If you’ve read previous theartsdesk roundups from We Out Here festival, you’ll know that this is one time of year when your humble correspondent takes a short holiday from strict critical objectivity, at least about the festival overall. With a small, but regular DJ residency at WOH (this was my fourth year), impartiality is out of the question. However this time round I won’t wax lyrical about the great sense of community and whatnot, and I can hopefully give honest assessment of the music heard. And I did at least get some extra sense of perspective this year as my camping companion for the weekend had only ever been to the very first, much smaller, WOH in its original Cambridgeshire site – so it was very interesting to see the much expanded festival through his eyes.
We eased in on the Thursday, mainly taking time to saunter, survey the site, bump into friends and enjoy a happy nod to Digable Planets on the mainstage recreating warm-hearted Nineties rap with plenty of call and response. But the relaxed pace was dramatically disrupted when we decided to check out electronic producer Darren Cunningham aka Actress’s live set on the Lush Life stage. Having seen him play many times over the years I was expecting something quite spaced out and spooky, but what we got was really extraordinary, weighty and corporeal. Cunningham has always been on the cutting edge, but here he pushed his unique synthesis skills further than every yet put them to work generating something with intense rave energy: even as the sounds warped and merged with incredible craft operating, it was all in service of generating intense bodily feelings. We came away truly reeling.
Back to the main stage, and we found the altogether less avant garde but still ravey Outlook Orchestra performing 20 years of dubstep and dubstep-adjacent tracks. It’s the sort of thing that should be schmaltzy – and god it made us feel old – but this lot have a long history of working with the best in UK bass music and understand the spirit and impact of it, so though it was a nostalgia exercise it was a whole lot more musically satisfying than your usual “orchestral Ibiza” type jazz-hands nonsense. We rounded off the night with Brit-in-Berlin Barker, who did something extraordinary with the long, narrow rave pergola aka The Grove stage (pictured below). His set was almost entirely synth arpeggios – somewhat in the way of “kosmische” Germans like Tangerine Dream and Manuel Götttsching but infinitely higher tech and more spatially precise – with kickdrums or sub bass notes appearing only every minute or so with no obvious expectation of when the next would come… but the keyed up party people present were dancing away to it completely without the need for the guardrails of a steady beat.
Friday, we were determined to avoid the FOMO of poring too hard over a packed programme and started by just following where most of our friends were going – which was the literally named Bowl stage. Impressed by nobody coming a cropper on its steep sides, we enjoyed the genial presence of Gilles Peterson himself, feeling like a very informal host at a giant fete or BBQ as he broke out his radio voice between the tracks he was spinning – with increasing jollity as he had to pad out his set to wait for dub reggae legends Channel One who’d been held up by a crash on the M4. His reports, his glee as he said “tip to all DJs, make sure you’ve got a few reggae 45s in your bag in case Channel One don’t turn up”, the fact the eagle-eared among us spotted he was dipping into records that must have still been into his record bag from his radio show the previous weekend: all of it added strongly to the sense of a family occasion.
Channel One provided a fantastic blend of spirituality (a nyabinghi drumming record blasted out as a purifying ritual) and classic reggae good times vibes, and time disappeared until we remembered another tribute show on the main stage: Dave Okumu’s ‘DVTN: A Prayer for D’Angelo’. This had a truly remarkable array of musicians, and some brutally intense moments, but where the Outlook Orchestra have had years to perfect their replication of dubstep and jungle grooves, this is a new project – the modern soul legend D’Angelo died less than a year ago – and trying to capture the fluidity of his Soultronics backing band (often cited at the time as the greatest live unit in the world) is wildly ambitious. This felt like a first iteration, albeit a bold and passionate one, of something that needs time to mature.
We strolled about sampling all kinds of sounds, notably stopping to the sprung-floored Love Dancin’ tent to marvel at some elegant shapes being cut to Mr Scruff and DJ Spinna’s eye-wateringly selection of eye-wateringly rare but relentlessly wonderful discofied records from around the world. Then at the behest of my wife, who’d dropped in to site for the evening, we watch Japanese-Swedish star Yukimi and were very glad we did. There couldn’t be a better demonstration of well-drilled performance: her backing band – who are essentially Little Dragon, the band she has also fronted for 20-odd years – were so tight, in an old-school, groovy Californian Laurel Canyon way, that at first their nifty, cheeky interplay became the main event. But Yukimi’s huge presence took over and by the time she launched into an epic, rather Pink Floyd-y take on Kate Bush’s “Army Dreamers” she’d won us over, and sent a group of 20- and 30-something superfans into squealing raptures.
Friday night – much as happened last year – we got a bit housed out. It started well, though, with Berlin scene mothers Tama Sumo and Lakuti in the haybale surrounded Rhythm Corner area delivering the most wonderful roll-out of house music as built from first principles: disco, latin, post-punk, acid elements mixed together with enough looseness to be an antidote to modern overly-slick digitally synced DJing but more than enough well-practiced expertise to make every transition a boost in energy levels. It was telling that upwellings of whooping and cheering from the crowd came not at dramatic drops or shifts in the music, but spontaneously, mid-song, because people were simply having a lovely time.
We took a break from dancing to watch main stage headliner Thundercat (pictured below). It was a fun presentation with Iron Maiden-inspired giant inflatable backdrop that matched the virtuoso bassist’s larger-than-life persona, but suffered from pacing issues. The set was best when the band eased back from a million-notes-a-minute flamboyant prog-etal-jazz-funk, especially when they sat right back into smooth, Eighties, Hall & Oates vibe – but it felt like even these didn’t have the song pushed as far front and centre as they could have. We started to speculate what this could be like if Thundercat were to find a frontperson with performance energy to match the musical ambition and tomfoolery, leading me to utter the alarming phrase “Imagine a Black Dave Lee Roth!”
However, when the main stage finished and we circulated among the many dance areas, we got weary. It wasn’t just the preponderance of four-to-the-floor dance music everywhere: this was when my companion’s sense of overwhelm at the difference between this year and the first festival in 2019 kicked in. Certainly it has progressed in slickness even since last year – with remaining wrinkles with toilets, fencing, and crowd circulation ironed out, yet more arenas added (notably the fancily constructed party central Beat Hotel with whole lambs being fire-roasted outside it) – and it really is a world away from the unknown quantity of 2019’s speculative attempt to persuade the UK’s soul-jazz community out into a field. “I feel like this could be any festival,” my friend said.
Well, we thought, we’re old and tired, let’s go somewhere we know will be a little quirky and escape the main drag, relax a bit then get an early night. So we headed to the Once In A Blue Moon tea tent where my friend DJ Monobrow was playing, and sure enough it was exactly what we needed: a cup of chai, soft cushions and gloriously peculiar tunes like a version of Voodoo Ray seemingly performed by goblins all played over a warm sound system built (in Bristol, naturally) from old chopping boards. We unwound, we felt like, yes, there was still room for quirk and unpredictability on the fringes and were ready to turn in feeling better. But then as we left, we heard odd sounds coming from the Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz tent which hands over to DJs at night, put our head through the door and got a glorious surprise.
A young DJ, who we ascertained was called Winona, was playing music we had never heard before to a very small crowd of her 20-something peers and a few waifs and strays including a guy firing lasers from his fingers. It felt like stumbling into a party we weren’t meant to be at, and as such brilliant, and the sounds were dazzling. There were elements of grime, global electronic sounds, old New York electro, broken beat, menacing UK road rap and more but it all felt wildly new, blended with total confidence – Winona mixing fast and impeccably all while nonchalantly smoking a cigarette – but chucking out new “wtf” moments minute by minute. She too ended up moving into house music, neatly building towards it as people flocked into the tent ready for long-established DJ Wookie who was to take over at 2am, but what we’d seen til then was enough to completely revivify us and we stumbled to our tent cheerful and reminded the festival is still gleefully exploratory.
From here we tumbled through all sorts of fun. I had a panel discussion – about raving, science fiction and comics – out in the sunshine on Saturday morning, we kicked back in the Sanctuary wellness zone, we discovered a converted American school bus that is gathering field recordings of the local countryside and saw harpist Marysia Osu playing along to wildlife sounds next door to it in the Ground Tempo tent. We had our ears scoured at lunchtime by the free jazz riot of 72 year old percussionist Kahil El'Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble on Lush Life, then immediately soothed ourselves again with Momoko Gill’s urbane songs across on the main stage. We had our minds rearranged by GENA: a duo of Texan vocalist Liv.e and Detroit drumming legend Karriem Riggins who brought whole new levels of personality to neo-soul not least due to Liv.e’s remarkable between-song chat which somehow managed to be scat, freestyle rap and speaking in tongues all at once yet engages the audience as if she was being straightforwardly showbiz.
Germans Jazzanova once again showed the benefits of a well-drilled live show on the main stage, DJ Sweetpea had us raving hard to classic hardcore and jungle, saxophonist Mali Sheard gave the weekend's best demonstration of the talent that the Tomorrow's Warriors youth programme nurture as she and her band casually delivered a set of advanced but gloriously danceable jazz in the TW tent, DJ Tasha in the Worldwide FM radio truck provided a masterclass in immersive and embracing dub techno as we collapsed on leather sofas, and Chicagoan house music vocalist Peven Everett completely demolished the main stage crowd with the most stunning gospel-underpinned vocals despite – or perhaps because of – his velvet voice now having a burred edge as he is still undergoing treatment following stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis in 2024. Finally we fell back into Once In A Blue Moon for my own 1-4am ambient session, where I was once again reminded that this was a festival where people would not just accept but celebrate abyssal drones next to Bulgarian folk choirs next to familiar smooth soul.
Finally, although by now very dazed, we went into Sunday determined to be a little more structured in seeing live music. After a spiritual refresher watching jazz dancers in Love Dancin’ warm up for the all day revival of the Dingwalls club where Gilles Peterson and his peers first set out their musical stall back in the 80s, we saw a little of Dingwalls resident Patrick Forge’s Da Lata collective making gorgeously smooth Brazilian influence moves on the main stage – but then had the cobwebs really blown away by Joshua Idehen on that same stage. A couple of years ago, the Nigerian-born, Sweden-based poet/rapper played the same Sunday lunchtime slot to a couple of hundred people. I was among that crowd, and also there bumped into musicians Adam Scrimshire; we’d both known Idehen for years via many collaborative projects and noted with glee then that he’d really found his voice as a solo artists and if he stuck with it the world was his oyster.
This year he proved us right with bells on. Now playing to a field packed front to back, his motivational speaker meets finger jabbing African preacher meets Mike Skinner colloquial rave poet combination was amplified a thousandfold. The secular gospel he preached of how “nobody is coming to save us except us” and how “depression can’t hit a moving target – this is why we dance” hit home hard, and every bit of crowd interaction he danced got people more and more engaged with his words and his musical partner Ludvig Parment’s joyous house rhythms. Poems that can seem a little pat on record became glorious sermons on stage, and the whole thing became a real event: people hugging friends and strangers, grown men crying, a sense of overwhelming collective joy sweeping the field. By coincidence I bumped into Scrimshire shortly afterwards and we shared a moment of glorious vindication and pride in watching promise become so fully realised.
Elsewhere UK new generation jazz lynchpin (and, incidentally, Idehen collaborator in the Sons Of Kemet) Shabaka provided perfect Sunday afternoon cosmic meditational vibes, his set eschewing any idea of climax by gently drifting into a practically ambient flute coda. Momoko Gill’s collaborative set with Matthew Herbert struck a rare awkward note: Herbert’s ever-experimental soundmaking seemed to run up against technical issues, and in drastic contrast to their super-accomplished 2025 duo album ‘Clay’ it felt like an unfinished experiment. We drifted away from the live stages to The Bowl (pictured below), where the Eves Drop Collective – a massed rotating cast of women DJs, singers and MCs – were giving a masterclass in how to flip the classics of jungle, garage, soul and broken beat to stop them feeling hoary. Only the increasing amount of dust kicked up by dancers made us grudgingly move on from this perfect afternoon fun.
Back across site to Lush Life, though, we were delighted to find that witchy indie-electronic Brooklyn rising star James K – even without her backing band – found a natural connection to the We Out Here audience: her set flowed more naturally than when I’d seen her at the Barbican recently, and her music built for clubs and boho venues felt just as delightful out in a sunny field. Then the main stage headliners really rounded out the weekend in style. Stereolab – a band it took me a long time to really understand as on record they can feel arch and even clinical – showed exactly why they are beloved of leftfield jazz and hip hop musicians by making their songs sound immense and shockingly danceable. And finally, in what’s become confirmed as WOH’s legend slot, Gary Bartz – collaborator with Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, Art Blakey and… well, everyone really – shone literally and figuratively in a silver suit jacket, with a set of pure smoothness and yet cosmic peculiarity, all held together with a sense of benevolence and simple melodies that made the heart sing.
But we weren’t done. Finally completely revivified we went back to The Glade for one last hour of jungle and drum’n’bass music from DJ dBridge providing the finale for the Rupture club’s takeover. There, surrounded by ravers from their teens to their sixties, we no longer felt like the old men in the dance, but just like part of the crowd, lapping up every fresh twist on the sound. The fact that this music, first formularised 30 years ago in clubs like Metalheadz, could still range from raging pile-ups of sound to minimalism to match the most academic of composers, contain sounds that have never been heard before, and still keep dancefloor energy unstoppable was delightful. But then again given we’d just been dancing en masse to an 85-year-old in a collective celebration, it no longer felt surprising. Having said I wouldn’t over-egg the sense of community here – after those incredible shared experiences around Idehen and Bartz just on that same day, it seemed like it was just the natural way of things in this very special place.
