Stevie G: Skepta shows why he remains the boss
Skepta played to a packed Electric Arena at EP, delivering classic after classic, in addition to some new material.
Friday hadn’t gone too effortlessly, with well publicised over-crowding incidents leading to the pulling of Armand Van Helden’s set for safety reasons, and thankfully nobody was seriously hurt. Similar stories emerged from Duke Dumont’s over subscribed gig later on Saturday, and as I drove up that evening, the news outlets were all covering this story, as well as offering hourly weather reports from a festival hit by rain. Thankfully, I avoided not only the bad weather but the overcrowding too, and by the time I leisurely arrived on site at about 10pm, it was a dry evening.
As someone who has experienced pretty much every Electric Picnic, I did notice that it was particularly busy, but access to most services seemed OK from my point of view. I had spent the first 12 years of my own Electric Picnic journey DJing in that Smirnoff arena, which had originally been the modest Bacardi area of the Picnic in 2005.
That day, my three-hour set became a five-hour one, as someone was late, and there must have been about 300 people there in the tent at max. As the years progressed the stage became bigger and bigger, and when Smirnoff took over, it was obviously set to expand even more, given its position in the very centre of the festival. I’d imagine they will move things about next year and put other safety systems in place.
What about the music? Well due to other factors and my own Sunday night set, I mainly saw four acts, and they were all superb.
Gorillaz were the perfect Saturday headliner. It was a great antidote to the madness, as they effortlessly glided through their vast catalogue of great music. The big tunes were accompanied by deeper cuts, reminding us to delve deeper into their later records, and the many on stage guests helped add to the Saturday night party atmosphere. Gorillaz are a sound system in the best traditions of the culture, and they were superb at EP.
A day spent chilling far away from Stradbally meant that I again missed most of the bad showers on Sunday, but I also missed many of the Irish acts I was due to check out. Cork’s I Dreamed I Dream and Babyrat were two of those who impressed the masses, but I arrived just in time to check out Ravyn Lenae. This was high on my list as she is one of my favourite artists right now and she arrived in Ireland weeks after dropping her acclaimed new Blue Island album. The vibe was incredible and by the time she started playing her more uptempo material the tent was packed. Ravyn matched amazing great vocals with a great stage presence, and her huge Love me Not hit proved a festival highpoint.
Next up I headed over to Skepta. I had seen Big Smoke multiple times at multiple festivals, but arriving at the Electric Arena 20 minutes before his set it was already packed. It was a young demographic who were unlikely to have seen him before, and it was testament to Skepta’s standing in 2026 that the anticipation was so high. He delivered an energetic journey through his own amazing career, again justifying why he remains one of the greatest artists of the 21st century. The whole tent became a mosh pit as we jumped around to classic after classic, before he exited with some new material. There was a huge crowd outside too, but thankfully everyone was respectful and had fun.
Before my own show, I briefly caught the Fontaines DC, who played to a huge crowd on the main stage, before announcing they are going to be doing Slane Castle next year too, which is a great achievement for an Irish band. Most people my age seemed to be spending the weekend online comparing the EP line-up to the festival line-ups from the 90s and 2000s, but in my opinion EP remains an important festival for music fans, though the commercialisation has meant it’s a long way from that little gathering in the field in 2004. For me, it was a reminder that Skepta is still king.
