A VIRTUAL GLASTONBURY COULD MAKE MUSICAL HISTORY

Glastonbury may be cancelled, but if you’re bracing for another limp June weekend of televised archive material, you can be reassured.

Despite its reputation for blocked lavatories and throwaway tents, the festival has been pulling off technological marvels for years – and it may well have have the perfect team already on site to do it again.

When founder Michael Eavis introduced Worthy Farm’s infamous fence in 2002, to prevent mass gatecrashing, a more lawless area was brought in to recreate the revelry some felt had been lost.

At its heart sits Block9, founded by set designers Stephen Gallagher and Gideon Berger. In 2019, the duo presented IICON, a 15,000-capacity venue – “part-gig, part-club”,

Gallagher said at the time. It was like standing in front of a gargantuan head, its eyes glazed over by a visor-like cube in which internationally renowned DJS performed, with the audience drenched in lasers as the sun came up. It was one of the greatest new additions to Glastonbury in years, and

(prepandemic) it had been booked for ambitious events last year in London, New York, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Sydney.

Last year, Block9’s founders adapted to our Zoom-based lives, creating something genuinely surprising: a virtual gig experience that came near to the thing itself. The set designers had long worked with Gorillaz, Damon Albarn’s “virtual” band. In December, the collaboration became truly virtual with Song Machine Live, three concerts performed over two nights in a smattering of time zones. Blending animation with live music by the band, the gig raised the bar of virtual entertainment. But Block9’s bigger triumph happened a few weeks earlier, when pop star Dua Lipa, left, attracted five million viewers to their collaboration Studio 2054, a virtual gig that proved such things could be invigorating, not simply second-best. Kylie, Miley Cyrus and FKA Twigs all appeared, and Rolling Stone magazine called it “the future of livestreaming”.

Could such a project be the future of Glastonbury, too? Lipa’s set was created entirely in Printworks, a club and soundstage complex in London’s Docklands. Surely the festival could create headline-worthy sets there for live-streamed performances in lieu of the real thing (or, worse, another year of tired TV clips). A virtual Glastonbury could offer something that the festival has long been famed for: making musical history. Alice Vincent