sure how they managed to transport that in, and I reckon that itself is a testament to the dedication of those who organise/attend Nozstock.

So, now comes the part where I normally list the festival’s problems. Nozstock gives me trouble with this. All the usual, jarring pinch points- rude security, disgusting toilets, epic walks— were all non-existent. The security was lovely, the toilets were well-managed, and the site was compact. Even the heavy rainfall was managed well, with the occurrence of difficult mud in the arena rare (you would be fine in trainers) and a fleet of tractors keeping the tracks clear and rescuing vehicles who got into trouble when it came time to leave.

While Nozstock has no real problems… there is one slight improvement I could suggest. This year the beautiful site felt just a little empty- as Bilbo Baggins would say, “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread”.

This isn’t consistent across the whole event all of the time, but, especially at night, hardly any of the live music venues are being used. Stumbling into an unknown ultra-late night live act or cabaret is one of the highest joys of festival life, and yet at Nozstock it felt like most stages were all over and done by two.

The quality is all there, and most things on at the festival are great, but, Nozstock could probably do with another thousand or so punters, and a dozen or so more acts. None of them need to be big names at all, but currently, the incredible site feels about a third empty, and half empty at night.

Nozstock: The Hidden Valley is one of the best festivals in the country and offers attendees the chance to lose themselves in a tremendously beautiful setting for three wonderful days of music, fun, and dancing. The crowd is among the friendliest I’ve ever encountered, only topped by metalheads and psychedelic music lovers, and many of the acts are literally world-class.

I’d strongly recommend attending if you like even one act on the lineup. While initially I feared it would be a messy, drum and bass-heavy rave-fest, it turned out to be so much more. Nozstock is essentially a pocket Boomtown, just without any of Boomtown’s bullcrap.