A secret New Year's set only for those in the know.

Where you need to be at 3am on the first day of 2025. Plus! A selection of holiday reading to help you recover.

At 2.30am on New Year's Day, the main stage at Northern Bass powers down. The music stops, the lights turn off, and tired fans who have spent three days partying at the Mangawhai festival stumble back to their tents or jump on a bus and head home to recover. For many, they’ve given all they’ve got. They need a cup of tea and a lie down. They’re wrecked.

But the show isn't over. Northern Bass isn't done. For the hardiest festival goers, those who’ve kept a little something extra in the tank, there's one last set to take in. You need to know where to go. You need to understand the history behind what’s about to happen. For those making the pilgrimage, the festival’s founder promises something “magical” is about to happen.

So, at 3am, those who want to keep the party going head down a winding path through a thick forest. There, they’ll find around 5000 like-minded people gathered at the Jungle Stage, where lasers scan the trees and a full metre of mulch has been laid to protect the marshy swampland from all the dancing that’s about to happen.

It’s here, when the closing set of Northern Bass is about to begin, that Popham says his festival gets really good. “It's 3am, a lot of people have left, but there are always 5000 people left just for the music,” he says. “It's just the core drum 'n' bass fans … It's the last set, it's an emotional set, and it's the set that's magic.”

In the past, that spot is reserved for artists who know they’re about to soundtrack something special. The veteran UK producer and artist Goldie has done it. “We had five [artists from Goldie’s record label] Metalheadz going back-to-back,” says Popham. “Last year, [Northern Irish DJ and producer] Calibre was going off in the rain. It was just insane”.

Popham also tells the story of the UK DJ Andy C, who expressed concerns about not being on the festival’s main stage. Popham told him: “You're going to want to do it.” After making 5000 people bounce for 90 minutes for his own 3am set, Andy C walked off the Jungle Stage and went straight up to Popham. He said: “Wow – that was incredible, bro.”

Northern Bass’ Jungle Stage is the place to be on New Year’s Day. Photo: Supplied.

This New Year’s, festival punters have many options, many of which kick off today. You could take in Ice Spice and Pendulum at Rhythm & Vines. You could see Becky Hill and Montell2099 at Rhythm & Alps. South Head’s AUM has Pitch Black and Greg Churchill. In Broomfield, Rolling Meadows has Wiz Khalifa and Camo & Crooked. (Tomorrow, The Roots perform here for the first time in 15 years at Summer Haze, a one-day festival in Tauranga’s Wharepai Domain, which is where I’ll be.)

Those festivals are being headlined by drum ‘n’ bass artists, a sign of the genre’s growing mainstream dominance. Popham, who first began promoting many of them back in his days running Fu Bar, points to Chase & Status headlining Electric Avenue as the genre’s biggest success story. “Two years ago, they were headlining Northern Bass,” he says. Then they released ‘Baddadan’ and exploded. “They won't do Northern Bass again,” he admits. “I won't be able to afford them.”

But Popham has something special of his own up his sleeve. This year, he’s managed to persuade the veteran UK artist Roni Size into doing the 3am honours on his Jungle Stage. The 55-year-old released his Mercury Prize-winning album New Forms all the way back in 1997, and he doesn’t tour that much these days. Yet Popham promises it will be among his festival’s biggest moments. “It’s a fucking cool sound system. You’re between the trees. It feels like a club with all the lasers and visuals.”

He expects emotions may, at some point, boil overt. That’s because many of the people who attend Northern Bass have been going for years. Some have been to every single one. Roni Size might be a special moment, but it’s also tinged with sadness, a sign that the festival’s coming to an end for another year. “You've got all these people who've been coming for a long time,” says Popham. “It's something they look forward to all year … and it’s ending.”

After the past 12 months, Popham believes we all need to recover. Live music, he says, is the best way to do that. “There’s a lot going on and it’s been a tough year, not just financially with the cost of living crisis: Trump won the election, AI’s just around the corner,” he says. A festival is a chance to put all that to one side, a moment to let your guard down and find a different rhythm. “I still think music and gathering with people is a huge thing for everyone.”

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Everything you need to know.

• Across 2024, vinyl has been my response to an increasing distrust of tech and streaming services. In a review of Liz Pelly’s new book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, The New Yorker ($$) believes I might be on to something. “A tech company doesn’t care whether we’re hooked on the same hit on repeat or lost in a three-hour ambient loop, so long as we’re listening to something,” argues Hua Hsu. She believes Spotify has turned the art form into ambient noise destined to always be on in the background. “What we have now is a perverse, frictionless vision for art, where a song stays on repeat not because it’s our new favorite but because it’s just pleasant enough to ignore.”

• I really enjoyed this piece from The Guardian, which asks musicians to expose and explain their own listening habits for 2024. “I find Adrianne Lenker’s solo music calms my nervous system,” says Nilüfer Yanya, who released one of my own favourite albums this year. “It’s something I can have on repeat without noticing for about four hours and then I’m like: “Maybe I should change it.”

• The record-collecting website Dust & Grooves has a great interview with Discogs founder Kevin Lewandowwki about the origins of his website and the status of his own record collection. He admits he’s user No. 001, has never sold a record through Discogs, and as well as vinyl he also collects vintage speakers and calculators. He also suggests the site’s firm rule that “you’re not allowed to add something to Discogs until it’s in your hands” might be about to change.

• The secretive Berlin nightclub Berghain has turned 20, and the New York Times is celebrating that milestone with a deep-dive on why it’s become so special. “It’s always been kind of a symbol of queer culture, a space where people are free to be themselves and do what they want to do, kind of outside away from peering eyes,” says one DJ who’s played there regularly. I can’t help but think that just like those exceptional Jack White shows, Berghain’s no cellphones and no photos policies has something to do with it. (For more, check out the Search Engine podcast, Why didn’t Chris and Dan get into Berghain?)

• If you want to hear middle-aged men reckon with the year in pop while debating whether or not their podcast is “brat” enough, The Daily’s latest episode – titled The Year in Music – has all of that, including some interesting thoughts on why many big name stars turned into country artists in 2024. The answer probably won’t surprise you: it’s money. It’s always money.

• The New York Times has put together a comprehensive interactive that allows you to catch up on the year’s best songs from many different genres while letting you discover a bunch you may not have heard yet. It’s great! I spent way too much time with this, which is how I heard ‘Talk to Me’ for the first time, a crisp banger you should crank up wherever you’re spending your New Year’s break…