Parklife’s blend of DJs and live acts separates it from the band-centric Reading and Leeds and rap-heavy Wireless in the youth-cultural big leagues, but this year the headliners are a band and a rapper: the 1975 and Aitch, raised in the region and with Manchester dear to their hearts.
Rave culture, though, remains at Parklife’s core – everywhere you go, artists address the crowd as “ravers”. The Rinse FM stage hosts quality UK garage from aficionados such as Girls Don’t Sync, Interplanetary Criminal, Conducta and Salute; Jaguar, Melé and more loosen hips in house venue Magic Sky; and on the Eat Your Own Ears stage, Yung Singh spins a blistering mix of Punjabi garage and bassline, and Nia Archives whets appetites for the Prodigy’s set with remix-heavy jungle exhilaration.
Aitch’s homecoming headline set, performed on a levitating strip that takes him almost into the rafters of the Parklife stage, showcases his bulletproof charisma and confidence. In a generous display of hometown pride (“0161 to the world and back!”), he takes the audience through his journey chronologically to show how Manchester has been there every step of the way, from rapping the freestyles filmed in his Moston estate that first broke him to bringing out a children’s choir to fully realise the chorus of Close to Home (“they love me when I’m home but I’m never there / We like it here but it’s better there”).
However, his thunder is stolen by Fred Again: the crowd at the Valley stage is enormous, all in the grip of the producer’s easy EDM-like euphoria adorned with atmospheric UK bass and diaristic vocal samples. He’s become the poster boy for a supposed revitalisation of UK dance music, and some will say his turnout compared to Aitch’s indicates a paradigm shift away from rap’s pop-cultural dominance in recent years and back towards dance. But dance music never actually went away, and Fred Again is just having a moment as any big star does – in the age of streaming, Parklife is a reminder that tribal loyalties to a single genre are very much over.
The top slots of last year’s Parklife were dominated by US rappers including 50 Cent, Tyler, the Creator and Megan Thee Stallion, but this year has more homegrown vocal talent. Shygirl brings proudly sexual dance-pop, while Little Simz returns to an ever-swelling audience finally clued into her greatness. The few US artists do elicit vivid excitement, though: experimental rapper-producer Jpegmafia and Skrillex each kicked up dust by spurring on mosh pits, and while Parklife has struggled in the past to incorporate heritage artists – who tend to mean nothing to Gen Z – the significance of Wu-Tang Clan and Nas’s NY State of Mind show isn’t overlooked here: Wu-Tang tees are ubiquitous and Raekwon’s CREAM verse ripples through the crowd.
In 30-degree heat and barely any cloud to cover it, water access becomes an issue at congested refill points – then a mid-afternoon storm on Sunday halts the festival altogether. But with clear communication through the festival app and people entertaining themselves with phone speaker raves, the action is back in an hour.
The 1975 close the main stage with a safe, controversy-free set in the wake of frontman Matty Healy’s recent edgelord antics, but at the Valley, the Prodigy bring heretical big beat that typifies Parklife’s rave ethos. Paying an unspoken tribute to late frontman Keith Flint with his silhouette etched in laser during Firestarter, the response is mayhem from an audience who have the facial expressions of people being hurled around a rollercoaster. Thirteen years in as the official start of summer for northern England, Parklife hasn’t strayed far from its original mission.
