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“It’s the first time I’ve been to this part of the country,” announces Edinburgh wunderkind DJ Barry Can’t Swim as he gazes out from the main stage. “It’s proper nice, man.”
Wilderness Festival, held on the prim and proper Cornbury Park estate on the edge of the Cotswolds, has a reputation for being one of the poshest in the country. More than just a music fest – or less, depending on your perspective – it’s almost equally focused on tunes, talks, food and oddball entertainment. Wander around at night and you’ll find three women in pink cowboy hats (aka DJ collective Femme Again) lip-syncing to Shania Twain’s ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman!’ opposite a sports ground where two teams are having a vigorous dance-off over who’ll go first in a game of dodgeball.
Against this backdrop, it doesn’t really seem so weird that electro-funkers Ibibio Sound Machine spend Friday evening hyping up an audience that includes two punters dressed as lobsters, or that a guy in a loincloth gets his groove on to Barry Can’t Swim’s emotional house. Even returned ‘90s dance giants Faithless’ bonkers heavy metal cover of Joy Division‘s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, which segues into throbbing house before the two styles merge in mind-melting fashion, sounds perfectly normal here.
Is Wilderness as posh as people say? General camping tickets are £278 before booking fees, which makes it cheaper than Reading & Leeds, and the food trucks are only as expensive as those at most festivals. There are boujie ‘dining experiences’ and suchlike on offer, but you don’t have to book those. So it’s only really ‘middle-class’ if you have preconceived ideas of what middle and working-class people like to do. Us plebs like nice stuff too, you know?
In any case, no-one’s too stuck-up to resist Alison Goldfrapp, who demands the audience “get [their] arses moving” to her liquid funk on Saturday night, the band blasting the Van Halen-style synth of ‘Rocket’ and drafting in a keytar – always a good sign – for a super-slinky ‘Ooh La La’. Over on the Atrium stage, London DJ Jordss plays to a small but appreciative audience that swells when she drops Diana Ross’ ‘Upside Down’ (the communal spirit is only mildly interrupted when someone dressed as an alien chases their pal through the middle of the dancefloor).
Easily the musical highlight of the weekend, though, is psychedelic soul don Michael Kiwanuka, a quietly subversive figure whose songs sound like lost ‘70s masterpieces that tackle police brutality (‘Hero’) and racial identity. The audience is packed on the main stage and as serene strings give way to a distortion-drenched ‘Hard to Say Goodbye’; it’s the beginning of what feels like a ‘Glastonbury moment’ at the wrong festival. ‘Hero’ crashes out in a squall of feedback and a howling solo tears through epic closer ‘Love & Hate’, the heady atmosphere answering the question Kiwanuka posed in earnest at the top of this sensational set: “Are you ready for some soul music?”
Indeed, hip-hop titans De La Soul cheerily demolish any faint prospect of a Sunday evening wind-down with a fuzzily feel-good set that sees rapper Posdnuos lead an enthusiastic crowd chant of “potholes in my lawn”, which probably isn’t actually much of a problem in the Cotswolds. After disco maven Jessie Ware breezily declares Wilderness her “favourite new festival”, it’s up to future-facing electronic duo Bicep to close the main stage with their hyped CHROMA show, an audio-visual bonanza that pulses with glitching, kaleidoscopic visuals and beats like controlled detonations.
Hugely ambitious and drawing perhaps the youngest main stage audience of the weekend, it’s a fitting end to a do that’s as much about the party as it is its immersive quirks. New this year, for example, is The Riddle, a dance tent and bar built around trees that sprout up to the rafters, which leads out to a chintzy garden populated by people dressed up as characters from Alice in Wonderland. This is the meeting point of the two sides of Wilderness.
By night the festival is a party paradise, with punters flocking to The Valley, a hedonistic strip deep in woodland that leads up to a triangular stage pumping out house and techno. And then there’s House of Sublime, a burlesque tent that hosts what can perhaps best be described as a BDSM dominatrix show. Yes, there’s cage dancing. By day, though, you’ll find families taking dips in the tree-lined lake, which is also not a bad way to shake a hangover (though you’ll probably want to give the Family Field a wide berth).
Obviously, with Michael Kiwanuka and Bicep as the big draws, however great they are, this isn’t a festival with a superstar musical line-up to rival that of, say, Reading & Leeds. If you’re here solely for the tunes, it’s probably a four star weekend. But if you’re looking for pure escapism – be it hedonistic or family friendly – it’s a five. Wilderness: it’s proper nice, man.
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“I received plenty of comments saying it was far too soon to ‘go solo’,” Geese frontman Cameron Winter told NME last year while reflecting on how people initially reacted to his decision to branch out on his own. “Most likely because a lot of folks assume that ‘solo albums’ only happen once a band has passed its peak and that they usually feel like uninspired cash grabs.”
Honestly, everyone is trying to earn a living however they can these days, yet no one expected a Geese side project to generate any real financial payoff in 2024. “Just so you know,” he went on, “my solo album is different: because barely anyone knows my band, I am young and comfortable living with my parents and I have the freedom to follow any ideas that interest me.”
Brooklyn indie followers and former NME cover stars Geese were gaining real momentum when their second album ‘3D Country’ mixed cowboy psychedelia with a jazzy, art-punk energy that had already captured the attention of many UK 6 Music dads back in 2023, but who could have predicted what came next? Geese have become one of the most talked-about bands of 2025 and are expected to dominate multiple end-of-year lists with the ambitious and full-range rock of ‘Getting Killed’. Yet the moment that set the stage for this rise was Winter’s Lou Reed-inspired debut solo record ‘Heavy Metal’.
A handful of late-night US television appearances and a spot on Jools Holland acted as a welcoming doorway for the world to see what this 23-year-old can do far beyond what many twice or three times his age are capable of. Now the sold-out Roundhouse audience made up of indie teens, art school regulars, fans who traveled across Europe and seasoned listeners reacts with a collective breath as a slight opening in the stage curtain reveals the silhouette of Winter seated at a piano. First comes a spark of excitement, then a sudden hush.
There is no flashy social media moment, no chatter overriding the music and almost no sea of raised phones. There is a sincerity to how the night unfolds. The Geese singer barely turns toward the audience. “Turn around!” someone calls out from the balcony at one stage. “Is this not enough for you all?” Winter teases back. For some, maybe it was more than enough. At least four people appear to faint around the warm and crowded Roundhouse while the room stands in absolute focus as Winter moves through the dreamlike storytelling of ‘Try As I May’, the emotional swirl of ‘The Rolling Stones’, the bright lift of ‘Love Takes Miles’ and the sermon-like stomp of ‘Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)’. When he reaches the intense and spiritually charged ‘$0’, even the most skeptical hipster might be convinced that “I’m not kidding, God is actually real”. In that moment, it feels as though we all understand.
The entire performance can be summed up in how ‘Drinking Age’ unfolds. It starts softly with a gentle touch on the keys before erupting into a thunderous attack on the Steinway that could echo into next year, followed by a long, open cry aimed toward the sky. Winter somehow manages to blend something minimal with something enormous, something grounded with something cosmic, a delicate approach that hits with staggering force as he reaches toward ideas of existence, heaven, hell and everything surrounding them.
Winter could recite the phone book and still leave a crowd stunned. He carries the spirit of a post-punk Rufus Wainwright you can play alongside The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys, a Gen Z Tom Waits for listeners exhausted by TikTok overload, a new Nick Cave who arrives at exactly the moment he is needed. His voice feels older than his years yet perfectly suited to express the concerns and emotions of his own generation.
We will continue praising Geese endlessly because they deserve it. They are an extraordinary burst of musical creativity that goes far beyond what their lineup would ever imply, and along with Fontaines D.C., they are poised to become one of the decade’s essential bands. Still, tonight offers something quieter and more intimate. Cameron Winter stands completely on his own power, talent and magnetism, proving himself a rising force who can hold an entire room with only his voice, a piano and an entire future waiting for him.
‘Try as I May’
‘Emperor XIII in Shades’
‘The Rolling Stones’
‘Love Takes Miles’
‘Drinking Age’
‘Serious World’
‘Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)’
‘If You Turn Back Now’
‘Vines’
‘Nina + Field of Cops’
‘$0’
‘Take It With You’
‘Cancer of the Skull’
