Forwards 2025: Orbital, Confidence Man & Ezra Collective

Forwards Festival takes place on the Clifton Downs in Bristol for two days every year, with the Saturday generally being a dance programme and the Sunday being indie leaning. Organised by the Love Saves the Day team, who also programme the Silver Hayes area at Glastonbury Festival, capable hands are quite obviously in charge, and this really shows.

I am an access user for a couple of different reasons, both neurological and physical and so this review speaks to how this festival caters to Access users, as well as to the musical side of this rather fabulous day festival. Having attended last year, I was looking for lessons learned. What I didn’t expect was new Access ideas to make our lives easier.

Firstly, applying for Access has been made incredibly straightforward, with an easy to understand form to complete and their acceptance of the Nimbus card as evidence of need (they also accept other forms of evidence). Response as to whether Access needs would be met was quick, and the Access team are incredibly responsive to questions. The Access pack was emailed three days before the event, giving those of us who need to do a little pre-reading to prep for events plenty of time to plan.

At the festival, we arrived at around 4:30pm to zero queue for disabled access, however, I could see they’d started to change things from last year with the addition of chairs, in case a queue developed at the box office. A dedicated disabled security lane ensured zero queueing again (you may be wondering why I’m focusing on where queue management was excellent, but this will become clear later). 

The disabled viewing platform at the West stage was where it was last year, which is to say perfectly positioned by the first speaker repeater stack with brilliant sound and sight lines. However, it’s the addition of the Viewing Area at the front of this platform that seriously made my day. Sat on the platform to recover from the effort to get to the festival, it soon became clear during Confidence Man that my body wanted to dance and I’m quite a shy dancer. So, rather than dancing on the platform, which felt above and distant from the crowd and therefore the set, we got to go to the front of the Viewing Area to dance and feel part of the crowd, whilst not having to worry that a bump was going to send me to the Medical tent. 

As a result I got to enjoy a suitably confident Confidence Man set who came, arrived, performed, and showed they are absolute professionals who can be relied on to deliver. As a first timer seeing the duo and that set, their set was a really nice balance of happy dance, celebratory lyrics and dollops of pop, mixed with dubbier, bassy sounds that nicely balanced, and I felt the mix of those two was perfect across the set. Having endured a few terribly designed sets this year, I am now appreciating the art of track selection. This set took us on a really good journey, ending with a raucous crowd rendition of Holiday. It’s also lovely to see a male-female duo where both equally contribute to the show where both of whom have the chance to shine individually as well as together.

This was where the inklings of a potential problem started to show: food queues. My companion had already eaten before Confidence Man, and got a number ‘02’ ticket for a food stall serving in the ‘80s’. I wasn’t worried at that point as I stupidly thought that if I waited til the temp dropped later in the evening, the queues would get smaller. Dear reader, they did not. And here’s where things get complicated. An A6 note was pinned to each food stall’s frame saying that they were happy to recognise Access needs. Firstly, I don’t know what that means and there wasn’t anything in the Access pack to tell me. Secondly, we had zero chance of seeing that from the back of the queue. Thirdly, and for an incredibly shy me, no one else in the queue has any chance of seeing that either, meaning that if you wanted to queue jump cos of Access needs, no one else in the queue would have any idea why you were doing that, potentially causing aggro. An A4 sign next year would be really appreciated, as well as a note in the Access pack.

Cue me ending up desperately buying food I didn’t really want from a stall cos it had the smallest queue which predictably ended up in a mock dog in a bun so dry that when I picked it up it snapped in half and fell on the floor. I hadn’t eaten since entering the festival at 4:30pm and this was around 8pm. To be honest this may be why I didn’t enjoy Ezra Collective. All I can offer here is that if you enjoy jazz noodling, you’ll love them. I am also aware that I’m in the minority because everyone around us was really quite obviously loving them. 

We graciously ceded our seats on a now incredibly busy West stage disabled platform that was running out of chairs, leading to companions having to sit on the floor, to head towards my headliner, Orbital. Via a Mac & Cheese stall who fed me pasta and cheese with zero queue cos literally the entire festival was at Ezra Collective, and who literally sorted my blood sugar instantly. 

Having briefly experienced the East stage disabled platform for a totally overwhelmed Mount Kimbie (sound problems, heat affecting equipment problems leading to a band who sounded nothing like the band I listened to on Spotify), we decided that since we were there early, we would be brave and try being on the barrier. That platform has moved since last year and frankly, needs to be returned to where it was. 

Now bear with me. It sounds insane for anyone who has Access needs to choose to be on the barrier, right? Except, you’re guaranteed a flat metal grounding to stand and dance on, a handy thing to hold on to if you’re struggling with overwhelm or dizziness, and lots of space for your hands to dance where other people aren’t, as well as being within easy yelling distance of stewards if anything goes wrong. Other Access users’ needs vary.

So, Orbital. Another duo who understand the art of sets and track selection. Journeying from the depths of Dirty Rat ire and irritation, with the hilarity of rhyming English Channel and fried animal, straight into an extended Satan, with the dark visuals to match, was quite an intro for those of us who’ve been fans since the beginning.

After the deep, dark and dirty, however, things started to slowly build. Hope re-emerging from the dark, with the twinkles of Halycon On & On feeling like a rescue team arriving as everyone obeyed Paul and Phil’s orders to get their hands up.

You can tell when a band has gone off-piste with the set list, because the photographers and camera ops don’t know where to put themselves and the confused gaggle front stage right spoke volumes.

Those who bothered to stay until the end of the set got rewarded with shots of euphoria and silliness, with Phil changing his white headlights for pink and ascending into Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven is a place on Earth three quarters of the way through Chime, before throwing another curveball as The Spice Girls’ Wannabe dropped, warped and twisted, slowed down and sped back up in a gleeful demo of what his button pressing and knob twiddling can do.

As I stood at the barrier literally crying with laughter, the Beekeeper came on to intro Confidence Man, to perform a sped up Holiday with the Hartnoll Brothers, and the crowd erupted.

And then we left because, honestly, for a woman who’s been a fan of Orbital’s since the beginning, it wasn’t going to get better than that.

Overall, I’d say Forwards are doing seriously well on the access front. They are way better than quite a lot of multi day festivals and they aren’t resting on their laurels. They’re innovating in this space, coming up with new ideas and new ways of doing things and that’s really appreciated. The stewarding is first class, and one of the platforms is absolutely perfect (West) and the other can be easily sorted. The food queue jump for Access attendees is a genius idea that not even Glastonbury have thought of, but it just needs a bit of tweaking. I will be back next year.

Editors note: the reviewer wishes to make it clear that they paid for their own ticket to the event and that this review was written without fee or accreditation.