Love Saves the Day Brought Bristol to a Sun-Soaked Standstill This Weekend
Khris Cowley & Theo Cottle

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Love Saves the Day Brought Bristol to a Sun-Soaked Standstill This Weekend

The weekend festival was a testament to the UK’s capital of community.

Bristol might not be the biggest city in the country, but it is a mammoth when it comes to throwing parties. Beyond the constant buzz of London, or the subversive productivity of Manchester, the South West city is a very particular pocket of people, sounds and spaces that make it home to some of the best days and nights imaginable. This was on vivid display this weekend when THUMP headed down for the Sunday of Love Saves the Day.

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Making it's home in Eastville park, somewhere between a huge Tesco and the M32, the festival played out like a small carnival packed in under the sizzling bank holiday sun. The weekender is run by Team Love, a group of Bristol promoters and event organisers who run nights throughout the year as well as heading up their own pub/club venue the Love Inn. For the festival, this team then collaborated with a host of Bristol institutions including In:Motion, Who Cares, Crack Magazine and Futureboogie, all presenting their own stages. So while on the surface Love Saves the Day might have appeared to be another mid-year congregation of face-painted teenagers and warm tins of lager, there is in fact the energy of a whole city behind it.

It being a bank holiday, we decided to head down for the Sunday to catch some of the excellent roster of electronic acts the festival had secured. After a breakfast of toast and cheap Cava, we stuck on our sunglasses and entered the site and it wasn't long before we were deep into the mix with the multitude of selectors on the bill. Our afternoon really got to a start bouncing between the Trinidad-informed wobbles of Jus Now and a conversely cool and pulsing session from Erol Alkan. From this jumping off point we were straight into the banger-led hedonism of New York Transit Authority, before re-joining the Paradiso tent for a decidedly funked up set from Floating Points.

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It was here that our highlight of the day emerged. THUMP are big fans of Daniel Avery, but in a sunshine soaked park, largely brimming with disco-infected house, glitter paint, and crop tops, there was no indication that his steely, acidic techno would find as much of a home as it did. To a modestly sized, but fiercely engaged crowd, Avery filled his tent with a selection of a cuts that managed to somehow entrance and enliven at the same time. As the sun set over our shoulders, the swirl of pushing beats and trippy samples pulled us willingly into the night-time and an exquisite closing set from the inimitable Four Tet.

We then followed Keiran Hebden to our after-party, situated in Bristol's multi-room home of endless nights, Motion. The skate park's smaller Marble Factory played host to a blast of bass-heavy goodness courtesy of the likes of David Rodigan, Jus Now and Pinch. It was then up to Four Tet and Floating Points to go back to back in the vast depths of the main room. By this point, our Cava and toast was 12 hours of standing under the sun behind us, yet luckily for us the eclectic selectors had more than enough in the way of beguiling beats and esoteric zingers to keep us hooked. Truth be told, we couldn't have left even if we'd wanted to. Their set was an exploration, skipping through genres as readily as it did nations of origin, daring to sacrifice the safety of recognisable tunes in favour of some hardly heard, but deeply well-received, risks.

Then, 5am came around and THUMP were thrown out onto the streets with the rest of the happily dazed dancers. The sun began to catch up again as we made our way back through the city's empty streets. Given the time to reflect on the place, and the party that the Love Saves team had thrown, it was clear that the collected artists (many of them Bristol-based) and various groups who had come together to create the experience had a whole lot to be proud of. It is a testament to the familial qualities of Bristol, and its constant spirit and stamina for partying, that the whole celebration felt completely at home.

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