Every year, All Points East comes around to give Londoners one final hit of live music before summer draws to a close.
This summer was my first time attending. I’d been warned of Victoria Park’s dust, and received a few remarks about the sound quality, so if I am going to start on a brutally honest note, my expectations were low.
While the dust bowl warnings were certainly needed, Jorja Smith and Tems’ opening day of the festival delivered far above and beyond my expectations, my cynicism was shattered and I was left wondering how on earth I could sum up this line-up in a way that does it justice.
The Friday was curated by Jorja Smith and her FAMM label, bringing together R&B, Afrobeats, amapiano, soul, hip-hop and some of the UK’s most recognisable dance sounds. Across the park, established names sat alongside artists who deserve more recognition, creating a day that felt like equal parts nostalgia and discovery.
This was a strange but welcome collision for me. Hearing songs I remember playing through my headphones on the way to secondary school or that I was desperate to see at Reading Festival post-GCSEs alongside artists I listen to now, or who I have eagerly been keeping an eye out for tickets.
First up was ENNY on the X Stage. Having broken through with ‘Peng Black Girls’ in 2020 (which you might know through the version featuring Jorja Smith), before earning a BBC Sound of 2022 nomination and a global audience through her COLORS performance, she is hardly an unknown new star. Yet watching her live, I was left wondering why she still feels like such an underrated presence in the industry.
I’ve caught ENNY before through her work with the Silhouettes Project and alongside artists such as Nix Northwest, and she has consistently been someone I think needs more recognition. There is a confidence to her performance that feels completely natural, rather than manufactured for the festival setting. Her lyrics are also the embodiment of underground UK Rap for me, honest, conscious and most importantly, clever.
Over on the West Stage, Katy B then offered a very different kind of nostalgia. Her set was packed with the songs that have become embedded in British dance music culture, and she attacked them with the energy of someone who knows exactly how much they mean to the crowd. It was an early reminder that this wasn’t simply a showcase of what is new, Jorja had built a line-up around the music that had shaped her (further explanation later on) and much of it had shaped us too.
Next came the unavoidable festival dilemma: two new artists I wanted to see, playing at almost exactly the same time.
Between 5 and 5:30pm, I made the decision to split my time between Tyler Lewis on the E3 Stage and Demae on the Rising Stage. It was frustrating knowing I couldn’t give either set the attention it deserved, but both felt like names worth keeping an eye on.
Tyler Lewis has this huge voice, combining classic R&B with more eclectic production and what I think is fair to call an obvious pop ambition. There was something so distinctly ’90s in her vocal delivery, think Mariah Carey and think Whitney Houston. Her sound also brought Mahalia to mind for me. Either way, it’s an impressive combination, and she’s someone that feels capable of reaching well beyond the festival circuit.
Demae, who’s also signed with FAMM, meanwhile brought together R&B, hip-hop, jazz and soul with an effortless stage presence. I’d actually been following her music for years without realising it was the same artist. After a little research, I found out that her SoundCloud alias Bubblerap had introduced me to covers and demos before I ever connected the music to Demae herself. If I were to use one word to describe her, it’s cool. And one song to listen to, which we had the pleasure of hearing before its release ‘Steppers’.
Tems by Bethan Miller-Carey
Then came the first headline act, Tems, who naturally brought a completely different energy to the day. From the moment she stepped on stage, there was a calmness to her performance that seemed to pull the entire field towards her, particularly by opening with ‘WAIT FOR U’. That tranquillity didn’t last long though. Just as everyone had settled into the rhythm of the whole performance, Dave appeared on stage for his feature on ‘Raindance’, which as expected sent a roar through Victoria Park.
Her set moved between older favourites and newer material, including ‘Higher’ from her 2020 debut EP For Broken Ears, Wizkid collaboration ‘Essence’ and her latest single ‘What You Need’. Across the 40-minute set, Tems moved effortlessly between R&B, Afrobeats, and neo-soul, with that vocal style that remains unmistakably her own.
My personal highlight had to be Nia Archives. Who took over the West Stage and definitely changed the pace.
I’ve caught her sets several times over the years, and with her newer material from Emotional Junglist, I wondered whether the show could really match the standard she set with Silence is Loud.
It did.
Watching this set, the production of it and the performance, makes it clear Nia had written this album with a live performance in mind. While her past DJ sets, or at least he ones I saw, always comprised of an old-school soundsystem and live vocals over traditional turntablism, watching her at all Points East felt like a true performance. With each track, whether new material or old, the entire crowd moved as one as she jumped on a sofa or danced around stage. The thing about Nia Archives is that while her music is at its core dance music, it is also deeply emotional music, with so much breadth into other genres. It’s music that somehow manages to turn a festival field into a communal release. I often find it cliché to talk about the energy of a crowd, but in this instance, there is no other way to describe it. The energy was high the entire time.
By the last song, you’d expect most people to have already left for the headline act, making sure to secure a good spot. But as soon as she told the crowd she was taking us to Brazil closing with ‘Baianá’, no one felt obliged to leave.
And then came Jorja.
Rather than treating her headline slot as a greatest-hits set, she used the opportunity to celebrate the British dance music that helped shape her. Kyla appeared for ‘Do You Mind’, the UK classic which found an entirely new audience after Drake sampled it for ‘One Dance’ in 2016, and for the chronically online (myself), it found a more recent afterlife through Love Island TikTok edits.
Katy B returned for ‘Katy On A Mission’, making the collaboration particularly poignant given her own history with the song (as previously mentioned). For those who have not seen the video online, teenage Jorja once uploaded an acoustic cover of the track; years later, it is playing on the big screen before she shares the stage with the woman who originally made it.
The callbacks continued throughout the set. AJ Tracey appeared for ‘Ladbroke Grove’, while Nia Archives returned from her own stage to join Smith for their collaboration ‘Get Me Down’, before getting behind the decks herself. Odeal also joined Jorja for the Afro-house-inflected ‘Coming Home’, and of course Loyle Carner had to come out for ‘Loose Ends’.
For me, the most affecting moments came when she simply let her own catalogue speak for itself. Playing songs that I thought might not have been ones she would have chosen for this big of a festival.
Hearing ‘Don’t Watch Me Cry’ live was enough to transport me straight back to being 15, while ‘Teenage Fantasy’ felt like an even more direct trip into the past. Without being too personal, these are songs that have existed alongside different versions of myself, so hearing them again, surrounded by thousands of other people who clearly had their own memories attached to them, gave the performance an intimacy that a festival this size shouldn’t really be able to achieve.
I saw some discussion online about whether the sheer number of guests risked taking attention away from Jorja Smith as the headline act. Personally, I didn’t feel that way at all. If anything, the collaborations were what made the set feel like a show rather than simply a headline performance.
Jorja Smith wasn’t just celebrating herself with this festival. She was celebrating the sounds that came before her, the artists around her, her label and the music community that helped shape the artist she has become.
And that ultimately was what made the opening Friday at All Points East work so well.
It didn’t really feel like a random collection of artists thrown together on the same bill simply for their names. It felt a lot more curated and intentional than that. For me, this curation provided a kind of welcome nostalgia, mixed with just enough new music to remind you that, as there was before, there is also always going to be another artist for the next stage of your life.
