This year’s Bestival blasted expectations into outer space as 40,000 music fans descended upon Robin Hill Country Park from 11-13 September to take a weekend-long voyage into the cosmos.
Having been completely deluged in mud last year, the site had been transformed for 2009 to include two new fields; the Magic Meadow and the Fire Field, with the main stage elevated to a more centralised location in close proximity to the Big Top. Memories of 2008’s torrential downpour were quickly forgotten as everyone soaked up the glorious autumn sunshine and took the opportunity to consign their everyday lives to oblivion and seize the surreal.
Famed for being one of the friendliest yet most off-the-wall festival’s you could ever hope to attend, Bestival-goers pushed the boundaries of eccentricity even further this year by fully embracing the “Space Oddity” fancy dress theme in abundance. The range of costumes on display were quite simply breathtaking, from storm troopers to spocks, aliens to astronauts, moomins to transformers, everything and anything sci-fi related was magically beamed down to earth for the grand fancy dress parade on Saturday afternoon.
The musical line-up proved to be as diverse as the range of unusual attractions on offer, with acts such as Lily Allen, Mika, Goldie Lookin Chain and Bjorn Again pulling in crowds to the main stage as large as headliners Massive Attack, Kraftwerk and Elbow. This year’s monster schedule included over 300 top name artists and DJ’s also boasted a record number of Mercury Music Prize nominees including Bat for Lashes, Florence and the Machine, The Horrors, Friendly Fires and La Roux plus the recently crowned prize winner. Rising hip-hop star Speech Debelle who was awarded the accolade for her album “Speech Therapy” just four days prior to her appearance at the Bestival, played to a packed audience in the Red Bull Music Academy tent on Sunday afternoon.
The event also managed to break the Guinness World record for the most people in their pants in one place when hundreds of people gathered around the Bandstand to say “Pants to Poverty” in aid of Comic Relief. In keeping with the charitable spirit, festival-goers were encouraged by Oxfam to “demand action until you’re blue in the face” by having their faces painted blue in a bid to take action on climate change. As well as the new site layout and additions such as the big wheel, helter-skelter and Insect Circus, to celebrate “The Year of the Spectacular” Bestival 2009 cumulated in an out-of-this-world bonfire and “Blastival”– an amazing pyrotechnical extravaganza and street-theatre show which saw Radio 1 DJ and Bestival curator Rob Da Bank apparently being blasted off into space, set against an explosive backdrop of fireworks.