Bestival Reviews

Relive Bestival 2011 in all it's glory!

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2010 Review

by John Bownas (virtualfestivals.co.uk)

Ecstatically eclectic, Bestival captures the essence of a dozen or more subcultures and blends a chaotic perfume of music and fashion to leave you reeling – but wanting more.

From punk to polka, from dancehall to disco, the segues come thick and fast as stages morph from one genre to the next – and at every turn there’s another surprise awaiting.

Stretched out along a beautiful valley at the very heart of the Isle of Wight, Bestival swells like a rare late-blooming orchid and bursts into flower as the last-gasp of the summer festival season. Its colours and sounds are born from careful planning and years of combined festival experiences – but the resulting whole is more than the sum of the parts, and frankly takes your breath away.

Of course every rose has its thorn, and another thing that could take your breath away is the long (long, long) walk from the car parks to the arena. Or the long (long, long) queues for toilets every morning. Or the high (high, high) prices for a can of cider at the often crowded bar.

But then the food is varied and excellent, the stages are well spaced and manage to avoid too much sound bleed and the people are – quite frankly – fantastic.

Although perhaps this year there has been a surge in the ‘Reading crowd’ types (low slung pants and hoodies with little hippy-tolerance) the overwhelming majority of Bestival people are party creatures with joy in their hearts and a smile on their painted faces.

2009 Review

by Daniel Fahey (virtualfestivals.co.uk)

Bestival still sits head and shoulders above its rivals, but this year it was a case of two steps forward, one step back, argues Daniel Fahey.

In 2009, Bestival was three sunny days away from cementing itself as the greatest festival of its size in the world. Mixing intelligent bookings, a fondness for dressing up and a crazy Alice in Wonderland experience for two generations of ravers, the quality and eye for detail of the triple UK Festival Award-winning event continued to rapidly raise the benchmark for all other festivals. Instead, the soiree was hit by that infamous British festival conundrum: heavy rain. Faced with their first weather-related challenge in five years, organisers not only survived, but floated headily above the sludge of the site proving that they had more strings to their bow than just throwing a damn good party.

One year on - to loosely quote Oscar Wilde –Bestival has gone from the gutter to the stars (quite literally with their ‘Space Oddity’ fancy dress theme) by expanding the site, adding new arenas and staging Blastival – an intergalactic fanfare of fireworks, tongue-in-cheek amateur dramatics and a huge burning bonfire. Sadly, however, a new site layout has left Rob da Bank and Co taking two steps forward but one step back and it will be at least another re-think and 12 months or more until the organisers create the perfect festival – something they look most likely to achieve.

The festival’s most creative and successful new addition is the apocalyptic gothic fallout Afterburner - an arena that da Bank himself describes as “the best outdoor stage in the world,” – and, on this outing, it is hard to argue. The monstrous off-spill is a stage in the round surrounded by pillars of intermittently spewing fire with the likes of Jaguar Skills, DJ Derek and hardcore legends Altern-8 proving irresistible to night-dwellers. Elsewhere bosses have introduced Magic Meadow, the quarters for the non-musical aspects of the event, which includes the theatrical Insect Circus, comedy stage, and a fluffy pillowed paradise called, aptly, the Solace tent. They’ve also relocated the Big Top to the foot of a hill giving much better views for the audience than previous years and a third layout triumph for the festival.

The trouble, however, lies in the new positioning of the main stage, which has been moved from the foot of the valley to the previous location of the Big Top. Struggling sonically against soft winds, losing power during Lily Allen’s set and suffering from sound clashes from nearby tents, the stage doesn’t have the best debut volume-wise. The real gripes though are in the neck-aching viewing, which is often like watching a film at the front row of a cinema, and for the larger audiences, the crowd backing onto a main thoroughfare, which creates more congestion than is necessary.

Still, Bestival continues to push the boundaries of what an event can achieve and with a great atmosphere and some homemade costumes to match, it remains the most essential ticket in the festival calendar alongside the mighty Glastonbury.

2008 Review

by Staff Writer (virtualfestivals.co.uk)

30,000 underwater freaks came, saw, slipped around and left covered in mud - but did falling on your bum spoil the fun? 

Mud, mud, rain and more mud, you’d be forgiven for thinking this year’s Bestival had the makings for the worst festival of the year, but think again. It seems that nothing can stop the good times at Robin Hill and as Rob Da Bank confided to VF on the opening day,  “It’s the people that make it”. By Saturday you could barely recognise the objects stumbling round in sludge as actual people. Covered in mud, fancy dress or both, all you could see was the white teeth of their smiles. But despite the war-like conditions little was affected in terms of the production. The main stage was closed Friday morning while plastic flooring was laid, meaning the loss of Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong and Bastila, and the BBC Introducing stage was affected sporadically, but it’s a miracle and testament to all involved that there weren’t further major disruptions. Ultimately, no one seemed to care they were plagued by the type of wet and windy conditions you wouldn’t normally go out for a drive in, let alone stumble round dressed as a crayfish, and the attitude shown by all has to be commended, especially the hundreds who face-planted in mud to rounds of applause from delighted onlookers!

2007 Review - Part 1

by Ross Purdie, Virtual Festivals

Johnny Rocket gets his dancing shoes on for Bestival. His feet are bare by Monday.

With at least 14 dedicated musical areas, featuring bands, DJs, comedy and performance, there was more than enough of everything for anybody's musical tastes a Bestival.

The journey had taken longer than anticipated, but by Friday night tent was pitched and ears were at the ready, the walk down from the drop-off point brightened up by the sounds of the wonderful Seasick Steve playing on the Bandstand in the Village area.

Steve (who says the name 'Seasick Steve' isn't a name, but a curse, and who didn't really enjoy the ferry crossing across to the island on strength of that) has been playing all across the festival circuit this summer. A soft-spoken genuine article bluesman and one-time hobo, Steve sings songs about real life. He's incredibly charming and churns out some classic dirty blues on his trademark three-string guitar.

2007 Review - Part 2

Johnny Rocket scratches the surface, digs underneath and touches the sky to discover just what makes Bestival the unique coming-together of brilliance that it is.

Big grins and happy faces define the weekend as 30,000 party-goers mass at Robin Hill, done up in their finest fancy dress finery for a music-crazed orgy of entertainment and love of life under the Isle of Wight sunshine.

The site is festooned with flags, with music blaring out everywhere. There's plenty of space, plenty of shade, and a host of atmospheres, from the happily intimate village fete halfway up the hill to the more mass market zones around the main stage and the incredibly chilled-out Restival area on the way to the main camping fields.

2006 Review

by Tamar Newton, Virtual Festivals

Like the last unexpected can of beer found in the fridge, Bestival is that final delicious swansong, the last dance before the clocks go back and reality steeps coldly in...

Its setting is positively Narnianesque, set in an undulating wooded valley over which can be seen the white sails of yachts from the distant harbour. Unfortunately every Eden has its snake, this one in the form of the ground being more pitted than the average teenager's face, but as Robin Hood walks past idly scratching his lurid latex bulge, the realisation dawns that this is going to be no ordinary festival.

If you suffer from even the slightest ADD tendencies then Bestival will mess with your hard wiring. For a such a small festival it crams in so many new bands, classic DJs, seminal names and sparkly things, it'll have you picking up greasy brown paper bags off the grass just to calm yourself down. Every festival this year has been standing on it's tip toes, straining to be the one to borrow Glastonbury's glory in it's absence. And whilst none can quite replicate the small town that appears out of the Pilton mists, Bestival has certainly picked up it's glittery elements. It's curator Rob Da Bank's fantasy line-up made real and then heavy decorated with Bollywood imagery, robotic horses, WI cake stalls and much much more.

2005 Review

It's not only the amount of people that have more than doubled since Bestival's inaugral outing on the Isle Of Wight last year. More venues, better bands, almost everyone dressed up; it's also double the fun!

With the small but perfectly formed festival site buzzing all weekend with an amazing end of summer party spirit, Bestival 2005 was truly like no other, mainly because, in just two years, organiser Rob Da Bank and his team have somehow managed to achieve what many have tried and failed to do, to take the best bits of Glastonbury and twist them into creating the next generation of small festival; something truly interactive that demands every visitor gets properly stuck in (those 'civvy-dressers' who felt stupid during Saturday's fancy dress party will know). A gamble perhaps, but one that paid off. Just ask the punters who cleared up in the casino.

2004 Review

by Ross Purdie (virtualfestivals.co.uk)

Unlike its bigger, non-related rock equivalent, the Nokia Isle Of Wight Festival, Bestival is small. Very small. That shouldn’t be a problem, small can be beautiful, and if you’ve got great acts (like here, Fatboy Slim warming up for Basement Jaxx) and a good vibe then it shouldn’t matter. But when it looks deserted, then you’ve got a problem. Searching around, it’s often difficult to believe the site is anywhere near full, especially on Sunday afternoon when a decent but damp-weathered set by reggae revivalists Ori-Jah-Nal is watched by no more than 50 people. And the first thing Sia says, when she joins Zero 7’s headline performance is, “Thanks so much for sticking around.” It’s just as well people have done because the band are the highest paid act of the weekend.