Music / Alice Watson
Review: The Outlook Orchestra + Roots Manuva, Lloyds Amphitheatre
With the renaming of Colston Hall now in the works, it seems appropriate that they’ve chosen this anniversary year to stage one of the biggest celebrations of predominantly black music the city has ever seen.
Touted as ‘a celebration of Bristol’s soundsystem culture’ and organised as part of the Harbour Festival, the night pulls in a lot of out-of-towners as well as some local names, but acts as a sort of nostalgia trip for anyone who’s been out dancing in Bristol within the last ten to 20 years.
The roster of stars is truly phenomenal, from the perennially popular, whip-smart Roots Manuva to treasured old-timers Dawn Penn and Horace Andy making an appearance.
is needed now More than ever
Backing almost every track are the Outlook Orchestra, doing a bit of a promo for their upcoming festival in Croatia, but much more importantly providing a rich binding agent for a night that could otherwise feel a little disjointed as we switch from star to star within a matter of minutes.
Arriving at the Lloyds Amphitheatre to a promise of torrential rain all evening, the crowd of Bristol party people is initially a little thin and Roots Manuva’s opening set takes a while to hit its stride.
He gradually becomes more playful as he banters the lyrics of Colossal Insight with a partner MC and gives plenty of room for the excellent vocalist Alice Watson to provide some soulful interludes.
After a short break the main entertainment begins, with the Orchestra launching into a marathon two-and-a-half-hour set that is to take in hip hop, dub, reggae, soul and soul among a good dozen-or-so genres and sub-genres with unsurpassed assurance.
Joining them are literally too many people to mention, the effect being to surprise even those who’ve read the full line-up with the sheer volume of names. “Pharaoh Monch! Forgot he was coming! … Congo Natty are absolutely killing it … I love this, who is it again? Foreign Beggars, that’s it … Roots is back! Thought he might have gone home … Dawn Penn! Motherflipping Dawn Penn!”
All taking different approaches, the guest vocalists sometimes stay fifteen minutes and drop a few surprises, sometimes collaborate with one another, and sometimes – as in the case of Monch – turn up to bang out their one crowd-pleasing hit and then disappear for the rest of the night.
As such, the audience energy necessarily dips and peaks, and it’s only in the last 40 minutes or so that a finally full and enthusiastic crowd stops chatting distractedly and gets totally into the groove.
The excellent Loyle Carner is the one act that doesn’t play as a nostalgia trip and it would have been nice to see a little more investment in younger talent, looking forward to the future of Bristol’s best-loved music genres as well as back to their recent past.
But the Orchestra gel everything together into a satisfying whole, with a surprising lightness of touch that allows the trombonist at one point to produce a loud, farty parp from his instrument that distracts all 20-or-so musicians and sends them into giggles without dropping a note.
And by the time they crescendo with a rendition of Roni Size’s Brown Paper Bag and the whole line-up starts to filter back on to the stage the night finally becomes what it is meant to be: a deliciously full celebration of black music’s centrality to Bristol culture and a thank you to the crowd of long-time devotees who are sent out smiling and misty-eyed into the damp summer night.
All photos by Luke Palmer
Read more: Happy birthday, Colston Hall
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