Outlook Festival returns

Accounts of the first instalment of Outlook Festival four years back (held in a Croatian night club with relatively low attendance and a lot of rain) sound like Phoenix Nights on the Adriatic. Since then the event has come a long way.

This year saw close to 12,000 festival-goers; some of the biggest names in bass-heavy music performing and an arena re-vamped so fittingly one can’t help but imagine that when they built Fort Punta Christo however many centuries ago they must have had the festival in mind. Couple that with the mellowed beauty of the location (at least on day one), some darn fine weather and a young energetic crowd and you get a feeling for why Outlook is in a league of its own.

The festival is split between the campsite and the main arena. The campsite is located around a bay on the Adriatic and contains a super market and a number of bars and pop-up restaurants. Daytime sees mass migration to the various beaches where the two or three sound systems play out until the evening.

The arena is split between the main stage-a large open space by the waterfront-and the fort which itself contains a number of smaller stages, all equally impressive.

Despite Barrington Levy’s last minute withdrawal, the quality of performances was never going to be an issue. David Rodigan opened the main stage with his trademark feel-good history lesson. The reggae-dub theme was followed up by The Gentleman’s Dub Club, Iration Steppahs and, elsewhere in the fort, The Heatwave.

Grime was well represented by Newham Generals, Logan Sama and a mammoth set from P Money that seemed to straddle at least 4 or 5 DJ sets. The second and third nights were dominated by El-B, Rustie, Hudson Mohawke and the Hessle Audio bunch while the final night saw Marcus Nasty tearing it up followed by Night Slugs DJs, Mosca, Bok Bok, L-Vis 1990 and Girl Unit.

It’s very difficult to fault Outlook - in fact, it requires resorting to geriatric-style complaints regarding things like organisation (there was a lot of queuing where it felt like there shouldn’t have been). Having said that, there was a clear sense of nostalgia from many of last year’s returnees who felt the festival had grown excessively and in doing so lost its former intimacy and relaxedness. Organisers should be mindful of not spawning another Reading or Leeds in Pula. For the moment, suffice it to say this: Carlsberg don’t make festivals but if they did they’d probably be something like Outlook.