We should have been packed by now. In another, better timeline, we’d have spent yesterday trying to remember where we left our wellies. Today we’d be crammed into cars, sleeping bags under our feet to make space for more booze in the boot, setting off on the slow pilgrimage to some corner of a Pilton field that is forever Glastonbury.
Not this year; not in our new prevailing reality. Social distancing does not easily lend itself to 200,000 people getting mashed in the mud. We must make do. The BBC will be broadcasting classic sets all weekend, as close as you’ll get to the Pyramid stage in 2020, but what of the festival’s notorious late-night south-east corner? Surely you can’t recreate that decadent playground for the senses during life under lockdown?
The team behind Shangri-La, Glasto’s hedonistic festival-within-a-festival, believe they can, proving that you should never underestimate the ingenuity of professional party people deprived of a party. On July 3 and 4 they’re inviting us all to attend Lost Horizon, a massive free VR event they’re calling “a real festival, in a virtual world”. While performances will be streamed on Beatport, Twitch and YouTube, to fully explore the event you’ll need to either use a desktop PC or, if you happen to have one lying around, an Oculus Rift headset.
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 