Forwards Festival 2024 through five key performances

Team Love, the promoters behind the Bristol two-day event Forwards, are definitely doing something right. Still a relatively new festival on the scene, Forwards has a knack for landing artists who get people really excited – think Charli XCX, Aphex Twin and Erykah Badu. Now clocking in for its third edition, the recipe for success is clear: a balance of crowd pleasers and, crucially, community. 

Saturday saw the likes of Four Tet and Floating Points go head to head with some of the leading lights of the UK jazz scene, including Nubya Garcia and Yussef Dayes. Sunday’s roster featured the acerbic stylings of Baxter Dury, Bristol’s art-pop icon Hollysseus Fly, Ireland’s new mother-in-chief CMAT and, of course, proven headliners LCD Soundsystem. Day two’s stormy weather did little to cast a pall on proceedings, but the news that Crazy P would no longer be performing, later revealed to be due to the tragic passing of singer Danielle Moore, left a far longer shadow.

Outside of the music, the festival’s Information Stage hosted a series of thought-provoking discussions, featuring august speakers and incisive thinkers alike, including Brian Eno, Akala, and Victoria Stone. In short, Forwards emerged this year as a true cultural temperature take. 

Here are the five performances we’re still thinking about.

Floating Points 

As golden hour settled across the Clifton Downs, Floating Points met the moment with a captivating performance that was a finely calibrated balance between cerebral and visceral. Surrounded by synths and controllers, he set the tone with the pointillist synths of Birth4000, from his newly released album, Cascade. Even when things took a turn for the rave-y, the London-based producer never lost the sense of poise and precision that runs through his productions. The performance peaked with an extended version of Vocoder – accompanied by a mesmerizing LED display that mirrored the emotional intensities of the music. 

LCD Soundsystem 

In a year marked by the unprecedented rise of The Dare, a Brooklyn-based LCD Soundsystem simulacrum, there’s something strangely edifying about seeing James Murphy’s veteran dance punkers showing the new generation how it’s really done. Fittingly, James Murphy, looked every inch the elder statesman of Bushwick – commanding the stage with a presence that belied his unassuming demeanour. From the opening krautrock of You Wanted a Hit to welcome outings of I Can Change and Tonite, the set was a masterclass in jittery tension and release with Murphy’s lyrics, delivered with his trademark deadpan, offering the necessary counterpoint. As is tradition for the band, All My Friends served as the euphoric closer; an extended moment of pure emotional unstoppering. The track still sounds as fresh now as it did when we first heard it, almost twenty years ago – if anything it sounds better, more vital and more bittersweet.

Nubya Garcia 

Nubya Garcia, the London-based saxophonist, turned the East stage into an oasis of bliss with her sound that was reminiscent of the transcendental soundscapes of Alice Coltrane. High praise! Alternating between smoky and incendiary, Garcia lit a fire under tracks from both her debut album Source and her then still unreleased sophomore record Odyssey. The throughline? Her commandeering presence, which kept both audience and her band in her thrall.

Yussef Dayes 

Yussef Dayes’, another luminary from London’s rich jazz scene, provided a masterclass in rhythmic innovation and technical prowess. Live, the drummer and bandleader brought an electric, virtuosic energy to cuts from his 2023 album Black Classical Music. Frenetic tracks such as Afro Cubanism rendered Dayes a blur of limbs behind his kit, yet each hit was precisely placed, creating polyrhythms that seemed to defy the laws of physics. The performance was made even more remarkable by the fact that this was the first time playing with two of his band members. A true pro.

Jessie Ware 

On Sunday, the East Stage was transformed into The Pearl Club for Jessie Ware’s high-camp performance, complete with glittering decorations and her charismatic backup dancers, the Pearlettes. Opening with the pulsating anthem That! Feels Good! interpolated with Soul Control, Ware immediately established her tone as equal parts celebration and good, old-fashioned entertainment. The crowd responded in kind – especially during big, grinning hits like Running – with hands raised skyward in an approximation of disco communion. The performance reached its zenith, surely, with a surprise cover of Cher’s iconic Believe, transforming the field into her own personal Studio 54. This was the kind of show that can only work if an artist is having a lot – and we mean a lot – of fun. And it really worked.