Felix reviews: Decolonise Fest

Within the first week of moving to London, I walked into my first ever alternative gig, in an area of the city I had never even heard of before, completely alone, about two hours before the other attendees. I had only ever listened to one of the artists on the bill: if the show wasn’t free, I would not have even considered going.

Thus were my thoughts when making the long journey (any journey involving a National Rail service is long to me) out to the Piehouse Co-op for the launch party of Decolonise Fest, “a DIY punk festival collectively organised by and for punx of colour.” The venue – 150-capacity in a railway arch in Deptford, filled with mismatched sofas and walls adorned with posters about disabled resistance – immediately made me feel at home. Maybe it shouldn’t have: a straight normie, shy and alone, in a room full of queer people dressed to the nines in the style of about ten different alt subcultures. But any initial nerves were quickly dispelled by the effort people there put into talking to me. Their photographer reassured me that at his first gig he was also insanely early, the festival volunteers were eager to discuss my degree and about my big move to London, and even one of the main organisers promised that if I wanted to make new friends I was in the right place.

On the lineup that night were three trans women of colour: Floralis, ish99ni, and Princess Xixi, who – if you were on the same side of TikTok as me in 2022 – you may know from her minorly viral drill track “LENG LOI.” I had never heard of Floralis before, and thus was a bit sceptical as to what she would have to offer. Before she even started her first song, projected in the background was a video of police, protests, and a city that I suspect was her hometown of Brighton, overlaid with text opposing transphobia and giving advice to people apprehended at protests. This seemed cool! Unfortunately, she decided to start the set with “black combat boots.” Fun song, but I was discouraged by some of the few lyrics I could make out during her performance (“Thank you puppy/Was that yummy?/Lick my thighs and kiss my tummy”), although, coming home and reading the lyrics back made me realise it’s actually about being a trans woman forced to do sex work. The best part of her set was easily “capitalism gone mad ft. ish99ni”, a track about aerospace guys who work for weapon companies. Smoothly produced with a chorus that stays in your mind long after first listen, it’s the perfect example of songs you can dance or spiral about the state of the world to.

The best part of my entire night, however, was getting to speak to ish99ni before her set. While Floralis stunned me with her energy, and Princess Xixi stunned me with her looks, I refused to be too shy to speak to someone who I mainly know from Instagram shitposts. Out of all the celebrities and microcelebrities I’ve ever spoken to (including a Bake Off winner and the then-captain of the Bangladeshi Men’s Cricket team), ish99ni was by far the kindest. We had a good chat about our mutual difficult experiences with white girls, how meeting young people helps inform the way she wants to play her gigs, and concluded with trying to guess each other’s ages: I underestimated by seven years and she overestimated by four. Her older sister-vibes and enthusiasm to engage in conversation filled me with warmth, and this warmth probably fed into why I was so happy to watch her performance. I had given her Spotify a cursory look on my walk to campus that morning, but I really had no idea what would be in store for me sonically. She mostly shared songs from her debut album The Melancholy of Ishaani Aitchtemelle, which is full of long song titles that my inner Sufjan Stevens fan can definitely appreciate. “‘it’s not fair’ OR The Disappearance of Ishaani Aitchtemelle” was a stand out. With a feature from genre-defying legend Left At London, the track is an energetic electronic and rap piece that I could throw on loop for hours.

After a fantastic performance from ish99ni, I was worried as to how Princess Xixi could follow up. Xixi allowed me to be worried for exactly two seconds. Her set opened with a goth woman reading the fictional story of Princess Xixi, a beautiful girl who had escaped the boundaries of her kingdom and eventually found magical creatures just like her. As the story progressed, sinister music started to play while Xixi entered from the back of the audience wearing a veil. I had only listened to two of her songs before, but that was enough for me to expect that Xixi does not play around when it comes to brutal but true lyrics. I was not let down! She interspersed unreleased music and songs from her 2024 project “a dolls house EP” with commentary about how awesome/awful/whimsical/scary it is to be a trans woman. Following this, the song that made me a Xixi fan: “LENG LOI”! She explained that she normally doesn’t play it, but wanted to do it for the Decolonise Fest crowd: it’s insanely lucky that this was the show I went to, since I probably wouldn’t have been interested in going if not for that song. The only person I’ve known in the past four years who knew the song was myself, so hearing a full crowd sing the lyrics with their chest live was surreal. The very last song of the night was “TRNNY TRAPPIN,” Xixi’s latest single. Winning me over with the line “I am over eighteen, why would I have Snap?”, Xixi condemns performative men in one of the most fun drill songs of recent times.

By the time Princess Xixi left the stage, I was left wondering why I had been so apprehensive about coming in the first place. Across three very different sets, Decolonise Fest managed to offer exactly what a DIY festival should: exciting music, artists with something to say, and an audience that seemed just as invested in creating a good atmosphere as the performers were. I went in knowing almost nothing about two of the three artists, and left with new music to lose myself to and a much better idea of what I had been missing. For a launch party, it was a convincing introduction: maybe next year I’ll actually buy tickets for the entire festival.