Review | Wildlife 2016 

(photo cred: Ellie Hardman)

Festival season is fully upon us with (supposed) sunshine, cider, and lots of great music. Music is one of my biggest passions and is already central to my writing, so I thought I’d do a mini series over this summer documenting my experiences at and thoughts about the festivals I’m attending.

First up for me this summer is Wildlife in Brighton. With exams, assignments, and university is over for the summer, we thought we deserved some fun. Saturday seemed more our cuppa tea, and being students who have already forked out for Bestival tickets, we only went for one day. So I threw a load of glitter on my face, put on some purple lipstick and headed along to Wildlife on Saturday.

As much as I had a great day drinking cider and dancing in the sun with my pals, I was slightly disappointed by the timings of the day. The two acts I was most looking forward to were Skepta (of course!) and DJ EZ. Both acts were at really odd times. Skepta was way too early for a mainstage performance which made the atmosphere weird and kind of boring. If he had been later, on mainstage, or that time in a tent, I think it would have been so insane (for instance, I saw snapchats of Kano’s performance on the Sunday in the Supercharged tent and it looked so lit). Similarly, DJ EZ got the graveyard shift. I mean by the time it got to 11pm, the constant day-drinking had taken its toll on me and I had to leave before EZ even started. If DJ EZ had followed Disclosure, I would have been able to get myself hyped, but I was just too tired.

However, Disclosure and Redlight were the highlights of the day for me. Both were insanely good and created such a buzzing vibe during their sets. Seeing Redlight perform Gold Teeth and 9Ts made my day. I was danced like a crazy person during their set. I was kind of sceptical about Disclosure, because my housemates had bigged them up so much, but, boy, they proved me wrong. They created such a great vibe, with everyone dancing and singing along.

I’d definitely go back to Wildlife next year, if the lineup was decent, because I had a great time dancing about with my uni pals and the vibe was so fun! (p.s. who can say no to a festival where you can get Kopperberg for a fiver, rather than standard festival cider like Somserby.)