REVIEW: BRISTOL LOVE SAVES THE DAY FESTIVAL 2012
On Sunday it was doors at 10 and pac-a-macs at 11 as Bristol’s latest boutique festival kicked off under a sheet of thick Jubilee rain.
Founded by the team behind Glastonbury’s Dance Village WOW! Stage, Love Saves the Day claimed to be the ‘culmination of many years spent in fields and clubs, in tents, on dance floors and stages’ and from the moment revellers set foot in the Castle Park site they must have known something was afoot.
After being handed a set list in one hand and plastic flowers in the other I was greeted at the front gate by a troubadour of twenty-somethings who popped up under red umbrellas to serenade the young couple ahead of me with an acapella rendition of ‘I’ll be there.’ And they didn’t even ask for change afterwards. Regular Bristol city centre this was not.
Around the corner a boxing ring style dance-off stage was already filling up with kids in fancy dress power jamming to NWA and a village fete tent complete with sack-racing Goths. Tucked away at the rear of the park Tenja was already packing a crowd at the Tokyo Dub Stage with heavy beats and life-affirming reggae vocals. Bristol knows how to lap-up dub and heads were nodding in to cans of Thatchers Cider here.
Around the site a dance troupe dressed in black and hearts flipped and splitted between crowds while one man zipped his hoody up over his face, catching his tongue in the tracks and slipping down a muddy hill in the process. It was one of those days. The crows noticeably swelled around main stage for Jessie Ray, a set that opened with uplifting 90s power pop but effortlessly melded in to synth driven drum and bass that had the crowd throwing fingers like it was ’96.
Next a somewhat over exuberant compere brought on Annie Mac with the kind of zeal one might expect from a North Korean royal announcer. Still, the crowd lapped up Mac’s first mash of pop and dub and when the rain began to fall hard her festival experience shone through as she reached for the dub step. An hour of face-melting dub and techno left the crowd hungry for the next main stage set, Disclosure, who ratcheted up the tempo for more 90s influenced rave and sing-along lyrics. This must have been the tip for the day as for the rest of the night Disclosure seemed to be on everybody’s lips.
Disaster struck at six as the bar next to Tokyo Dub Stage ran out of booze. The bar manager tried to calm the frustrated crowd, who had been queuing clueless of the booze-out , but were he on Apprentice he would surely have been torn a new one and promptly fired. Alas, life goes on.
Over at the Just Jack stage Eats Everything was kicking off an hour of old school euphoric house that felt refreshing after hours of dub based belly wobblers. A friend of mine mentioned that in this era of glamorous celebrity DJs it’s good to see a producer who looks like a butcher from Norwich and I’d be remiss to neglect the glaring pun that Eats Everything certainly knows how to serve his chops and beats. Maya Jane Coles followed with a set of deep, pounding house that made a muddy field in Bristol feel like a villa party in Spain. Coles also has the endearing habit of flashing the crowd a wry smile before dropping barnstormers and this little trait felt more honest that some DJs tendencies to shout about ‘phat ones’ or throw their arms up like Biggie. Just saying.
By this point people were wet. Like jump in a river and then dry off under a waterfall wet. Fortunate then that up next were DJ Luck and MC Neat, only MC Neat wasn’t there so it was really DJ Luck sans MC Neat. Luck wasted no time in setting the tone with 90s garage classics Sorry and Little Bit of Luck. Dancing became so frenetic that the boxing ring dance floor began touching earth and security had to pause the set for fear of the whole stage collapsing. Visibly annoyed, Luck hit back at security with some Lethal Bizzle and then a song about Tigers during which everybody but me knew to crouch and jump in unison. Impressive stuff.
Foreign Beggers saw the night off in their own inimitable way on the main stage before the crowd surged out of emergency exits like liberated captives in search of the coveted few remaining tickets for Love Saves the Night at Motion and Lakota. For me it was a rush to the nearest warm bar for warm drinks and a dry towel, where if love didn’t save the night then certainly a hot shower would do.
Words: Daniel Humphry
Photos: Laura Palmer
