This in from Bestival HQ in their own words. Ed
HMS Bestival is finally steaming back into home waters. Our trusty and now slightly rusty ship and crew have spent the past decade cruising the high seas, dodging pirates in tropical climes and partying with natives on moonlit beaches. Now it’s time to come home to celebrate ten years of Bestival on the Isle of Wight.
All aboard for the journey home to The Port!
What is The Port?
Bestival HQ have been busy working out how best to mark a whole decade of great Bestivals and have come up with our most ambitious and largest on-site project since we began.
The Port is a landlocked harbour with HMS Bestival as its centrepiece, surrounded by a pier, nautical sideshows and all the action of a bustling port… in a festival!
Funktion One
The Port will boast state of the art sound (provided by Funktion One), hi-tech lasers, LED screens and a boatload of pyro exploding from HMS Bestival’s funnels.
DJs will man the bridge, steering the good ship through day and night of techno & house, with many of the world’s leading DJs playing onboard this hyperreal ship.
All aboard HMS Bestival
Taking a little time out from reaching for the lasers, Rob da Bank says; “I’m probably more excited about this new stage for Bestival than anything else in the last decade of creating fun and mental spaces for people to party on. We’ve got a tree you can rave inside, a forest with films and a giant metal spider that breathes fire, but we’ve never had a life-sized ship transmitting the best techno and house DJs across the waves while lasers strafe the crowd and a lighthouse booms its foghorn!
“This whole new field is going to be an all-night maritime adventure with dirty little rum bars, enticing brothels and sea shanties ringing out from random sailor-folk in every corner. It’ll have crazy aerial displays and a bucketload of pyro that will blow your mind – it’s the dance arena to end all dance arenas and it’s gonna go off! If you want to know where the party’s at, it’s at The Port.”
Who’s on board?
Manning the bridge of our incredible 24 metre long ocean-going liner will be a cavalcade of the finest names to grace club culture, a veritable who’s who of Bestival Classics. Friday night headlining action will come courtesy of the Plastikman himself Richie Hawtin (pictured).
Saturday night will see a triumphant Annie Mac Presents selection and Sunday will be brought to a cataclysmically joyous end by the one and only Carl Cox. We will also have the cream of the dance music scene to smash up The Port’s dancefloor, including the newly-announced Knife Party’s explosive fusions of bass and beats, Kiss FM’s DJ EZ who will be dropping majestic garage goodness, the mighty Toddla T Sound who will be ripping up the fiery techno-dub, turntable-ninja Jaguar Skills who will be serving up his genre swerving cut & paste bedlam, and back to back mayhem from Bestival favourites Phat Phil Cooper & Russ Cuban.
And there’s more
With a lighthouse come helter skelter, a dockers’ bar, amazing aerial performances via a huge crane, delicious dancing girls and camp sailor boys on-stage, plus dance podiums throughout the arena for the crowd, a coruscating brilliance of unbelievable pyrotechnics, sparkle, flame and fire effects, confetti, and smoking funnels, The Port is where you’re going to want to be.
There will also be a mega DJ line-up all weekend long that will include the previously announced Seth Troxler, Julio Bashmore, Maya Jane Coles, Erol Alkan, Duke Dumont, Eats Everything, Cyril Hahn, Hospitality Bestival Take Over Featuring High Contrast, Danny Byrd, Nu:Logic, Fred V & Grafix Hosted By Wrec & Dynamite, Marcel Dettmann, Heidi, Ed Rush and Jesse Rose.
The Port; it’s brand new and good for you, so put on your dancing shoes!
