Festival Review: Bestival 2015

Photo: @jake_mier

If your body is broken by the odyssey of travelling across bodies of land and water by unconventional modes of transport; if you’ve burnt through half the pack of Lamberts you were hoping would last you the weekend before you’ve even pitched your tent; and if a guy in a pineapple print bucket hat is asking every member of your group if there’s a nos balloon going, then you know – already, by 1pm on the Thursday – exactly where you’ve arrived.

This is Bestival, the season-closing party on the Isle of Wight curated by venerated Radio 1 tastemaker Rob Da Bank and his wife Josie. Once a year, swarms of twenty-somethings pack themselves onto ferries, hovercrafts and catamarans, making something of a spiritual pilgrimage to a temporarily transformed Robin Hill country park. Seeking to test their personal capacities for self exploration and self destruction, they dig out their most violently colourful and unapologetically practical garms, raid the nearest Tesco for ‘everyday value’ crisps and cereal bars, and strap themselves in mentally for the most revealing, least hygienic weekend of their lives. Twice now I’ve been counted among said swarms, and on neither occasion have I returned to mainland territory disappointed.

Only at Bestival does Flying Lotus supporting Duran Duran make perfect sense

Many overheard comments referenced the line-up this year, which demanded deeper versing in the creed of circuit raving than the typical major line-up tends to. The poster space occupied last year by ubiquitous names such as Chic, Disclosure and Major Lazer, this year found itself filled with acts of either cult popularity or relative obscurity. This slight stacking towards the alternative lent itself to one of the best festival crowds I have ever experienced, characterised by a concurrent appreciation of niche artistry and unpretentious displays of warmth towards acts of mainstream appeal. Only at Bestival does Flying Lotus supporting Duran Duran make perfect sense.

Where Boomtown – with its divisions by subculture and distinctions of genre – encourages an atmosphere of playful tribalism – Bestival strives instead to transcend such notions of difference, making it the perfect hunting ground for spotters of future trends and guilty pleasures alike. One of my mates shared a fag with (yes, the real) Paul Chuckle at the Chemical Brothers, and had an even better time screaming out all the words to every song performed by a Frank Sinatra tribute band, who were playing in an imitation fifties ballroom. This is the sort of eclectic series of experiences Bestival prides itself on delivering.

Photo: @jake_mier

As diverse as it undoubtedly is though, the festival retains a few clearly defined strengths, and it plays to them. This year, grime and bassline were the electronic genres to dominate, the potential highlight being Mike Skinner’s Tonga party with Big Narstie, Murkage and DJ Q, which saw the ideally claustrophobic Jaegerhaus stage transform into a relentless mosh of sweaty bodies as The Streets mastermind – evidently battered – slurred emotionally charged words of worship to the DJs and MCs he shared the tiny stage with: “Oh my days… Have you ever seen so much shellin’?” Pirate radio icon Slimzee’s back-to-back set with bassline poster girl Flava D caused similar scenes at The Port (Bestival’s main outdoor rave stage, built into a massive disused military ship), reaching a peak when rising grime star Novelist hopped on the mic to provide what he accurately called “energy and flavour.”

Complementary to the paranoid hype of all that 140bpm pandemonium were the softer-edged pleasures of artists like FKA Twigs and Jamie xx, both of whom worked Big Top tent crowds into states of trance, though by entirely different methods. Twigs’s was an entirely physical performance, the balletic sexual confidence in her dancing and movement elevating the collision between her vulnerable falsetto and cavernous future trap beats to a thrilling, primal euphoria unlike anything I’d ever experienced live before. By complete contrast, the most physical Jamie xx’s set got was a gentlemanly goodbye wave to the audience at the end. Whereas Twigs spiked and invigorated the senses, Jamie lulled and bathed them; as his sweeping set washed colourfully over them, his listeners appeared as intent on letting their minds drift from the moment as Twigs’s were on keeping their eyes glued to the stage.

In truth, the experience feels something closer to a lucid dream than it does to merely a ‘music festival’

And even with such a spectrum of sonic excellence to offer, Bestival’s reach extends far beyond the musical. It’s in the nonchalant wanderings through the mystical greenery of the Ambient Forest, the between-act sit-downs beneath the exotic neon glow of the Bollywood tent, and the 6am missions to the toilets past the World’s Largest Disco Ball, that Bestival holds its most profound purchase on the wet wipescented soul. In truth, the experience feels something closer to a lucid dream than it does to merely a ‘music festival’.

Photo:@jake_mier

You might not know as many of the acts listed on next year’s Bestival flyer as you do those on the flyers of Reading and T in the Park, but if you’ve got a cynical VICE-reading friend trying to talk you into following them there next summer, and you decide to take the leap of faith, chances are you’ll be signing up for the early bird payment plan come September 2016, and buying tickets to every rave you never previously knew existed in your local city immediately after.