Our Madruga experience began late on Friday night as the sesh was hitting its stride, dragging our brat-summer-ready suitcases up the gravel path to Baskerville Hotel, pounding music met us at the door and a small swarm of ravers made their way between rooms. After wondering what we’d just walked into and ascending the stairs into the belly of the building to claim our bunk beds in the crew dorms we stopped for a minute to take in the place, picture a mix between The Haunted Mansion movie, a ’90s school trip without teachers and an atmosphere of ‘anything goes’…
After soaking in the space (which full disclosure low-key gave us the heebie geebies) we set our sights on why we were there, Madruga’s music. Blending the sounds of Bristol and Brighton’s electronic music scenes, we were in for a weekend of what we will say with our full chest, was the best tunes we’ve heard all festival season and outdid even our absolute favourites, with a lineup including DJ ADHD, Dr Banana, Papa Nugs and a stack of steamy underground artists.
First off, don’t be fooled by the mansion aspect of this festival, we came in a little apprehensive at the prospect of spending a weekend amongst a crowd of ‘rah’ but after chatting with the team behind the event found that Madruga very much comes from grassroots, the baby of two groups of working-class Event Management students turned promoters dating back to their uni days. The venue itself, picked for its iconic history as a starting point for Fantazia’s legendary parties, hosting Carl Cox and holding the final raves of the free party movement of the ’90s within its walls before the government dealt a crushing blow to the rave scene with it’s 1994 criminal justice bill.
After familiarising ourselves with the 2 evening stages on Friday night, ‘The Dining Room’ (which took some getting used to as it kinda felt like time hopping back to our school disco days) we moved over to ‘Eso Room’ to watch The Ghost drop some unmissable bangers, but we do hold our hands up… we may have overdosed on the funky fungai chocolate we made in preparation for the festival and were forced to call it a night earlier than we would have liked (it was our first time making them ok!) While doing our bedroom ritual (with significant difficulty) Iz got kidnapped by the Madruga mansion dorm bathroom when the broken lock sealed her in a windowless room with no escape (talk about a bad trip) after Lorna tried banging the door down, a shroomy Iz clawed her way to freedom with some expert lock-shifting skills (we can laugh about it now lmao). We looked at each other comedically to say WTF!
Warming up to the nature of the Baskerville Hotel after learning of its legendary legacy and rating the old-school scatty nature of the place now we knew its roots, our expectations shifted away from the lens of Madruga’s socials (shoutout to their videographer for shining a spotlight on the sickest parts of this place!) and towards what event place truly is, a messy weekend away with your mates.
On Saturday we quickly sussed that the daytimes are designed for downtime with mellow tunes starting around noon at the Madruga stage, or the dome as we nicknamed it, (we wish this one stayed open throughout the night as it’s an absolute vibe in the dark). Giving you time to chill, chat and back some bevs with your besties, the size of this place is perfect for friends looking to split up between the pool, sauna, hot tubs, plunge pools, Recovery Records (with vinyls going for as little as 5 for £20) and general zen zones including a jelly-fish-lantern covered tent in which we found the comfiest bean bags we’ve ever parked our broke butts on (perfect place for a zoot) as, despite the lack of signal, you’ll run into each other again without all the usual festival faff of regrouping your gang.
“It’s a festival for a big group of mates who actually want to spend quality time together and not have to worry about finding each other. We want it to feel like you are at a party with your mates” says Erica Travis, Co-Founder of Madruga.
Making the most of our final evening, we warmed up with drag bingo at the built-in pub on-site which saw Madruga’s in-house drag queen Callum being his eccentric self (we love you) switching between shouting numbers and falling on the floor in his handmade fits which were absolute fire and Iz bagged a full house, cheers for the T-shirt btw 🙂
As night descended, the DJs brought another beat-heavy vibe to the dancefloors as the mansion came alive again to the sounds of up-and-coming artists including Ssslip B2B O Kirk who pimped out the Dining Room stage with some soul-clenching tunes, Delano who delivered some dirtyyyy tunes and the renowned Joy Orbison who took to the decks at midnight for an hour-and-a-half set of pure magic. Despite being danced out, Darwin Reef sucked us back in with a set that can only be described as hypnotic, had the crowd going ham and us crawling our way to bed.
After a long dip and debrief in the hot tub on Sunday morning, we packed our bags and headed back to London with Madruga lingering on our minds, still processing everything we’d witnessed. Despite the vibe being completely different to what we’d expected, we can honestly it’s unlike any festival we’ve EVER come across before (and believe us we’ve done the rounds). This event is truly unique, only on its second edition, in the early stages of development and with that, we can’t wait to see what Madruga’s saying next year…