The late May bank holiday weekend. It’s the amuse-bouche of festival season — the excitement for the year’s first noon pre-drinks is palpable, motorbike boots are yet to be muddied, and spirits are understandably high.
Although the hoo-ha surrounding Brockwell Park’s event schedule (the furious local residents, the artist boycott causing a PR nightmare for Field Day) may have snatched the spotlight this year, in Peckham, there’s one word on everyone’s lips, and it’s been there for a while now: GALA.
The community-minded independent festival — which is dedicated to the “warm, organic and soulful sounds” dance music was built on — celebrates its tenth edition this weekend. Drawing in crowds of fortysomething music heads and twentysomethings who look like they’ve leapt out from the depths of Depop’s Discover page, it’s not difficult to understand why Gala is so beloved.
First and foremost, the music across its three days is curated with admirable care. Where it can too often feel as though a bank-breaking headline act is booked and the rest of the day is an afterthought, at GALA, the schedule is harmonious and clearly, very well thought-out.
Friday recruits Detroit legends Moodymann and Theo Parrish, the latter of whom takes over one stage for an entire day of left-field yet soul-soaked house. Unabashed breakbeat, feet-stomping electro and queer-coded techno are on the menu on Saturday, while Sunday pivots to more relaxed and funkier genres thanks to the likes of Horse Meat Disco and Paula Tape.
This musical programme is bolstered by the GALA’s stages, which boast some of the coolest designs I’ve seen at a festival. In the aptly-named Pleasure Dome, long red streamers hang from the intrados and a mirrored panel backs the DJ booth. During sibling duo S-candalo’s Saturday set, whistle-blowing dancers decked in footie gear amp up the crowd, while showgirls on stilts emerge on Sunday’s cacophony of disco.
Elsewhere, a slime-esque plastic installation floats in the air in the Cornerstone tent during Club Are’s Saturday takeover, which is swapped for vinyl records and a disco ball on Sunday as local Hi-Fi institution JUMBI takes the reins. The Cause and Chapter 10 also host their own takeovers across the festival, proving that GALA’s organisers have their fingers on the pulse when it comes to the who's who of the city’s parties.
Finally, JOY, the main stage. It’s decorated with strips of fabric that billow in the wind, and to the amusement of many, an out-of-place vase stuffed with lilies perched on the DJ booth, which looks like it could fall and shatter at any second, and who is undeniably the main character of the weekend.
Either way, the stage provides the ideal setting for the atmospheric club sounds of Avalon Emerson on Saturday and the cinematic magic of Caribou’s closing live set on Sunday, which is breathtaking both sonically and visually. It’s the perfect way to wrap up a festival which doesn’t need to shout about being cool. It just is.
