I’ve been to a lot of festivals this year and RALLY is the one I’ve been looking forward to most. As was the case last year, the lineup was incredible showcasing both emerging talent and established stars of the alternative scenes. It’s admirable how dedicated they are to supporting local artists, bands, and venues with a stage dedicated to Skehans pub (providing pints of Guinness!), copies of the Toerag newspaper scattered around the site and situational art pieces provided by local artists.
The Agnes stage remained the best of the festival, both in terms of aesthetics and lineup. With a slight rejig, in my opinion an improvement from last year, the artists were much more accessible and easy to view. The first artist we caught there was Astrid Sonne who took to the stage accompanied by Emma Bradlet on the cello. She let the crowd know it was her birthday, and the crowd gifted her with a soft rendition of the birthday song which was sweet to experience. She’s a gentle performer who embraces fragility in her work. This delicateness allows you to focus on her beautiful violin playing and diary-like lyrics.
Moving to the main stage, it was an emotional display for Porridge Radio’s final show of their tour, and one of their last performances ever before their looming breakup. Dana Mangolin gave it her all, belting out lyrics and swinging round her guitar, joined by Georgie on backup vocals who was back for their final date after 9 months away. They began by showcasing some of their more recent songs, but the crowd really kicked in as they brought back some tunes from Every Bad.
Moin were absolutely mind-blowing. They took to the stage pretty casually, and then proceeded to blow out everyone’s eardrums with their incredibly tight instrumentation. They followed by bringing out Sophia Al-Maria to give a beautiful spoken word performance. From our angle we could see a stressed worker giving them 5 more minutes, which they took pretty liberally, but how could you shut down such an intense performance with an equally captivated audience? Definitely a highlight of the day.
Some of the artists we stopped briefly by but still deserve recognition include Asha Puthli who opened the festival for us, Taahliah giving an ethereal performance on the Agnes stage, and The Speakers Quartet who provided a beautiful celebration of the work of Arthur Russell.
Exploding onto the Agnes stage at 8pm was the rising star duo Bassvictim. Producer Ike Clateman remained comfortably at his decks while front woman Maria Manor took hold of the stage, strutting around and twirling while the front row desperately reached out their hands. It was undeniably incredibly fun. My personal favourite song Alice elicited screams from the crowd and a sea of raised hands. It’s always exciting to see a band this reasonably new with such a dedicated crowd.
Closing out was the icon that is Floating Points who was accompanied by some captivating visuals. We managed to get a spot in the front row and felt ourselves consumed by the music. It was a beautiful send off to probably the best RALLY so far, at the very least the one with the best weather.
