Format Festival (9/23 - 9/25)

Wristbands arrived this morning. Planning to attend all three days, but some shortening may occur. as for probables, I pretty much wanna see 90% of the acts. it will be difficult for us to balance that out with the FOURTEEN+ art projects laid out around the grounds. we shall see where the wind takes us. 

In general though, I am also attempting amperage. It is hard to look past 'what could have been' here. It will be impossible to duplicate or imitate what the first year accomplished. But I think it will ultimately be fine. Experiencing the inaugural, I do believe the -artistic- minds behind this truly want it to succeed and will put on an enjoyable product. It just won't be the same atmosphere and no where near the same budget, due to the -financial- minds.

My main concern is being in the center of town; the parking and overall logistics potential for a nightmare. Ironically, that was my biggest issue with last year's, but this will be the flip side of the same coin in terms of setting.

here is the map layout:

Alanis Morissette will be there this week.

Yes, she will be there.

looks like choices gonna have to be made. I love François K but he forever conflicting with someone huge. Sry bub.

Alanis Morissette will play at Format Festival tonight.

Didn’t go last year, but art seems to have taken a step back from the pictures and videos I saw. That said the logistics of the festival were pretty great yesterday. Granted I feel a lot of people only came for LCD Soundsystem. Grounds felt empty the majority of the day. Overall I thought the sound was good at all of the stages I saw.

Now Little Simz was the best set I saw. I truly do not understand how this artist isn’t bigger. US festivals need to start booking her more. She definitely won over the crowd of mostly people who had never heard of her.

LCD and Jamie were great. Jamie went harder than any of the other 4 times I’ve seen him which was a welcome surprise. LCD sounded more polished now than the two times I last saw them in 2016. Band appeared to be in a good mood and was vibing. Overall solid first day.

So getting the plug pulled three hours early due to incoming weather kind of sucked, but my group made lemonade from lemons. We arrived back from the fest to find our Airbnb had no power or running water. Luckily we had a fully charged portable speaker and a bunch of glow sticks and light up brackets and we raged way harder than we would have at the festival into the wee hours of the morning.

Overall the festival day was pretty solid. I met Al Doyle from LCD/Hot Chip while at the Museum of Love show. The Pharcyde and Sudan archives sounded great and Tiempo De Maldad brought the energy although they needed to be turned up way louder. Alanis was fine but her vocals were too low and everyone just talked around us no matter where we moved unless she was playing one of her hits. Hoping Dombrance gets rescheduled for today as he was one of the few acts I had not seen before that I was looking forward to.

Final review… Overall this is a nice little festival. The town of Bentonville is actually pretty cool. Logistically this thing ran very well. Everything started on time and nothing really had any lines. However, I could see this being a problem in the end because I’m not sure if this festival drew enough to survive…. But hey maybe the Walmart kids can take a few L’s before they find their footing.

Pros
- Actually had a couple cool small print artists that aren’t on the Livenation touring circuit. Museum of Love, Arushi Jain, Tiempo de Maldad, Dombrance, Digitalism etc.. All very cool artists that I’m glad I was given the fortune of seeing
- Next Door Stage was super intimate and really cool dome stage which had projection art mapped to the dome.
- Staff and Grounds Crew were all super nice, and did a great job dealing with the rain impacting the grounds
- Art is not an afterthought at this festival. It very much is at the forefront.

Cons
- Sound quality inconsistency. Some artists sounded amazing while others weren’t loud enough or mixed poorly.
- Crowd size was pretty sad for several of the artists. You could pretty much be on the rail for anyone except headliners if you showed up 5 minutes pre set.
- 8-10 artists from the original lineup didn’t play for some reason or another. While some of these certainly aren’t the fault of the festival that is a really high number IMO for a festival that probably only booked 50 acts to begin with.

Overall 7/10. Would come back if they continue to grab a couple cool small print acts and get one headliner that I’m remotely interested in catching. Top set honors go to…

1. Little Simz
2. LCD Soundsystem
3. The Pharcyde
4. Tiempo de Maldad
5. Museum of Love

HM - Dombrance, Franc Moody, Jamie XX, Sudan Archives

Did anyone here go both years? I'm curious to know if moving it into town rather than that farm area to the north was a good move or not.

The second year of format festival was a very different experience from the first but still ended up being a fun time. Unfortunately, all three days were shorter than I would have liked them, but I still got to see a good amount of performances. The weather was mostly perfect, with the exception of cutting Saturday short a couple hours.... but first

FRIDAY
We arrived at a pad, where I was super lucky finding, that was literally less than a mile from the festival entrance. We brought bikes again this year - and unlike last year, we got to ride them there all three days! (So we did not experience the shuttle or rideshare this time) the neighborhood is very calm, the bike valet parking area was quick and easy. Security was chill and not strict at all - my kind of people. 

So. The new festival grounds? Pretty awesome. Not Sugar Creek Airstrip open space awesome, but still very diverse and entertaining nonetheless. They gave me a mixture of two Texas fests - Day For Night vibes (with the indoor Rode House stage, and the outside of the building for artist usage) combined with Fortress Festival vibes (incorporating the art museum, installations and wandering the grounds). Walking in through the checkpoint, the disco barn is directly to the right of the entrance - a genius decision. 



Arrived just in time for Digable Planets start. Automatic initial assessment of the audience - boring walmart regulars. Acts like this are a cool booking for a niche festival, and it's nice they made up for missing the first year. But there was not a lot of feedback/participation and you could tell the group was well aware. Plus, it's leaving work time on a Friday! Sparse! 


Caught the closing of Theon Cross, formerly Sons of Kemet alum. Played to a small intimate crowd in a tight setting like the Rode House. So I suppose this was the consolation prize to The Cube, more of a traditional venue, but I liked the layout and intimate feel - despite not being a unique construction with an airy atmosphere(atmoscube?) open ceiling. 


Stopped by the other returning artistic venue - Next Door Nova Heat aka portapotty dome. Playtronica Berlin Station were the definition of experimental. They use electronics to their fullest musical potential, like a cool science class.

In fact they have a kiosk near the water hydration station where you yourself can interactively play music using fruits, vegetables and other objects attached and plugged into a diode board. Great for kids. On that note, this is a good place to mention an interaction a crew member had with my wife. He asked how the whole experience was, and if we went last year, which we did. He wanted to compare thoughts from last year to this year. He mentioned how they added more family-focused activities, which was an interesting decision. But it makes sense, for this area, location, demographic, and widening their scope for attendance. 


We went to go get food - me and my hunger were greatly pleased with the exponential improvements they made in options. last year was about 5 different vendors, and even with the scarce populous, the rush hours had unnecessarily long lines. This year? at least a dozen options!! Happy to see the local BBQ nachos truck made a return - damn they hit the spot. Ate those while moseying by Little simZ on the main stage, she had strong presence. 

and initiated the thought of how fascinating it is that she is playing Arkansas of all places - along with just about everyone else up and down this lineup. including... 

Jamie xx - holy hell did he bring it to the Ozarks. He hammered that sound system out into the Wally World around us. So glad I could finally cross him off my list after having to miss his set at the last ever DayForNight.  


lcd soundsystem - have not seen them since ACL 2016. They still have it. They were my wifes recommendation on the post year one review, and they are a perfect fit for headlining this place. 


They could not spring for Despacio tho, which is lame. oh well maybe next year

After they closed out the main stage with a barrage of all their hits, we wandered back to the Rode house to catch returning Format artist, and probably a yearly staple - Francois K. the Rode House became packed to the gills as he then went b2b with the oncoming LP Giobbi. She was fun, and turned the room into a rave, as designed.




 exiting the fest was simple, retrieving bike a piece of cake.... The next day? bit of a different story

this fest is "on pause"

Spoiler: it ain’t coming back