Top 5 visuals: Glastonbury 2015

Not just the biggest music festival in the world, but an all-encompassing four day bender party. Glastonbury is a festival of performing arts and so much more. With such a collection of popular culture, it’s nigh-on impossible not to draw inspiration from the sets, costumes, visual imagery, music and the self-expression from the punters themselves.

The settings are striking enough. Highlights include the mayhem that is Shangri-La, upstaging the Dalai Lama with an appearance from JESuS and the surreal sights of Block 9; a London tower block and New York tenement dropped in a field in Somerset.

A short stroll through the countryside takes you to the gargantuan mechanical fire-breathing rave spider that is Arcadia.

All lovely stuff but this year’s highlights were the stunning array of music visuals. Here’s my top 5:

5. Lionel Richie – The graphics were hella cheesy but very fitting. A special mention to the strange stock market ticker effect they employed for ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’.

4. Rudimental – Mixing it up with some big LED circles, mainly playing footage of East London.

3. Alt J – The patterned visuals provided both a beautiful backdrop to the live band, but also overlaid on a monochrome live feed for the big screens at the Pyramid stage, complementing and not competing with the traditional performance.

2. Jon Hopkins – Lots of striking generative visuals, but the LED hula-hoop dancers synced to the content made for a real spectacle.

UPDATE: It turns out our very own Chris Stoneman was responsible for a number of the visuals from this set. Glorious work.

1. Chemical Brothers – With new art direction on every track, these visuals kept you on your toes. Laser-eyed mechanical robots, tin foil roller disco, a 40ft face, Greco-Roman architectural fly-throughs and so many dancing shiny lights… maybe you had to be there.