There’s something about festivals on the Downs.
A wide, endless sky, the wind carrying, and a hum of anticipation that rolls across the slopping grass fields. Saturday at Forwards Festival is a day of contrasts: a carousel that spins between tender indie reflections, sweaty dance marathons, rowdy nostalgia and euphoric crescendos. The line-up reads like a mixtape of extremes, and following it from the first guitar chord to the last beat-drop was like tracing a journey across the spectrum of modern British music.
The day begins with Happy Mondays. They walk on to a roar of recognition, the kind you only get when an audience feels like they’re greeting old friends. The sound is scrappy, the vocals sometimes slurred, but none of it matters. This is nostalgia as communion. The hits roll out: ‘Kinky Afro’, ‘Step On’, ‘24 Hour Party People‘. Each one greeted like a national anthem. It’s messy, joyous, and gloriously imperfect – exactly what a Happy Mondays set should be.
What follows is not a bang but a whisper with English Teacher. Lily Fontaine stands centre stage, voice half-shy, half-defiant, as if daring the crowd to lean closer.
Their songs unspool like confessions; brittle guitars and clipped rhythms carrying words that feel like secrets scribbled in the back of an exercise book. It’s intimate, and strangely grounding, as people arrive in dribs and drabs, clutching pints and Jameson cocktails. English Teacher don’t need spectacle; they give us honesty, and honesty lands.
Nilüfer Yanya’s set is elusive, slippery – not quite indie, not quite R&B, always somewhere in-between. Guitars loop around one another, drums flicker like nervous heartbeats, and her voice floats above it all – cool, aloof, but cutting straight through. At one point, the crowd sways as if caught in a slow tide; it’s not dancing, more like collective drifting.
She builds atmosphere, layers of smoke and shadow that pull you into her orbit.
If English Teacher and Nilüfer Yanya asked you to lean in, Confidence Man barge onto the stage, shout in your face and cover you in glitter.
They bound about in sequinned costumes, synchronised routines that are part pop concert, part pantomime, part burlesque. Every track is a rush, every drop engineered for maximum crowd hysteria. They have us squatting, jumping, chanting; one minute it’s choreography, the next it’s communal karaoke. There’s sweat, there’s confetti. Confidence Man don’t just put on a show – they kidnap your attention over a performance which is absurd, sexy, and utterly brilliant.
By five, the pull of the dance tent becomes irresistible. Annie Mac, queen of UK club culture, has a crowd billowing outside of the tent, until she becomes an almost faceless figure orchestrating peak excitement without ever really being involved. Annie is precision engineering. Her set rises and falls like a perfectly plotted novel; stitching together decades of club sounds into one seamless journey.
As the evening light softens, Ezra Collective brings a different energy altogether. Their jazz-infused set makes for a riot of rhythm and horns slicing through the air like sunbeams, and the whole band grin as if they’re having the best night of their lives. They improvise, bouncing lines back and forth, stretching songs into new shapes.
Most striking is how democratic the performance feels. You don’t need to know jazz, or even like jazz, to find Ezra Collective’s set infectious, radiant and communal.
Darkness has finally fallen when Orbital appear, their trademark head torches glowing like alien eyes. Like beacons beckoning us in like lone ships in the night. Their long, building tracks create a kind of collective hypnosis; thousands of people rising and falling together.
The lights strobe against the night sky, the city twinkles in the distance and, for a moment, Bristol feels like the centre of the universe. Orbital are masters of slow-burn euphoria and they give us exactly that: transcendence, delivered via beats and bass. (Alongside a little Confidence Man cameo, featured rather sweetly with their own Orbital head lights).
Closing the night, Barry Can’t Swim brings warmth and catharsis. His set blends house pulses with jazzy flourishes, creating something both expansive and deeply human. His sound hits like a summary of the whole day; tying the threads together into one final, heart-thumping celebration.
As the last notes fade, strangers hug, cheers rang out, and the Downs exhaled. Saturday is over – but the echoes would carry long into the night.
Forwards Festival isn’t the biggest, brashest, or most chaotic of the UK circuit. But today, it proves something more valuable: that a festival can be a journey. It’s eclectic, yes. But it’s also deliberate, carefully woven together into a day that feels like a story. One that starts in soft daylight and concludes in neon night to leave Bristol glowing, grinning, and already hungry for next year.
featured image: Luca Rosewell
