The Best Bristol Music Moments of 2014
Fair play to Bristol, our taste in music is anything but boring. Thick with festivals, frolics and falling asleep at bus stops, Sammy thinks 2014 was tops. Here she is talking you through her best musical bits of the past year.
Any day of the week in Bristol offers you a chance to dig your heels into the music scene, and 2014 offered up some crackers. Check out these club bangers:
1) Tokyo Dub at Eastville Park
Hip-hop heads, junglists and dub-steppers alike converged on Eastville Park this year to celebrate the incredibly successful Tokyo Dub festival. While the soundsystems left a teensy bit to be desired, the biggest crowd Eastville has ever seen gratefully welcomed every act with shouting, shimmying and a whole lotta love. Lots of stages meant lots of chances to get up close and personal with your favourites, and the festival’s promise of delivering a variety of acts got even the most stiff-limbed of festivalgoers raving all night long. Well, raving ‘til the 11pm curfew, anyway.
2) Love Saves the Day
Despite the relentless rain that left Castle Park a mud-pit and local residents as mad as cats, Love Saves the Day returned with lots to brag about. Headliners like Jamie XX and SBTRKT are not to be scoffed at, and although the festival looked more like a slip ‘n’ slide than the actual Park Street water-slide on the Sunday, hoards of dance fans partied on regardless. That’s blitz spirit, that.
3) Old people dancing to Timber
In a once-in-a-lifetime, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, oh-my-god-am-I-hallucinating event, the elders at Linkage publically partied down to Pitbull (ft. Ke$ha) outside the Galleries to raise some cash for their charity. I hope I’m this sweg when I get old.
4) Marriot Hotel’s ‘Happy’
Hahahahhahahhahahaha. If you enjoy ‘The Office’, ‘Peep Show’, or any other show that gets its laughs from being unbearably uncomfortable, check this out. It made me want to claw my face off (in a good way).
5) Who is William Onyeabor? at Colston Hall
A star-studded line-up illuminated Colston Hall in April with a tribute to a man dubbed grandmaster of funk. William Onyeabor pioneered a sound in the 70s and 80s that wouldn’t be out of place in the indie charts today: futuristic, epic, and above all, original. Artists like the Beastie Boy’s Money Mark, Ghostpoet, Kele Okereke, and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor stamped out a technicolour event that had to be one of the best shows Colston Hall has seen in years.
6) Howling Owl anniversary week
Forget a birthDAY: DIY label Howling Owl took over a whole week. Filled with fuzz, noise and feathers, their shows spanned the city, from arty Centerspace to a debauched Mother’s Ruin. Adrian Dutt and Joe Hatt, party instigators-in-chief, captured a slice of Bristol music scene that’s young, fresh, and quite rightfully full of itself.
7) Simple Things
Every year, Bristol’s Crack Magazine try and top their multi-venue festival spectacular with more venues, more acts, and well, more stuff. This year was another triumph. While Mogwai lorded over the line-up at Colston Hall, Death from Above 1979 smashed the O2’s headline slot with a teeth-rattlingly heavy set that loosened everyone’s eardums. Thankfully, nobody seemed to mind.
What do you think of Sammy’s top picks? Is she on the money or dead broke? Let us know on Twitter or on Facebob