Anniversaries are celebrated and legends honoured as unity is the message at We Out Here festival, which boasted a line up featuring Sampha, CASISDEAD and Louie Vega for its 5th edition.
Words Liam Cattermole @liam_cattermole
This year, walking from the campsite and into the grounds of We Out Here, revellers are greeted by a simple message: ‘WE ONLY HAVE NOW’ is painted onto a black placard, breaking up a beautiful print of a starry skyline. The sentiment feels more important when you consider the world’s current climate, from the rioting that followed the fatal stabbings of three girls in Merseyside last month to the war in Gaza, there is an urgency around those four words that's difficult to ignore.
On Friday morning at The Bowl, an impressive, amphitheater-esque area of the Dorchester site that fizzes with excitement all weekend long, Haseeb Iqbal is keen to remind us of the important role diversity has played in our country’s musical landscape. “What would this country be without immigration?,” reads the back of his t-shirt, which he turns and points to while playing the Roy Ayers Ubiquity classic, ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine’. “No matter how painful everything is right now, we’re not going to lower ourselves to the hate. We’re going to come together and feel a sense of joy this weekend, because we deserve that,” the 25-year-old says in a break between euphoric funk and dub reggae tracks.
His set is an early highlight, but arguably the weekend’s highest point comes a day later on the main stage with Sampha. Submerging the crowd in a haze of spiritual jazz and leftfield electronica, the transcendental tones of his new album, Lahai, feel like a real moment. At one point, he and his live band coil around a set of drums, chipping away at the languid percussion on ‘Without’, before improvising underneath the blanket-like husk of his voice. And there’s time for renditions of some of Sampha’s best collaborations, like ‘Hold On’ with SBTRKT and ‘Father Time’ from Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.
Not everyone’s performances are quite so compelling. Yaya Bey has been on an extensive world tour since the release of Remember Your North Star and it’s starting to take its toll. She fails to match the emotional intensity of her back catalogue and at one point even owns up to the fatigue. You have to admire the honesty but there’s something about the lethargy that’s incredibly jarring. Joy Orbison fails to deliver on Ryhthm Corner, the rippling promise of a James Massiah-dubbed remix of ‘360’ by Charli xcx quickly swathed by tedious bassline and drill mash ups. It’s a shame when you consider the impact ‘Flight FM’ and the subsequent Fred again.. edit, featuring Playboi Carti, Future and Lil Yachty, has had in clubs this year.
Nevertheless, ’Flight FM’ is a fixture over the weekend and it’s the unmistakable Mala who mixes the track the best. Poised behind the decks, his bucket-hat silhouette basking in the shadows, the sonorous dubstep and Deep Medi Musik dubplates raise a few hairs, encouraging beautifully freakish and mindless movements from the crowd. There was a noticeable absence of 140 this year, which made his presence all the more special.
Across the weekend, anniversaries are celebrated and legends honoured. On Thursday, Hyperdub affiliates remind everyone of the label’s indelible mark on UK club culture. Kode9 and Sherelle go b2b in the pissing rain, fighting back the weather with razor-sharp footwork and jungle selections. Hours before, Ikonika and Shannen SP inject some polyrhythmic madness, rumbling Afrocentric tracks through The Grove’s giant pergola-like construction. Saturday night is all about Amp Fiddler: the Detroit funk legend who died in December last year, but not before he worked with Prince and mentored J Dilla. Moodymann is joined by fellow Motor City legends Waajeed, Andrés and Flo Real, who rip through their crates and provide a fitting history lesson for genuine musical royalty.
At Lush Life on Saturday night, CASISDEAD plays a typically atmospheric and visceral set, the anonymous rapper’s promiscuous grime pulling a big crowd and making the festival feel more like a sci-fi strip club than Dorchester shrubland. Tracks like ‘Venom’ off Famous Last Words balance out the testosterone-fuelled hits of old and encapsulate the ‘80s trance that helped him win a Brit Award earlier this year. Over in the disco ball hanging, ribbon-lined interior of Love Dancin’, New York house duo musclecars traverse bruk, disco and Afro-diasporic genres into swaggering blends of cross-generational electronica. Curated by DJ and radio host Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, the tent pops off pretty much all weekend, as audiophiles embrace the idiosyncratic soundsystem and the intergalactic grooves playing from it.
The last hours are best spent at The Bowl, where Louie Vega plays a surprise set having headlined the Saturday night with his Elements Of Life project. Packing in nods to the late, great DJ Randall and MC Conrad while encapsulating the weekend’s overwhelming sense of unity, Giles Peterson plays out the festival with everything from ‘Never Too Much’ by Luther Vandross to Studio Rio’s samba version of ‘Lovely Day’ by Bill Withers. Is there a more joyful song to end such an uplifting weekend? Even if it was just for the 18 seconds Withers sustains “daaaaaay” on the chorus, We Out Here is a reminder that, despite all that’s going on in the world, music gives us hope. It felt like we needed this weekend more than ever before.