Bestival (and the Restivals) – Part II

Wales’s picturesquely-situated Green Man festival and the Isle of Wight’s end-of-season desert island disco, Bestival, captured both my heart and ears with tasteful curation, highly creative set design, and plenty of deliciously overpriced styrofoam chip trays. 

Bands performing on Green Man‘s scenic Mountain Stage play to passionate and well-listened psych-folksters, many of whom were as giddy as I was to see cult heroes Neutral Milk Hotel emerge from their mythological hiding spot to headline this year. Even if the number of linen-clad school-leavers that feel too cool for Magaluf has increased, the Green Man vibe continues to be remarkably family-friendly and unpretentious, with an emphasis on good old-fashioned musicianship.

I went along having only vaguely heard part of a Nick Mulvey song on Radio 1, and maybe glanced at a Mac DeMarco vinyl in Urban Outfitters, but I left with a host of new favourite bands. Green Man’s curators make taste rather than follow it, as previous pre-fame bookings of Mumford & Sons and alt-J have proven.

Having had a couple of weeks to come down from the organic soup high, I voyaged by train, hovercraft and shuttle bus to the Isle of Wight to take in the dreamlike barminess of the award-winning (if rather boastfully named) Bestival. With a Reggae Roots stage, a Polka Barn, and a sauna-temperatured Bollywood tent, Bestival couldn’t be any more diverse if it tried. But things weren’t so off-the-wall that the more mainstream thrills of Disclosure, Major Lazer and Chic‘s sets felt out-of-place.

The site’s medium size means you can cover all of its insanity within a weekend, even if the your moshpit-worn legs are telling you you can’t. One minute I was strolling through the tranquil ‘Ambient Forest’, checking out red squirrel reserves and giant communal Roland drum machines; the next, I walked out into a popper-fuelled sea of real-life Mighty Boosh characters throwing unsavoury shapes to a brutal Andy C mix. Bestival is the trip to the other side your inner Next shopper had you convinced you never wanted.