When the Format Festival was announced back in April, I was immediately pretty jazzed but also a little weary. Northwest Arkansas has indeed been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years, due in no small part to the propensity of the Waltons (the heirs to the Walmart fortune) to pump tons of money into the area’s infrastructure, building world-class museums, mountain bike trails and bringing in all sorts of haute couture new businesses and people. Still, a big three-day festival featuring artists like The Flaming Lips, Phoenix, Rufus du Sol, Fatboy Slim, Herbie Hancock, etc. organized by the guys that put on massive festivals like Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits… It seemed a little too good to be true. Add on top of this that Format seeks to fuse Music, Art and Technology in some kind of unprecedented way, and you can see why my inner caution flag has been raised. Still, five months later here we are. The Format Festival is here, and I have to say, it really has delivered in a lot of ways. I thought it might be cool to take you folks on a walkthrough of my experiences with this inaugural festival.
5:30 p.m. I arrive at the festival via shuttle from a parking lot about 10 minutes away, acquire my wristband from will call and walk through the main gate (the first of many art installations, this one the result of a competition the festival promoters had with local artists). My first impression is that the festival grounds are MUCH bigger than I was anticipating. According to the website it sprawls across 250 acres, situated a little outside town on a private airstrip amidst farmland and forest. Purely from a square footage standpoint, this is as big as many major city festivals. From a venue perspective, we have two main stages, North of Oz and South of Oz (Oz being the nickname of Northwest Arkansas by the local tourism bureau) positioned relatively close to one another with the acts staggered between each so that there are never two acts going on at the same time at the two stages. I actually really liked this setup since it gives the next act on a given stage an hour to set up and sound check while the band at the other stage is performing, allowing the next act to start almost immediately as the previous band finishes. No annoying waiting!
The Marias are playing on North of Oz as I walk in and are a band I was interested in seeing (I wanted to catch more of their act but I had to work until 5… meh). Despite being late, I still managed to catch the latter part of their set, and as I walk up to the stage, they’re serenading the crowd with a cover of Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” which is actually fitting in a way as The Marías take the dream pop melodies of The Cocteau Twins and fuse them with the Britney attitude. The singer, María Zardoya, commands the stage with her presence. Her voice is silky smooth live, whether on the throbbing beats of “Hush” or the breezy cool of “Cariño”. Good stuff. Nice start to the festival.
6:00 p.m. After The Marías leave the stage, I make my way over to The Cube to try to catch the end of Ela Minus’ set. What is The Cube you ask? It is locally pretty much right in the middle of the festival grounds and is basically a three-story scaffolding-based structure with a stage in the middle draped on all sides by Art painted by Kenyan-born artist Uman. The Cube seems to primarily host electronic acts and while it looks a little drab during the day, this thing explodes in color and sound at night. Ela Minus is finishing up her set by the time I get there, but what I hear is a nice, spacy and mellow style of electronica using only synthesizers, no turntable, with Ela Minus herself in deep concentration providing the beats. After Ela is done, I take the next hour to scope out the grounds, get some food and relax a little before the big night really gets going. I wolf down a decent pulled pork sandwich and a pretty tasty spicy pickle from a local food truck and explore some of the art installations while the echoes of Robert Glasper’s uniquely interesting mix of post-bop jazz, neo soul and turntablism serenade me from the South of Oz stage.
So let’s talk about some of the art for a minute. One of the most noticeable pieces I see upon entering the grounds is a piece by Icelandic artist Shoplifter composed of a series of 15 to 20 ft. tall multicolored, hair-covered phallic sculptures that appear to be muppet dongs rocketing into the sky. It’s uh…definitely eye-catching.
Also in this area is a fence-like decoration sculpture ensconcing the outer perimeter of the North and South of Oz Stages from Italian artist Marinella Senatore. During the day, it looks a little cheap and chintzy, but at night with its garish Christmas lights decoration and a repeated message of strength and peace, it makes quite the impression.
Nearby is a piece by Mexican artist Pia Camil, basically a pair of blankets suspended on a scaffolding billowing down with holes in them. I mostly observed people sticking their heads in the holes and playing peek-a-boo with each other.
Toward the southern boundary of the grounds is an installation by Amsterdam-based artist Boris Acket that seemed to my un-Art-trained eye to be a very large billowy, silky translucent sheet suspended about 30 feet in the art gently twisting in the wind.
At the very south end of the festival grounds are two more installations. The more eye-catching of the two is a big silver hot air balloon courtesy of artist Doug Aitken, kept inflated by some bored-looking guys sitting in the basket. While it’s kinda neat to see in the day time, at night this thing really impresses, lit up like Christmas and drenched in fog.
Right next door to the big balloon is a mysterious looking completely black building. This installation is brought to us by the pairing of electronic artist Ritchie Hawtin a.k.a. Plastikman and artist John Gerrard. You walk into a dark room where Plastikman’s electronic composition surrounds you. Projected on the wall is a digital animation of a snake eating its own tail. This was definitely… something that exists. I’ll talk about more of the Art later.
6:30 p.m. After wolfing down my sandwich, I check out the Bizarre Bazaar for a little bit. It’s a weird little enclave of boutique shops flanked with tasty-looking bakery snacks, hipster clothing, cryo therapy, temporary tattoos and even image consulting as well as other things to take the money of naive millennials. I buy nothing and head back over to Robert Glasper in time to catch his interesting improvisational riff on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. I chill here for a little while until the start of Nile Rodgers & Chic.
7:00 p.m. Time for some good-time funky grooves, folks! We have living legend Nile Rodgers here to MAKE YOU DANCE on the North of Oz stage. For those of you who only know of Nile Rodgers & Chic by their disco-funk hits like “Le Freak” and “Good Times”, let me give you a little bit of a lesson on why Nile Rodgers is a vaunted inductee into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to writing a bunch of hit records for Chic in the ‘70s, Rodgers is also a widely celebrated songwriter and producer of such massive hits as Madonna’s Like A Virgin album, David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out” and most recently he co-wrote and played on Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” with Pharrell Williams. Also Nile Rodgers does not let you forget ANY of this. His show is chock full of not just Chic’s funky, catchy earworms but also songs he’s written for lots of others. So we get “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl”, Bowie’s “Modern Love” and “Let’s Dance” and several other songs I’ve already mentioned. I’m not much for dancing but man, Chic even had me bobbin’ along to these tunes in peak funkosity mode. “Good Times”, one of the most sampled songs ever written, closes out the set which segues into “Rapper’s Delight” (a song that famously samples “Good Times”’ famous baseline also used in songs like Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” and Daft Punk’s “Around the World”). The party atmosphere is PALPABLE.
8:00 p.m. From the wild party vibes of Chic on the North of Oz stage we travel to the laid back, brain fogged vibes of The War on Drugs at South of Oz. The War on Drugs creates a deceptively simple combination of driving Tom Petty-esque back beat and melody while layering hazy, light shoegaze textures, rising and falling like the crashing of waves on the shore of a melancholy ocean. The entrancing music combined with the dense, fog-drenched lights of the stage combine to make for a memorable experience courtesy of a band whose studio versions are solid but rarely memorable for me. The War on Drugs really blossoms live.
9:20 p.m. Finally time for the headliner of the night, French electro indie pop band Phoenix! After a twenty minute delay while they worked out the kinks of their very elaborate multi-layered LCD backdrop, Phoenix launches straight into “Lisztomania” to get people boppin’ right from the get-go while their backdrop hearkens back to some sort of neo-classical Roman bathhouse. Their fondness for classical artwork in general is reflected throughout the show as they place themselves in a tranquil meadow, a gothic castle, an ornate theater and other atypical settings for a catchy string of pop songs. He even serenades a masked phantom figure at one point. Throughout the show, Phoenix shows a willingness to use technology in inventive and unique ways to broaden their performance, from their almost three-dimensional LED backwall to an entrancing drone show in collaboration with art collective Drift about halfway through to a neat little effect during “Trying to be Cool” where the singer has a pair of binoculars that act as a camera to watch the audience and project on the back wall like a jumbotron.
Phoenix wraps up the show with “1901”, one of their biggest hits and they go out in crowd-pleasing style with the singer making his way out into the audience and climbing on the shoulders of the fans. He actually ends up almost right in front of me which is kinda cool. Meanwhile artist Nick Cave (NOT the Australian musician of note)’s art makes an appearance with dancers decked out in some extra colorful, furry soundsuits making their way up the middle of the crowd. All in all, a joyful and fun ending to Phoenix’s tight, catchy set.
10:30 p.m. After Phoenix, I decided to head over to Next Door, possibly the most unique venue at the festival, to catch Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul on the recommendation of someone I know from Malta. On the way there, it strikes me just how cool the south end of the festival looks lit up at night.
So Next Door looks pretty innocuous from the outside, a drab-looking small blue building flanked with port-a-potties (with the only hint something out of the ordinary is going on an eyeball above the port-a-potties). But upon opening the door of a port-a-potty, you discover that it’s the entrance to a hidden art installation and spacey little concert venue/chill out place. The entrance halls are plastered with all sorts of mixed media ephemera and there’s even a little bar in the entryway. The main room in the structure opens out into a domed ceiling with all sorts of weird psychedelic projections cycling through with bean bags sitting in one corner, waiting for weary concert-goers to plop down and stare at the weirdness above them. I get the sense this was custom-made for stoners. The stage is very small, on the opposite side of the room from the bean bags, which doesn’t leave much room for the music acts to move around. On the positive side though, it offers the most intimate experience of the festival with the performers right in front of the audience.
So in this setting, it seems like the kind of environment where an act like Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul thrives with their throbbing electro pop synth and repetitive, agit-prop vocals. Adigéry’s presence is electric and visceral while also being eminently danceable. The crowd digs it, perhaps a little too much, because it’s so crowded in there I don’t stay for the full set. Too bad because I was digging it.
I decide since I’m over on that side of the grounds to check out Smokey’s, a venue back in the woods that mostly plays host to electronica acts and it’s a pretty cool place for a concert with a big grotesque caricature of a little girl shooting lasers out of its eyes. The entrance to Smokey’s is another art installation courtesy of Australian artist James Tapscott. It’s a very cool-looking large circle emitting light and fog and creates the appearance of walking through some kind of otherworldly portal.
Over at Smokey’s, Shygirl is performing, a female-fronted electro-pop duo from the UK. I watch them for a few minutes, and it’s pretty solid. But I’m old, and I’m tired. Time to head home.
On the way out, Fatboy Slim is DJing in the disco barn (more on that venue later). I stop to look in for a couple minutes, but it’s far too crowded to mess with and live DJing has never been something I’m a huge fan of to begin with.
11:15 p.m. So ends Day One of what’s shaping up to be a pretty flippin’ cool festival here in good ol’ Bentonville. While the crowds may not be in the numbers the promoters were hoping for (with ticket sales several thousand less than what was anticipated) and some lame VIP-exclusive stuff including a section of the South of Oz stage that juts out halfway into the crowd that just comes across as money-grubbing (but lots of the big festivals have this sort of nonsense, so I guess it’s one of those evils you have to learn to live with). Overall though, this festival has so far been a blast and I’m looking forward to what’s coming tomorrow. Beach House! Moses Sumney! The Flaming Lips! I am jazzed.