We Out Here (Day 1): The Sun Shines for a Perfect Festival Weekend in Dorset

For the second year running, V13’s Alfie and Del Pike had the pleasure of attending We Out Here festival; a four-day musical getaway in the beautiful grounds of Wimborne St Giles, Dorset. The festival is curated entirely by Gilles Peterson, founder of the Brownswood label, specialising in jazz, hip-hop, soul and everything in between. This year celebrates the fifth year of this incredible event.

Following the quality of last year’s festival, the bar was set high, very high. Arriving pretty late on Thursday afternoon meant narrowly missing Sainte, one of the few hip-hop acts performing in comparison to last year, as a result of the ‘50 years of HipHop’ celebration. However, we managed to catch Mount Kimbie, which I was very excited about.

Their album The Sunset Violent has been on repeat since its release in April. Despite the electronic roots of the duo, this album sounded amazing live, perhaps due to the persistent driving drums or the atmospheric vocals delivered by Andrea Balency, who can be found on the majority of this album.

When travelling from Liverpool down to Dorset the weather was constantly teasing us with spurts of rain followed by sun and so on, however by the time we had pitched up and walked to the main stage the heavens had opened up. Enter King Krule, one of the few people who can put a smile on your face when you are being soaked to death. With two features on the album and more on previous MK projects, I had speculated a cameo.

They performed “Empty and Silent” and “Boxing,” and a personal favourite of mine, “Blue Train Lines.” The moodiness of these tracks complemented the weather perfectly and made the set feel very cinematic.

Upon the release of this year’s lineup back in January, Mount Kimbie seemed like an odd choice when surrounded by the likes of Sampha, Aja Monet and Brian Jackson but I suppose there is no harm in diversifying the lineup here and there.

Mount Kimbie © Photography by Jake Davis | Khroma Collective (www.instagram.com/khromacollective)

The pouring rain has not dampened our spirits yet, but it’s hard not to want to seek shelter. Huddled together in the Brownswood Tent are a crowd of soulful revellers soaking up the sweet vibes of Allysha Joy. On entering the side of the fit-to-bursting tent, you could be excused for believing this was a gospel gathering with just a choir onstage, but Allysha is hidden away behind the amp astride her keyboard. This is testament to how much exposure she allows her musicians, they are not her backing, they are her band. Beautiful moments fill this set, and before long, we forget the rain that still pounds outside.

Perhaps the strangest and most cosmic moment of the whole weekend came early in the form of Lonnie Holley. Hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, Holley has a long and fascinating story, too vast to cover here, but at 74 he has had a life filled with early hardship and later, multi-media creativity. My first encounter with Holley was through his work with the incredible Moor Mother, an artist who is surely continuing his legacy.

Holley’s wonderfully haphazard set is filled with fractured sounds and declarations of a world in crisis, and it is clear he has a strong message to sort this shit out. “I’m not here to make you cry, I’m here to wake you up – I just woke up!”

His music which appears largely improvised ranges from the psychedelic to the experimental and has led to fascinating collaborations with Michael Stipe (“Oh Me Oh My”) and Moor Mother (“I am Part of the Wonder”). When Moor Mother joins him on stage you can literally feel the lineage between the two artists. Her performance seems slightly muted compared to her own live work that we witnessed at East London’s Church of Sound earlier this year, but this is still a special moment.

Perhaps the most surprising element of the set is the Spice Girls T-shirt worn by the drummer. Truly a sense of two very different worlds colliding at We Out Here Festival.

Another highly anticipated act was Yaya Bey, Brooklyn-born RnB vocalist who very recently released her 5th studio album titled Ten Fold. Much like the majority of Bey’s music this album highlights struggles in her life related to family, love, finances, grief and so on. Despite such serious and damming topics her music remains uplifting and empowering.

We Out Here Festival © Sienna Lorraine Gray

Sonically the music feels like a modern take on Lovers Rock due to its very realistic and insightful look into the artists love life which remains unapologetically explicit. Thanks to her stunning vocals Bey can “talk her shit” over these very bouncy tracks and create something very unique yet captivating.

Aside from the music Yaya used her platform to shed some light on recent and some not so recent political and social issues. She prefaced this section of her set with a story about how a journalist had criticised and attempted to shut her down for getting political. I’m not here to do that. Throughout history artists have used their music to educate, Marvin gaye, Gil Scott-Heron, Nina Simone to name a few, this is nothing new.

During such troubling times we need people like Yaya Bey to speak on behalf of those that are silenced. A lot of the atrocities happening in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Tigray right now are almost incomprehensible. At the risk of sounding cliche, we need artists, poets, writers etc to make these issues digestible and evoke emotion that will fuel change which is exactly what Bey did up on that stage.

If you were to ask me what the best concert I’ve ever been to I would without hesitation say Sampha at Hackney church last June. So it’s safe to say I was very much looking forward to seeing him at We Out Here Festival, especially after having time to live with Lahai.

The setup was pretty similar to what I had remembered, a 5-piece multi-talented band including Sampha himself. They played a pretty varied setlist from the entirety of his career including a medley of his much loved features. The medley included “Father time” by Kendrick Lamar, “Dont Touch My Hair” by Solange and “Hold on” by SBTRKT. The set started around 8pm and the sun gradually began to set to the left of the stage which beautifully complemented the angelic nature of Sampha’s music.

Towards the end of the set the band gathered around one singular drumkit to play “without” from the debut EP Dual which contains a number of different drum sections which I presume was originally recorded artificially as it feels almost impossible to recreate live, yet somehow they are able to do and it’s truly mesmerising. Sampha is really one of the most exciting artists to come out of the UK in the past decade so if you are given the opportunity to see him perform I strongly advise. He has been known to take very extensive periods in between releases so don’t take any chances.

Sampha © Sienna Lorraine Gray

The greatest surprise of the weekend for me had to be Floating Points, aka Samuel Shepherd. Having placed his Promises album at the top of my albums of the year in 2021, I have to admit I was so obsessed with it I didn’t explore his other work. Promises, a collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra and the late Pharoah Sanders, turned the jazz world upside down and led to a Mercury nomination. Its soft, cool jazz lines took repetition to a new and refreshing level, creating a meditative piece separated into a montage of merging suites. Beautiful.

Shepherd’s headline position puzzled me at first, wondering how this hypnotic sound could fill the main stage at the end of the day, but what we got was a full-on rave set with stunning acid visuals and pounding rhythms that would probably be keeping Salisbury awake 16 miles down the road. Somewhat out of my comfort zone, the rave scene completely left me cold at the time, however I was strangely attracted to this set. As many of the older audience members moved away from the front, as surprised as I was, I found myself drawn in and thoroughly enjoying every manic minute. Whilst I secretly yearned for possibly just a smidgen of Promises, it wouldn’t have worked in this performance. A truly surprising end to a fantastic day.

For more information on next year’s We Out Here Festival, visit the the Official We Out Here Festival Website.

We Out Here Festival 2024 Poster