Wild Life Festival

Successfully cementing its place in the festival calendar, Wild Life, in its third year, fortuitously flourished in the best weather since its inception, as hometown-legend Fatboy Slim played his biggest crowd in Brighton for over five years. Diversity amongst the music mirrored the diversity of age, as revellers from as young 10 (accompanied by parents of course) up to their late 40's danced around Shoreham Airport to pop, grime, R&B, house, techno, drum & bass and reggae - though it was Fatboy Slim's headline set on Friday night that managed to bring everyone together for a truly impressive show.

Moving the festival from a Saturday/Sunday to a Friday/Saturday seemed to be a more logical idea and hopefully will be the case perpetually. Friday had its fair share of genres on show, with the Wild Life main stage hosting pop stars George Ezra, Clean Bandit and Jess Glynne, whilst the Tropical stage went grime with Wiley and JME. The Elrow and WHP stages hosted many worthy acts of electronica, including Pete Tong, Gorgon City, Hannah Wants, Jackmaster, Martinez Brothers and Fatboy Slim.

Naturally festival co-curators Disclosure and Rudimental sneaked in on the line-up, taking a break from headlining the two previous years and crept in on the line-up performing DJ sets on the WHP stage.

Continue reading: Wild Life Festival 2017 Review

After winning the Best New Festival Award in 2015, Wild Life was back at Brighton City Airport to now showcase and cement its date in the festival calendar as a major player. To do this, it would need to go one better, bring in something neoteric and exhilarating, whilst also landing some grand-musical heavyweights. They arrived in the form of grime's latest stars Stormzy and Skepta, American vets Ice Cube and Busta Rhymes, and pop artists Bastille.

It was the former N.W.A lyricist who had the crowd trembling at his figure tips though. Supported by no more than his son (not O'Shea Jackson who plays his father in Straight Outta Compton), Ice Cube was the penultimate act on Sunday's main stage and stole the show. The set of the weekend, despite co-curators Disclosure and Rudimental headlining the festival for successive years.

With both Stormzy and Skepta having tracks appear ubiquitously over all radio stations, this was their moment to shine, their moment under the spotlight. They appeared on the main stage Saturday and Sunday respectively and both seemed to revere their audience from the first moment, with Stormzy indicating it was the biggest and best crowd he had every performed at - it probably was for Skepta too.

Continue reading: Wild Life Festival 2016 - Live Review