Once again, the beautiful Scorrier Estate has been taken over, seemingly by half of Cornwall, for the extravaganza which is The Great Estate Festival.
There’s something delightfully surreal about watching a drag queen strut past a Victorian egg-and-spoon race while drumbeats throb from deep in a Cornish woodland. And yet, that’s exactly the kind of alchemy The Great Estate Festival pulls off with effortless swagger. Once again, the manicured lawns of Scorrier Estate morphed into a glorious circus of the strange and spectacular, as this now firmly-established favourite on the South West’s festival circuit returned for another year of music, mayhem and mild mischief.
Where else could you stumble from a pop-up pub serving locally brewed oddities straight into a rave tucked beneath the trees, soundtracked by futuristic drummers who look like they’ve wandered off the set of Blade Runner? It’s this kind of genre-bending, expectation-defying experience that’s become the Great Estate’s calling card—part garden fête, part fever dream.
Musically, it walked the line between crowd-pleasing and curated cool. Floor-fillers drifted through the forest air like incense, while costumed characters roamed the grounds with the kind of tongue-in-cheek theatricality that makes Glastonbury’s late-night areas feel positively understated. Moustaches were mysteriously misplaced, police officers (of the impersonated kind) brought cheeky chaos, and somewhere between the circus tent and the gin garden, someone probably rediscovered the meaning of life.
By day, it was all earthy vibes and family-friendly exploration trails, craft workshops, wellness sessions and enough eco-conscious programming to keep Cornwall’s green heart happy. But when the sun dipped, the estate pulsed to life. Big-name acts lit up the main stage, side shows offered theatrical bite, and mischief was never more than a few steps away.
The Great Estate doesn’t just host a festival—it conjures a world. A place where the rules are rewritten, the usual is upended, and the only certainty is that you’ll leave with a story to tell and glitter in places it has no business being.
This festival has things going on wherever you look, with little stages tucked away behind trees and weird things going on in every nook and cranny, including an amazing lady doing some extremely high aerial aerobics, a man getting covered, and I mean completely covered in squeezy bottles of paint, by several eager young volunteers and a kid of 11 or 12 or so doing an impeccable version of Forgot About Dre to hundreds of people in Made Wongs House of Wrong tent.
There was an old American School Bus with bands playing in front, or even on top of it, namely a cool goth rock band called Retreat, who, among others, did an awesome cover of Britney Spears' Toxic. There were great street food places everywhere and a superb choice of drinks, including a Pimms double-decker bus!
Early afternoon, we saw Willy and the Bandits wow the crowd with a set full of blues-tinged Classic Rock, which was followed by an unexpected highlight of the day in California's The Alive. These guys have been making waves since they formed a few years ago in their early teens. Today, their blend of Grunge, heavy rock and punk took the Great Estate by storm. With influences like Nirvana, Black Sabbath, Idles and Queens of the Stone Age clear, their set, propelled by youth and sheer energy, was outstanding.
They were billed today as The Alive featuring Shane Hawkins, and brought on their pal for a few songs, most notably a frenetic cover of Foo Fighters' Low. Shane pounded the drums as expertly and with as much power as his late Dad, Taylor, would have done hundreds of times on this track. This was followed by them bringing back on their own drummer, Miles Elze, two drummers, two kits, one display of brilliance in a 5-minute double drum solo, or should I say drum duo.
The Alive have a catalogue of hard, heavy, but catchy tunes, and an attitude that surely shows they are destined for big things, very quickly. Go and see them if you can, soon! Well done Great Estate for getting this exciting young band on the bill.
The Great Estate pulled out some really big names this year, Happy Mondays headlined on Friday with a zany, hit-filled set, and the mesmerising Leftfield closed the main stage off on Sunday night with some electronic genius, taking us back to the 90's in a flash.
Music News was here on Saturday, though, and witnessed the re-formed Supergrass, here to play their debut album in full. What a treat it was. They did the whole album, in order, and from the opening riff of opener I'd Like To Know, the crowd were bouncing. As early as Track Two, Caught By The Fuzz, we had a guest drummer. Danny Goffey got off his stool and came forward to introduce Shane Hawkins to guest on the track, which his dad Taylor, had done many years before, Supergrass reportedly being one of the Foo Fighter's drummers' favourite bands, back in the day. Shane bashed the hell out of the skins, much as he did earlier on in the day when he guested with California's The Alive. At only 17 years old, this guy has a massive future ahead of him. Could he eventually be his Dad's successor in the Foo Fighters? We'll leave that one out there...
It's amazing how many fantastic songs there are on I Should Coco, there's not a bad track on there, this band were always well crafted musicians, and effortlessly bang through the hits, Mansize Rooster, Lose It and Lenny, and of course, the one that even the non Supergrass fans can't help but know, Alright being the track that all the phones came out for. It's some of the lesser stated, more mellow tracks that really got the nostalgia going for me, Sofa (of My Lethargy), Time and the beautiful, Time To Go taking me right back to my student days, repeatedly flipping the vinyl over, until I knew all of the words, which surprisingly I still do.
With the immaculate debut album out of the way, interspersed with a lot of smiles and some trademark banter from Gaz and Danny, they delivered a greatest hits section featuring among others, the fantastic Richard III, which had the effect of propelling me to the front of the crowd in search of a mosh pit. Supergrass have always had the ability to embed a lot of emotion in their songs, no more so than in the poignant Late in the Day and in the quite frankly moving, Moving! Sun Hits the Sky and Pumping on Your Stereo finished off what could possibly be the perfect Supergrass setlist and performance. The guys played with confidence, oozing experience, and were clearly loving it and enjoying being back in the county where they recorded their debut album (at Fowey's Sawmills Studios).
This festival seems to get better every year, and the surprises keep coming. We look forward to seeing what Great Estate 2026 has in store for us. Early Bird tickets on sale now...
*Gaz Coombes image courtesy of The Great Estate Festival 2025_Matthew Hawkey
MUSIC PREMIERES
Four years on from the ‘Actual Life’ series lifting him into the mainstream spotlight, Fred Again.. continues to feel unavoidable. The London producer and DJ born Fred Gibson has moved at a relentless pace, bouncing between sold out stadium dates in New York and surprise appearances at Sheffield’s 1,000 capacity Forge, while also making history as the first electronic artist to top the bill at Reading and Leeds in 2024.
Where the ‘Actual Life’ releases and his fourth album, 2024’s ‘Ten Days’, leaned into warmth and joy pulled from ordinary moments, Gibson has also sharpened his instinct for high impact club weapons rooted in garage, dubstep and jungle. That side of his output lives on ‘USB’, an “infinite album” first imagined in 2022 as a home for tracks that exist outside any fixed universe, including defining moments like ‘Rumble’ and ‘Jungle’.
‘USB002’, the second vinyl only chapter of the ‘USB’ project, brings together 16 recent tracks, many of which surfaced gradually on streaming services over a ten week stretch. The music was shaped live, in step with ten unannounced DJ appearances across the world from Dublin to Mexico City. Even with a Glastonbury style registration system in place, The Times reported that 100,000 people tried to secure tickets for the opening night in Glasgow.
Appropriately, ‘USB002’ feels alive and constantly in motion, helped along by contributions from close collaborators such as Floating Points and Sammy Virji. The rigid, techno driven pressure of ‘Ambery’ echoes elements of Floating Points’ 2019 album ‘Crush’, while Gibson’s take on ‘The Floor’ builds like the slow climb of a rollercoaster before dropping back to earth without warning.
The guest list stretches beyond the usual dance circles, with two Australian guitar bands popping up in unexpected ways. ‘You’re A Star’ reworks Amyl and The Sniffers’ ‘Big Dreams’ into a breakbeat driven rush, while ‘Hardstyle 2’ pulls the experimental post punk edge of Shady Nasty into an Underworld adjacent space alongside Kettama. Gibson’s real trick is his ability to connect with anyone. These tracks are not reinterpretations but full takeovers.
The visual world wrapped around the ‘USB002’ rollout reinforces the instinct behind the music. Phones were prohibited at shows staged in vast warehouse spaces under sweeping light rigs, while Gibson’s team shared striking black and white footage and created artwork for each single on site. Bottling that sense of urgency, the project is rooted in the thrill of the present moment, something Gibson seems able to summon simply by turning up.
If the ‘Actual Life’ series and ‘Ten Days’ captured passing snapshots of experience, ‘USB’ is defined by constant movement, a space where boundaries are removed entirely. Sitting somewhere between an album and a playlist, ‘USB002’ underlines why Fred Again.. feels so dominant right now, and suggests that his current run may only be the beginning of something much bigger.
