Preview: Dials Festival 2018 (Part 3 - Later Evening)

Here is my third and final preview / tips post for Dials Festival 2018. A 5 venue wristband access event on Albert Road in Southsea, Portsmouth that I am helping organise in support of Solent Mind.

Having waffled on about how I became involved in the festival, the philosophy that underpins this year’s event and some of my thinking about the booking of the festival I feel that it’s time to sit back and just write about the artists a little more. This is a relatively waffle free post!

So here are 3 tips for artists nearer the top end of the bill that I think are worth your attention. This has been a particularly hard selection – as I haven’t space to mention the beautiful mellow pop of Art School Girlfriend that reminds me a little bit of Massive Attack and Portishead or the fiery Estrons who played Dials in 2016 in the Edge of the Wedge and return to blast the mighty Wedgewood Rooms with their visceral sound. But as in previous posts I’m limiting my choices to three. All have featured in past blog posts.

19:30-20:00 Bokito – The Vaults

Bokito is named after a gorilla that escaped from its cage at a zoo and that is exactly what this band are like. When lead singer Moses gets on stage he unleashes his inner caged animal. But it’s not a rock beast. No, it’s a hip swinging, falsetto crooning, crouching tiger of a man who dances like a African tribesperson. Imagine Everything Everything with a big heap of sunshine tossed into the music - and lots of confetti in this video for current single How Dare You.




20:30-21:00 Fröst – Edge of the Wedge

With a debut album Matters coming out next week we’ll get the full picture of what Fröst sound like, but from their transcendent singles such as Record Still Spinning and Black Mountain, which have found love from this blog and Lauren Laverne of BBC 6 Music, they can be described as having a sound full of retro analogue synths, pulsing electronics and motorik beats. Featuring a member of Fujiya and Miyagi and a French-Swedish sound artist, fans of Goldfrapp or Broadcast might be particularly smitten with Fröst. Dials is pleased to present them as one of just four shows they’re playing this October. The video below is a live recording of Record Still Spinning.



21:00-21:30 Grace Savage – The Loft

Another one of the curve balls I mentioned yesterday, Grace Savage is a beatboxer of extraordinary skill. Having seen her perform twice, once at Winchestival and the other time in the surreal setting of a roller-skating disco in Margate I can confirm that Grace will astound you. “She can’t be doing that just with her mouth and a loop station,” you’ll possibly cry. Oh yes she is. It’s why she’s four times UK beatboxing champion. If you want to see something different that you’ll probably remember for a long time after Dials 2018 finishes, Grace Savage is the one. No video can do her justice - you have to see it live.



You can find the full timetable for Dials by clicking here.

You can buy tickets for £16 plus a small booking fee from this link or direct from the Wedgewood Rooms box office where there is no fee. Tickets will be more expensive on the day so I advise to buy them now.

To prepare fully for Dials there's a playlist on Spotify featuring all the artists you can get by clicking here or just search for Dials Festival 2018.

Preview: Dials Festival 2018 (Part 2 - Late Afternoon / Early Evening)

One of the best things about running your own small independent festival is that you get to help book the bands. Whilst I don’t book everything on the Dials Festival line up, somewhere between 30 – 40% of the line-up has been my own selections and as a small team we all have an input into the final bill.  

Being a fully independent festival gives us the advantage that the team take some risks in what we book, choosing some acts that we personally like, irrespective of if they’ll sell tickets or not. Yet clearly we also have to find artists within our small budget that will help make punters put their hands in their wallets, buy a ticket and come along to the event.

We also have to try and curate a line-up that makes sense to people. However, for me it’s also important to trust in some of my own judgements and put a few curveballs on the bill to give variety and people some choice. Of course, some of those curveballs may end up playing to virtually nobody, but I have to trust the audience of what is essentially a new music festival to be open minded enough to not just sticking with what they know - discovery is key. As a music listener I don’t listen to one genre or style of music and I’m sure many of you reading this don’t. I like indie, pop, ambient, electronica, soundtracks, folk, hip-hop, country, soul and many more genres, so I want, within reason, the festival programme to represent that variety, yet retaining a consistency that makes a complete bill.

With that in mind here are 3 further recommendations from the Dials bill for the middle part of the day, two of whom should be no surprise to regular long-term readers of the blog and one that I’ve yet to feature, but I’m very excited about.

17.00-17.30 Curxes - The Loft

Curxes played the very first Dials Festival in 2015 and return in an evolved form. Since that last performance the project has downsized from a band and is now just essentially the solo creative vehicle of Roberta Fidora who has moved away from the mainland, across the Solent, to take up residence in the Isle of Wight. In 2017 Roberta released her second album Gilded Cage – a weird experimental electronic ghostly pop record which made it on to the Breaking More Waves 2017 Album of the Year List. 

Live shows to promote the album have been relatively few and far between although Curxes appeared at this year’s Isle of Wight Festival and last year there were a number of gigs supporting Blancmange where a mysterious figure dressed as some sort of dancing bear accompanied Roberta on stage. Will we get the bear at Dials? You’ll have to be there to see. Expect to possibly hear some brand new tracks as well.



18.00-18.30 Salt Ashes - The Loft

You could consider Viega Sanchez aka Salt Ashes as one of the curveball choices at Dials Festival.  There are after all a lot of bands that play guitars and couldn't necessarily be considered pop. 

Salt Ashes is the antithesis of that. She does bangers. Electronic ones. Dark ones. Sultry ones. Very modern ones. There won’t be a guitar in site. Just her, some pitch perfect vocals and someone behind her creating the music. She’s probably the most pop act on the Dials 2018 bill and is all the better for it.

At this point in the evening you have a very simple choice – the psychobilly garage punk sounds of Sleepeaters in Bar Acapulco or some badass dance jams with Salt Ashes. Also, if you choose Salt Ashes you’ll then only have a one minute walk to catch my next recommendation in the venue opposite (Note: All venues are subject to capacity) who start as she finishes, so hopefully you’ll miss very little.

Why not get your disco shorts on (I'd suggest dark leather ones would be appropriate) and give Salt Ashes a go? Listen out for recent single Girls – which has clocked up close to 300,000 plays on Spotify this year.



18.30-19.00 Penelope Isles – The Vaults

For anyone that has ever been to a gig in the West country or pretty much any festival, the chances are you’ll have heard of Big Jeff John. He’s the big guy (obviously) with the big frizzy blonde hair and a heavyweight load of festival wristbands on his arm nodding his head, waving his finger and throwing himself around to the music at as many shows as you have had hot dinners. He’s been hailed as a hero by many, including lots of musicians, who now treat it as an honour to have Big Jeff at their gigs. Rumour has it one of Haim tried to propose to him.

So when Big Jeff recently tweeted “I’ve got something big that I need to say, it’s pretty big, so deep deep breath, build some serious tension. I fricking love all the members of Penelope Isles. They are a great band. Take the dreamy melodies of Beach House and the chunky lo-fi riffs of Grandaddy,” you’d better take notice. 

Thankfully I think everyone in the Dials team agrees with Jeff. Penelope Isles is a great band in the making. I saw them at End of the Road Festival earlier this year and their last two songs were so incredibly powerful they made me well up. Having already toured with The Magic Numbers, Dials is extremely grateful that Penelope Isles are coming to our festival. They’ve been signed to Bella Union records and will have an album out next year. Ones to Watch for sure.

If you want to come to Dials 2018, don't delay. Tickets will be more expensive on the day. Grab them by clicking on this link: www.dialsfestival.com. £16 in advance plus a small booking fee. Exchange them for a wristband on the day at The Wedgewood Rooms Box Office from 12 o'clock.

Preview: Dials Festival 2018 (Part 1 - Early Afternoon)

In just under a two weeks, on Saturday 6th October Portsmouth’s Dials Festival returns for its third chapter following its first two editions in 2015 and 2016. It’s an event I’m pretty well versed in, after in 2015 having been invited to join the organising team because of my relative expertise in new music and help book some bands for the bill, for 2018 I seem to have ended up with the job title Festival Director and am one of the core organisers and financial backers of the event. I'm not quite sure how that's happened but it has.

The Dials ethos is a little bit different from many multi-venue single wristband access events out there, although I must give a huge shout out to Reading’s brilliant Are You Listening Festival whose model we have partly taken on. It was that festival that inspired me to suggest to the team that the event should be not for profit and run in aid of a charity partner (Solent Mind) whilst raising awareness of what their organisation does and maybe even raise some funds along the way. 

We also thought it was important that, after hearing a number of reports from local artists that certain other bigger corporate festivals in the area weren’t paying the smaller artists instead offering a guest tickets as 'payment', we would offer virtually every band some form of cash return for playing. Sometimes this might only be enough to cover transport to the venue but at least it was some help to artists. You might think that paying artists was imperative, after all they make the festival, but it seems that some events have different ideas. 

This of course means that tickets are a little more expensive than some might expect, but £16 for a full day of live music which includes a host of up and coming bands including the likes of Estrons, Art School Girlfriend, Lauran Hibberd and Fröst who are all getting play on Radio 1 or BBC 6 Music, is to my mind still decent value. The reality is we couldn't make it any cheaper.

Some artists have been wonderful though and agreed to waive their fee as the event is for charity and hardly any of the acts (including our headliners) have asked for guest list. I hope that our ethos of what we are trying to achieve will make both artists and audience feel invested in the festival and this will create a positive community spirit. It was something our previous events were praised for, as well the fact that all the venues are on just one street just a few minutes walk from each other, plus the large amount of women on the bill compared with other festivals, something which as Director I’ve pushed for again in 2018.

If you haven’t got your ticket yet I recommend buying in advance, as they will be more expensive on the day. You can get them from the Dials website by clicking here.

Now onto the music. Over the next 3 blog posts I will be providing tips and recommendations of acts to see at Dials Festival 2018. I’m dividing them into 3 sections – early afternoon, late afternoon and evening, based on the timetable (which you can see by clicking here).

Previous experience has shown that not many people come to the festival early – but this year in particular I highly recommend you get down for the start. We have some really great acts at the bottom of the bill – who knows some of them might even be future headliners? Also, for some early arrivals there will be a few bonus goodies that make your £16 ticket even better value, which we’ll be revealing through our social media a few days before the event, so keep an eye out @dialsfestival.

So here are three acts it’s worth getting out of bed for. You'd be a fool to miss them.

Libra Libra 13.45-14.15 The Loft

Brighton’s LibraLibra might only have 2 songs on line but they’ve already picked up attention because of their eccentrically maverick videos, powerful lyrics and uneasy claustrophobic music that mixes everything from Fever Ray like electronics to power-chord glam-guitars. The jewel in their crown however is the wonderful Beth Cannon whose mountainous vocal range can switch from baby sweet to operatic to rock goddess in a matter of seconds. Some of you might recognise Beth’s name (or voice) – she most recently has worked with Lost Horizons - the band formed by Simon Raymonde of The Cocteau Twins and Bella Union Records and Richie Thomas.

Having already headlined a stage at Brighton’s Alt-Escape festival and with an appearance at the tastemaker led Off The Record Music Festival / Conference in Manchester in November on the cards this is a chance to catch a bubbling under band at their very early stages. They might be on early but they are guaranteed to wake you up with the beautiful noise they make.



Lauran Hibberd 14.45-15.20 The Loft

It was only a year or so ago that the Isle of Wight’s Lauran Hibberd was playing to about 6 people in a pub just over the road from where she’s performing at Dials. Since that time, things have changed. Her song Call Shotgun has been BBC Introducing’s track of the week on Radio 1 and netted over 300,000 streams on Spotify. She’s supported Eliza & The Bear on tour and played the main stage at Bestival. Lauran’s ability to pen hooky fuzzy indie pop songs at an alarming rate is incredible and on stage her funny stories, wit and likeable personality engage as much as the tunes.

Lauran is one of a number of acts playing Dials that (arguably) could already be significantly higher up the bill. Get down and see what the fuss is about.



Jerry Williams 15.30-16.00 The Vaults

After Lauran Hibberd finishes you have 5 minutes for a quick break and then a 1-minute walk across the road to Vaults to see Portsmouth’s reigning indie queen Jerry Williams. Having already sold out the 400 capacity Wedgewood Rooms with her band, Dials will find Jerry performing a more low-key solo set in the intimate space of The Vaults. With a whole bunch of catchy personal pop songs such as Mother (5 million streams on Spotify and counting), Grab Life and Left and Right, this solo set will be another reminder of Jerry’s melodic talent. It may well be busy for this one!



Grab your ticket for Dials 2018 by clicking here.

Late afternoon and evening recommendations coming soon…