Picture the glorious scenes; it’s 10pm on Thursday. Glastonbury is thronging with festivalgoers in search of a good time, and as the sun goes down, the lights slowly go up on the site’s newest club: The Levels.
“They were doing some lighting tests on it yesterday,” Tom Paine of Team Love says. “We got some darkness and I was like: okay, this is gonna look really good.” The festival experts head up their own weekender – Love Saves the Day – in Bristol. They’re also the brains behind Glastonbury staples such as the Wow! stage.
This new venue, meanwhile, is set to be one of Glastonbury’s biggest yet, with a capacity of up to 7,000 and a focus on purely electronic music.
It will be the newest addition to Silver Hayes: a field famous for its dance heritage. The first dance tent was based here in 1995; this was later expanded and became Dance Village in 2000 before changing its name to Silver Hayes in 2013. Team Love has been involved with the area since 2008, and Paine is now one of Silver Hayes’ area coordinators.
Naturally, Silver Hayes’ rich musical heritage has made its way into the development of The Levels. “We inherited a lot of stuff that we wanted to honour, and a lot of agreements we wanted to honour, so last year was a bit of a transition year,” Paine says.
“This year is the first year we feel like we’re really getting our teeth into it and starting to establish what we want the evolution of Silver Hayes to be; what we want the new kind of new identity to be?”
What does that identity look like? Well, The Levels still celebrates that area’s strong connection to electronic music, but is very much a space all of its own – distinct from Block9’s own nightclub the NYC Downlow (which is modelled on a NYC meat-packing warehouse, and celebrates LGBTQ+ culture in particular) or the brilliantly ramshackle venues scattered around Shangri-La.
“You’ve got Arcadia and the spider; you’ve got Block9, you’ve got other great dance music areas as well; but they’ve got a very strong identity,” Paine says. “We were like, ‘Well what can we do?’ We really wanted to build an open air nightclub,” he reasons.
As you do. The inspiration, Paine says, was taken from nightclub architecture, lighting and production; the team wanted to build a space where day raving could seamlessly transition into night-time hedonism.
The aim was to create the sensation of stepping “into a club. But not a dark, sweaty club – a big kind of super club, really taking inspiration from some of the European clubs like Space and DC 10… “ he explains. “There’s an amazing club in Croatia actually called Barbarella’s, which is always one of my favourite spaces in the world.”
In terms of the much-hyped visuals, Paine explains that they drew on venues like the now-closed London staple Printworks, which became famous for its high-ceilinged dance space, and epic light shows. “I think Printworks and [Royal Docks venue] The Beams have kind of set that new bar now, haven’t they?”
More lovely people streaming in past The Levels, the gorgeous new stage at Silver Hayes - there's going to be some great things happening there over the weekend. EM pic.twitter.com/AYbtTn5B45
— Glastonbury Live (@GlastoLive) June 21, 2023
Of course, a space this promising demands some excellent music talent to match– and the line-up certainly looks good, with artists like Camelphat, Daphni and Saoirse playing over the course of the weekend.
“We’ve got to put some big hitters on there,” Paine says. “But what we want to do is really try and still make [the acts] artists that we enjoy ourselves. We know we like the music, and we feel like they’re kind of pushing boundaries with what they do, and are very forward thinking.”
There is also, he says, a special guest yet to be announced for midnight on Friday. Though he refuses to be drawn on names, the identity of their mysterious booking is set to be announced sometime on Friday. “We’re quite excited by that because that’s a very big artist,” he hints.
With The Levels about to open, anticipation amongst the team is sky-high. “It’s been so many months in the planning, and so much build and design has gone into it,” Paine says.
“Getting it running on full power and just seeing people’s reactions is what I’m looking forward to.”
