There are already so many festivals in London, but Polygon Live LDN promises something unique.
Its big pull is ‘spatial audio’, where hundreds of speakers are placed around the listener in a dome, surrounding you with the music from all angles.
Despite being a small festival over three days, it is claimed that its one stage has more speakers - 100 - than some larger festivals have in total.
I was intrigued to experience this and went on Saturday when headliner Jon Hopkins would be playing.
Line-up announced for ‘world’s most immersive music festival’ in Crystal Palace
The festival aims to draw a variety of genres, but was DJ heavy, the complex and varied electronic sounds suited to split up and spread around the dome.
This was smaller than any festival I had been to before. One stage, a few food trucks and bars in a corner of Crystal Palace Park.
All 3,500 people were drawn to the same stage all day, so there is no chance of a quiet intimate set.
All effort was put into one stage and its showstopping sound, offering a strong focus to the event. It was a great event for the indecisive.
The setting was a great size for a day, with a grassy hill and benches to relax on. Pints were around the £7.30 mark.
But the people were not here for the pints of Jubel.
They were camped out in the centre of the dome, bagging the sweet spot in the middle of all the speakers where the surround sound could be best appreciated.
Indeed, latecomers on the edge of the speakers lost out on the effect, with the sound all from one direction.
The music swirls around you in circles, drums in one corner, bass in another, sometimes moving around your head in a dizzying super high definition spin.
One track contained muttering voices - or was it people muttering at the back? You could not tell.
It was novel to be at a festival where people remark more on the audio quality as the music - a bit like remarking on the quality of a book’s paper rather than the story.
This focus away from the music was epitomised by the fact Jon Hopkins was not actually on stage for half of the set.
The performance featured a complete playback of his new album, RITUAL, with live accompaniment for part of it. But Jon himself was not to be seen, with a crowd facing an empty stage.
The attraction was not on the stage, but all around us - the dome of sound.
If I were being cynical, I would say this was like going into a speaker showroom and being played a sample track that showed off the hardware.
But you could tell it was more than this - people around me were embracing each other, staring upwards, misty-eyed with nothing to distract from the music itself.
It was a somewhat spiritual experience, and a fitting way to hear an album named RITUAL.
It was all encompassing and immersive, like bathing in music. If you are the sort of person to lie back and listen to music with your headphones on and no distractions, this is for you.
