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Rhian Teasdale swaggers onto the main stage at Wilderness Festival, turns her back to the audience and flexes her muscles like a prize-fighter. The Wet Leg singer has every reason to be feeling cocksure, given that the band recently topped the UK album charts with their sugar rush of a second album, ‘Moisturizer’.
Drawing a huge crowd on the Sunday evening of this fabulous weekender, the reigning indie champions leave no doubt as to why they beat Oasis’ best-of ‘Time Flies’ to the top spot. Their muscular guitar anthems are so full of wit that the audience responds in kind: one little kid down the front waves a sign that reads: “I’m your smallest fan.”
The band’s gritty performance shows how many ways you can ‘ave it at Wilderness. Held on the picturesque Cornbury Park and now in its 14th iteration, the festival has cultivated a reputation as the glammest on the boutique circuit. Yes, there’s a Veuve Clicquot champagne bar. And, yes, there’s a spa (and another champagne bar) beside one of the two lakes sunk into the site. Here pampered punters watch on as families enjoy a spot of wild swimming, minding not to disturb the people doing yoga on a cluster of paddle boats.
So, much of it’s very genteel and this is a distinctly family friendly do, with parents weaving kids’ trolleys around the throng (Wilderness has a capacity of 30,000 but it feels like the enormous site could accommodate double that number, which prevents any chance of overcrowding). At night, though, the freaks come out to play in a designated dance section that begins roughly at a secret garden-themed bar called The Riddle and leads to The Valley, an expanse of woodland that’s been transformed into a vast dancefloor.
Vibes-wise, this side of Wilderness is Charli XCX in her shades and Vivienne Westwood wedding dress, demurely smoking a Vogue. Late on Saturday night, Confidence Man move a packed crowd with their DJ set at The Valley, lasers zinging overhead as the Aussie dance dons pump out the likes of ‘Gossip’, their sassy, Spanish guitar-adorned collab with JADE. The freewheeling atmosphere is pretty well summed up by the lad good-naturedly dunking his fox tail-wearing mate face-down into a recycling bin.
There’s decidedly less neon on display at The Dive, a small venue that’s new to Wilderness this year. With an exterior that’s styled to resemble an American roadhouse, this gloriously dingy bar hosts scuzzy indie bands such as Goodbye, a five-piece who blend fragile, Cocteau Twins-style vocals with a guitar tone that’s by turns dreamy and full-on grunge. They’ve yet to release any music but are clearly one to watch.
If there’s a single band that embodies the louche side of Wilderness though, it’s Air who grace a main stage framed by a white oblong box. The minimalist set-up indicates the effortlessly cool approach that the French space-pop duo (rounded out by a live drummer) take to noodling through their 1998 masterpiece ‘Moon Safari’, which they began to play in full last year.
The band’s crisp beats, snaking basslines and neon-hued synths conjure images of, well, people sipping champagne in a hot tub overlooking a lake, which you couldn’t quite say of Kent ravers Orbital who obliterate the same stage with a sonic assault later in the evening. At one point the pair – cast in shadow, with flashing white lights affixed to their heads like eyes – are accompanied by a pre-recorded video of Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson, who barks class war missives during their pulverising collaboration ‘Dirty Rat’.
Norwegian singer AURORA is also outspoken the following evening, as she intersperses arty synth-pop with pleas for a better planet. “We see the world in so much pain and we want to do so much,” she says, “but it’s hard to know what to do.” In the end, she concludes, “our voices help and everything we do matters so much”. In that spirit, she dedicates the delicate, heartbreaking ‘Through The Eyes Of A Child’ to “the children of Palestine”.
She’s followed on the main stage by local lads Supergrass, who batter through their sensational debut album ‘I Should Coco’ to mark its 30th birthday. Peppering the set with other classic tracks that didn’t appear on that record, Gaz Coombes and co. put on a weekend highlight for all-ages audience who prove the Britpop revival continues apace.
After Wet Leg display their mettle on the final night, with Teasdale at one point dousing her hair in water, looking like a boxer who’s just floored the competition, Basement Jaxx close the main stage with a truly jaw-dropping show. The London dance duo rock out from a circular hole cut into the floor, aided in their big beat bonanza by a rotating cast of vocalists and dancers in space-age silver tutus, all of whom strut fearlessly down the tilted stage.
After a 10-year break from performing, the lads are certainly back with a bang. It’s yet another KO at a triumphant Wilderness Festival, the heavyweight glamp-ion of the UK.
NME is an official media partner of Wilderness Festival
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It’s unusual for Sault, the elusive group headed by Little Simz’s past collaborator InFlo, to take the stage. So when All Points East revealed that they would be leading the opening day of this year’s festival (August 15), the excitement spread immediately. Even though they hinted at a global tour in 2023, their only live appearances to date were at London’s Drumsheds, where they delivered a sold-out extravaganza. This night, then, promised an experience no one wanted to miss.
The line-up throughout the day was stacked with strong names like Kirk Franklin, Sasha Keable, Nao, Ms Dynamite, and others. Sadly, every one of these sets was squeezed into a messy three-hour stretch, creating painful overlaps all across the park. After 6 pm, only Main Stage East stayed active, leaving festival-goers with a single option: to watch the headline run of Sault, Cleo Sol, and Chronixx. The latter two, both tied to the mysterious group, each had their slots as well as time performing with the collective.
Nothing quite sets us up for Sault’s epic five-hour showing, which proves both overwhelming and tangled. Dancers and a choir appeared cloaked in burnt ochre robes, resembling travelers from a fictional desert world, surrounded by sand, dunes, and golden-lined rocks. The production had serious funding – a full orchestra with piano, strings, harp, and guitars filled the soundscape, and in the middle of the crowd sat a dusty pyramid that most people ignored. Whispers carried through the audience about the spectacle’s grandeur, with one nearby voice remarking, “Doesn’t InFlo still owe Little Simz £1million?”
The pyramid stage design during Sault’s All Points East 2025 set. Photo credit: Jennifer McCord
Whatever meaning this grand production was meant to communicate was hard to grasp. The leading figures, who looked like InFlo and Sol, seemed to be chasing something, yet it was never clear exactly what. Perhaps it was freedom, since the lead vocalist echoed the refrain of ‘Free’, with additional nods to self-discovery and healing, but the storyline stayed muddy and difficult to follow.
Energy picked up once Sol and Chronixx emerged early in the performance, both in beige suits and reflective shades, slipping into the first act. Alongside the cloaked ensemble, they played through a range of Sault songs that stretched across all twelve albums. Fans were treated to hidden treasures like the mesmerizing ‘S.O.T.H.’ and emotional ‘Pray For Me’, alongside more recognizable tracks such as ‘I Just Want to Dance’ and ‘Why Why Why Why Why’. For many in the crowd, though, the event played more like a quirky encounter than the immersive artistic showcase Sault seemed to be aiming for.
It took nearly two hours for the night to loosen up, and that turning point came courtesy of Chronixx. His uplifting reggae and radiant spirit shifted the whole space, people skanked along to ‘Smile’ and swayed to ‘Likes’, and suddenly the atmosphere felt celebratory again. Once he exited, Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) appeared out of nowhere in a strange yet brilliant surprise. Over chirping bird sounds and glitchy electronic noise, he reshaped ‘Umi Says’, spinning across the stage in a checkered drape, embodying the song’s spirit of liberation with almost comic exaggeration.
Chronixx performing at All Points East on Friday, August 15. Photo credit: The pyramid stage design during Sault’s All Points East 2025 set. Photo credit: Jennifer McCord
After four relentless hours of spectacle, Cleo Sol finally claimed the spotlight for her whole performance. The shift was instant, her gentle voice floated across Victoria Park, drawing hips to sway and couples to curl into each other, the entire air easing at once. She shone in glittering silver cocktail wear, moving gracefully with the poise of someone fully aware of how badly we needed this release. ‘Rose In The Dark’ carried an almost ironic weight as she sang “Hold on a little longer / It’ll be alright”, mirroring exactly what the crowd had been doing throughout the marathon. Closing with ‘Know That You Are Loved’, she stood atop the glowing pyramid while voices from the crowd echoed every lyric back to her, delivering the emotional peak of the evening.
She tried to squeeze in ‘Why Don’t You’ as an encore, but curfew struck, the lights snapped on, and the moment ended abruptly. The intention was clear, to unveil the breadth of Sault’s world through an unconventional showcase, yet the finale, like the beginning, left more questions than answers. For a group as rare on stage as Sault, a little less mystery and a little more music might have made their All Points East appearance truly measure up to the highs of Drumsheds.
Sault played:
‘Glory’
‘Free’
‘Let Me Go’
‘Over’
‘I Just Wanna Dance’
‘Warrior’
‘Faith’
‘Up All Night’
‘Son Shine’
‘Masterpiece’
‘Why Why Why Why Why’
‘Stop Dem’
‘Black Is’
‘Pray For Me’
‘S.O.T.H.’
‘T.H.’
‘W.A.I.’
‘Wildfires’
‘This Generation’
Chronixx played:
‘Big Bad Sound’
‘Here Comes Trouble’
‘Exile’
‘Survivor’
‘Market’
‘Captureland’
‘They Don’t Know’
‘Don’t Be Afraid’
‘Family First’
‘Spanish Town Rockin”
‘Skankin Sweet’
‘Majesty’
‘Sweet Argument’
‘Way You Make Me Feel’
‘Resilient’
‘Eternal Light’
‘Tenement Yard’
‘Saviour’
‘Love Is On A Mountain’
‘Smile Jamaica’
Cleo Sol played:
‘Love Yourself’
‘Rose In The Dark’
‘When I’m In Your Arms’
‘There Will Be No Crying’
‘Things Will Get Better’
‘Reason’
‘Don’t Let Me Fall + Outro’
‘Promises’
‘Sunshine’
‘Don’t Let It Go To Your Head’
‘Blue’ (Unreleased)
‘Know That You Are Loved’
‘Why Don’t You’
