In previous years, Forwards Festival has had an end-of-term feel to it, being the final festival appearance for many of the traders and artists with a hint of autumn in the air. Brought forward by at least a week this time around to coincide with an early August bank holiday, the piercing sun and scorched white grass give more of a high summer atmosphere, and one which provides a perfect setting for Happy Monday’s mid-afternoon set.
It is perhaps down to the reviewer’s ignorance, but Happy Mondays feel like one of those bands where one can name more band members than songs, where the band are more famous for their off-field antics than their musical output. This is, of course, highly disrespectful to a band who helped define the Baggy Madchester scene and are celebrating 45 years as a unit. Nevertheless, Bez – surely one of the luckiest men in showbusiness and now a keen veg grower – is better known for his Big Brother win than being the hype man for the Mondays. He lurches around the stage, maracas in hand, while Shaun Ryder does his best to keep up with the far more impressive female vocalist to his left. The band sound great, and ‘Kinky Afro’ and ‘Step On’ stir the early revellers.
It is to the credit of the Forwards organisers that they schedule the artists to avoid any clashes between the two main stages. As one musical act finishes on the East Stage, another starts on the West Stage. However, this does lead to a lot of flip-flopping between stages, and it means that crowds don’t really commit to a set, leaving 10-15 minutes before the end of one in order to catch the start of another. This doesn’t do much to enhance the atmosphere. I’m sure the organisers must have their reasons, but another logistical hiccup is in having the main stage facing East, leaving the crowd staring directly into the burning afternoon sun, rather than positioning the stages North to South. Elsewhere, by 5pm the urinals are full to the brim and liquid waste is pouring onto the Downs grass, where presumably families and friends will be picnic-ing by next weekend. This may perturb the often-anxious local residents and Downs Committee.
Following Happy Mondays it’s time for something less suited to a sunny afternoon, the doom-laden rock of Nilüfer Yanya, before Confidence Man are ushered onto the West Stage with an air raid siren. A single word is overheard in the crowd before they start: “Bangers”. And that pretty much sums up what Confidence Man offer, a party-starting cheesy pop-house confection that echoes Vengaboys, 90s Ibiza and a touch of the earlier mentioned Baggy scene. The lyrics are simple and sexual – “with an ass like that there’s no hesitation” could easily have come out of George ‘David Cop-A-Feel’ Bush’s mouth. The beats are heady, and twin performers Janet Planet and Sugar Bones flounce around the stage lip-syncing to the tracks. Sugar Bones does well to perform at all considering he is highly allergic to clothing. As soon as a costume change takes place, he whips his shirt off, presumably to dampen any reaction to non-bio detergent, rather than to show off his impressive abdominals. It’s all very silly, not to be taken at all seriously, and Confidence Man are exemplary at lifting the crowd’s mood ahead of the evening’s entertainments.
And as it transpires, the Australian duo prove something of a world class festival warm-up act as – subsqeuent to refueling with more helles lager at the VIP bar – Ezra Collective‘s mid-evening performance on the West Stage surely shepherds in the day’s acme of communal exuberance. The London quintet are polished exponents of modern jazz, fused with afrobeat, reggae and hip hop; it’s a dynamic genre-mash featuring TJ Koleoso’s propulsive bass shredding, while Ife Ogunjobi and James Mollison (Trumpet and tenor sax, respectively) deliver a two pronged brass section perched somewhere between euphoria and melancholy.
Perhaps the main joy of ‘EZ’s’ set (the moniker used on multiple occasions by drummer and master of ceremonies Femi Koleoso) lies in occasionally turning around to closely observe the exultant crowd’s reactions; there’s the profligate sighting of folk perched on friend’s shoulders, with one young man being fed beer by the pal atop him; there’s even someone who has his feet hooked like talons to a pal’s shoulders, creating a flesh pylon that dwarves the crowd around them; groups of friends perform echolalia in response to the breezy interjections of brass; later, saxman Mollison can be seen on the big screens posing for a selfie with fans in the front row. It’s also rather fortunate to have a seemingly rare smattering of 30s and 40s revellers on hand to supervise the follies of the near-fetuses that swarm around us. One impossibly young party gal complains of an infection in her new belly-button piercing, and a kindhearted maternal type – like the Fastest Mum in the West – immediately whips out a bottle of salving lotion.
Ezra Collective’s set is a fine balance of virtuoso ensemble playing, upbeat danceable tunes and audience interactivity. There’s a segment whereby the audience is ushered into a bout of ‘call and response’ with the dual brass section before we all clap along to Femi’s machine-gunning drum solo. Later, Femi expresses heartfelt regard to the significance of Bristol’s role in the group’s success – venues like the Canteen and Thekla were apparently important in the band’s evolution. It’s perhaps this connection to the city that explains – despite the band riding a recent wave of success in their winning both a Mercury Prize in 2023 and Best Group at the Brit Awards earlier this year – a continued loyalty to Forwards Festival.
Though the band’s near total instrumental approach makes it difficult for the largely untrained ear to pinpoint track names, it’s as if a miracle has occured that I’m able to acquire a consecutive hattrick of titles. ‘Temple of Joy’ is introduced with Femi’s wise-words as to the unconditional capacity to experience joy, even if only in a transitory sense: “If you’re happy or sad, you can still feel joy”. ‘Body Language’ has Femi temporarily confused about the constructural nature of his surroundings (“Let’s take the roof off this place”), before the audience is encouraged en masse to get down on its knees and explode back to full extension upon the beat dropping back in. The set closes with ‘God Gave Me Feet for Dancing’ which, fun fact, is apparently a track favoured by one Barack Obama.
With an hour to kill before Barry Can’t Swim’s set on the West Stage at 9.25pm, there’s a decision to score more lubrication at the VIP bar and, in what could be either a concerning medical issue or a happy discovery that my bladder is actually something like 20 years my junior, I visit the guest area’s compost toliets for my first relief since lunchtime. Opting to stand further back from the stage this time (hopefully there are already enough middle-aged types to look after da kids at the front), the atmosphere since Ezra Collective’s most effulgent of performances has seemingly slipped from largely lucid hedonism to slugglish late night debauchery. Someone loses their balance, a Kiwi gent is approached twice with enquiries regarding recreational supplements and somebody behind me – with pure clumbsiness rather than ill-intent – slams an elbow drop, Dwayne Johnson style, into my shoulder blade.
Barry Can’t Swim is the moniker of Edinburgh-born electronic music DJ and producer Joshua Spence Mainnie. Befitting the festival organisers’ frequent approach of using the Mercury Prize as a guide for emerging talent, Spence Mainnie’s debut album When Will We Land? was nominated at last year’s awards. The most enjoyable and ear-catching aspect to his electro dance stylings is the prominent use of strings, as three violins and a cello meld with twin keyboards and live drums to deliver a dreamscape of floating electronica.
The best part of being shoulder to shoulder with a mass of humanoids who have been in various states of intoxication since early in the afternoon, are the conversations and interactions that often emerge. I’m told that Barry is actually called Josh, and that Josh is in fact an Olympian level swimmer. A couple in their 50s are apparently so starstruck that I’m jotting in a notebook for a tiny local website, they both seem keen to befriend me, and the gentleman later brings up his Twitter profile and flashes his phone in front of me as if to say “Look this is me! Make a note of my name!”
Barry Can’t Swim’s style of music seems perfect to facilitate the nightime feel at the tail end of a festival, even if that means that, for some, it is merely a sonic backdrop to late in the day antics and revelry. There are moments, however, where the potency of the live instrumentation demands attention. The keyboards blend nicely, one providing a stark bed of atmospherics atop which the other adds an intoxicating melody line, and sometimes it’s hard to ignore the surging euphoria generated from the melding of live strings with the electronics. Spence Mainnie, who occasionally breaks out into a boogie, performs in what looks like a table cloth cagol and matching shorts. And that’s not even the night’s most impressive visual. The screen providing a visual backdrop behind the performers plays a surreal and psychedelic collection of images; lava lamp style shapes give way to human sillhouettes and transmogriphying eyeballs, and we see a brief video of someone running around in a suit made exclusively of rossettes.
And, finally, the miracle of a song title (another case where a lack of lyrics makes it challenging for reviewers tone deaf to eletronic music) as ‘Still Riding’ is given to me on a platter by a fellow debauchee. Now in its fourth year, Forwards Festival appears to be marching on in its positive eponyous direction, and is now perhaps ‘the’ event in the Bristol music calendar.
Conal Dougan & Scott Hammond