Sometimes when you go to a festival it has the x factor – something that makes it just that little bit special. You cannot put your finger on what that special ingredient to the mix is but you know it’s there; Y Not Festival has that something in spades!

Y-Not was voted Best Small Festival at last year’s UK Festival awards and we wanted to see what all the noise was about. It seems that far from sitting on their laurels, they quickly looked at making the festival bigger and adding even more amazing additions to this year. 

It soon became evident that the site was large but the covered arenas were small, ensuring the intimate feeling of a small festival. Yet at the same time due to the massive stage and video screen on the Big Gin Stage you felt like you were at a much larger festival.

There were seven stages, two of which doubled up as bars. There were also a further five bars all with a great selection of real ales and cider, plus wine. A few bars also served cocktails including the ‘Ice Bucket tent’ that showed classic films and ‘The Allotment’ for home grown talent. There was also a secret stage with some great ska being pumped out.

A new addition to this year and a popular haunt was ‘The Gun Smoke Saloon Bar’ hosting country, western & blues. The surroundings made you feel like an extra on the film set of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Hopefully next year they will make the venue bigger as it always seemed to be full to the rafters.

There was a good range of quality food vendors, whether you fancied wild boar burgers, freshly made wraps or just a cup cake all were catered for, plus so much more. And the good news was the queues were not too long!

Although the festival doesn’t profess to be a family festival there were a large number of families enjoying the festival, and the young ones seemed to enjoy throwing straw at each other (some things never change) 

The Thursday evening’s entertainment was hosted in The Quarry. Nizlopi reformed this year for a scattering of festival and gig slots before they part again to work on their solo careers. The set was uplifting and had the packed tent singing along to their anthem the JCB song. Afterwards they hung around to talk to fans, give autographs and have their pictures taken. The happy fans walked away with big grins and the weekend was off to a flying start. Earlier in the evening we caught most of the Thrill Collins set, their skiffle covers of modern classics went down a storm.

Friday morning saw wave upon wave of campers entering the site and the start of three great days:

Macclesfield’s finest The Virginmarys delivered a delightful punk infused set for the Friday afternoon crowd on the ‘Big Gin Stage’. The band are getting great critical acclaim for their King of Conflict album and it’s easy to see why, their set includes ‘Bang Bang Bang’, ‘Dressed to Kill’ and finishes ‘Dead Man Shoes’ with the crowd baying for more.

Due to the early evening sun it was difficult to appreciate some of the black and white videos that form such an important part of the Public Service Broadcasting set. However the quality of the musicianship meant that the set was still an audio triumph of the highest order, the highlight being ‘Spitfire’. 

The Dutch Uncles attracted a large crowd to the Big Gin, their set enjoyable with the finale a cover of Grace Jones ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ was better than the original! 

The not so secret surprise guests were Y Not favourites: Reverend & The Makers. As they walked on stage the crowd went mad igniting smoke bombs. The Rev had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand, his aggressive banter was just what the crowd wanted to hear, as the band knocked out great track after great track, including: ‘Noisy Neighbour’, ‘Heavyweight Champion of the World’ and ‘Silence is Talking’. As they left the stage more smoke bombs went off a great way to end a great set.

Having seen the Mystery Jets a number of times we watched the first three tracks (‘Someone Purer’, ‘Serotonin’ and ‘The Hale Bop’) and then headed to The Quarry.

Friday night saw a biblical storm of heavy rain and fork lightening that partially cut out the power but was restored quickly. Due to health and safety reasons we had to evacuate The Quarry and when the crowd seemed reluctant to leave Scroobius Pip jumped on top of them and made them crowd surf him to safety, the entire tent following. These are what festival moments are made of.

Much to their credit the organisers got everything up and running, but alas by this time our eyes were closed.

Saturday

Following the storm we woke to a sunny morning on Saturday; the walkways were like bogs and despite putting straw down there was always a chance of falling over (sober or otherwise). As with many festivals Y Not have a themed fancy dress day and not even the mud deterred the crowd from dressing up as heroes and villains, this year’s theme. Another new addition and a popular one to the festival circuit was the paint ball fight adding even more colour to the festival that was already brimming over with quirky artefacts. 

On the Big Gin Stage Drenge delivered a blinding set, playing tracks from their forthcoming self-titled album including ‘Nothing’ and ‘Favourite Son’.  Its staggering how two guys playing a guitar and drums can deliver such a wall of sound?

Swim Deep attracted a large crowd of mainly screaming girls to The Big Gin Stage, their set is made up of songs from their debut album plus a brilliant cover of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’.

Leeds based 65daysofstatic brought their industrial soundscape to the Big Gin Stage. With a new album on the horizon they did not fall into the trap of playing all new music, indeed, they played just one ‘Taipei’ which was well received by the growing crowd. 65daysofstatis prove (if proof is required) that bands don’t need a vocalist to create a presence even on a large open air stage.

Having spent most of the Day at The Big Gin Stage we decide to wander around the site to the smaller stages in search of a hidden gem, and boy did we find one. Johnny Kowalski & The Sexy Weirdos were playing to about 50 people on The Flaming Goat Stage, this dishevelled gypsy punk band had everyone dancing and screaming for more. They were given the rare opportunity to play an encore (yes this was a real encore not a convenient gap between songs) it was clear that they weren’t too sure what to play, but when they started the whole place was rocking again. The only song I recognised was a cover of Gogol Bordellos ‘Start Wearing Purple’.

As we looked over to The Quarry it was clear that we wouldn’t be able to see The 1975’s as there were as many people outside the tent as in it, so we had another beer and went back to The Big Gin Stage in preparation for Ash.

Personally I thought Ash should have had the headline slot, and their high powered performance reinforced my opinions. Their experience showed as they took the set from one high to another opening with a ‘Life Less Ordinary’ culminating in an extended version of ‘Burn Baby Burn’, via ‘Evil Eye’ and ‘Shining Light’

Sunday

The weekend was starting to take its toll, with festival goers emerging slowly from their tents and venturing into the main arena, but by the time We Were Promised Jetpacks entered The Big Gin Stage the crowd had grown significantly. 

The Twang's, ‘lads’ attitude went down well with the crowd who knocked out some great tunes including ‘Either Way’ and ‘Cloudy Room’ much to the delight of a very large audience. 

Over at The Quarry the crowd was bursting for Electric Six. As they walked on stage the crowd erupted and the body surfing begun, their set full of good old fashioned rock’n’roll and more innuendo than you can shake a stick at.  ‘Danger! High Voltage’ and ‘Gay Bar’ cause  the tent to go mad, with more mosh pits and crowd surfing than we saw in total of the festival. The band were given an extra 15 minutes which they made great use of with a further three tracks concluding with ‘Dance Commander’ quite a set.

To finish the festival on a novelty note, the landing of a UFO space ship by the side of the main stage took place in advance of the grand finale; perhaps it was a tribute to the Sunday headliners The Darkness whose debut album was titled ‘Permission To Land’, just a thought. As they strolled on stage and bowed to the audience blue and red smoke bombs filled the air before kicking off their set with ‘Every Inch of You’.  Yes The Darkness had arrived. Justin, understated as always wearing an outrageous black and white stripped leotard, posing and preening for the punters.  

One of the main differentiators between The Darkness and many of the other artists at Y Not was that they put on a show. Whether you love them or hate them it’s impossible not to be impressed. At the opening chords of ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ the crowd erupted, topped only by crowd surfing to the back of the audience while playing ‘Love on the Rocks’.

What a way to end a great 4 days.

The Festival labels itself “Small, Fresh & Loud” which just about sums it up nicely. Yes it had the big headline names, but there were lots of new finds you could stumble upon over the weekend, as we did.

Y Not Festival, not only lived up to the hype it exceeded it, I, like many other people thought this was the best festival of the year.

Article & photographs by Linda & Mick Game