Festival Review: Bay Dreams - South Island

It's a scorching hot day on Tuesday the 5th of January in Nelson, New Zealand as Te Pune and myself walk into Bay Dreams. This is an image I wouldn't have been able to picture months ago in lockdown,  walking into Trafalgar Park amongst thousands of other punters feels super special right now. As we arrive at the gate we are greeted by security who are telling people to obviously have there ID’s ready along with making us scan with the Covid Tracing App which is a good responsible move on behalf of the Bay Dreams team to have everyone scan in just in case so full credit to the festival team for that.

Last year I attended Bay Dreams as a normal festival goer and this year I was surprised to see the whole festival had been moved to the other side of the bridge at Trafalgar Park. The site did seem smaller and less spread out compared to the year before, this year we had the arena stage along with a small stage inside of that building too and then the “Doof Stage” and “Field of Dreams” outside under the sun.

We kicked off the day inside the Arena Stage watching Rikki, a young artist from Wellington who has been gaining a lot of attention and was also on Vodafone’s Emerging artists to watch, so we had to check it out. Rikki brought a very alternative feel with a great live band behind her, her set was full of energy and she did so well to grab the crowd in on one of the early sets of the day.

Just after we hit the Field of Dreams stage to see Katchafire, who are just New Zealand Veterans on the live scene. Katchafire was the first set to really kick the day into full gear with a few thousand people singing along to their hits such as “Working” and “Get Away”, Katchafire is a perfect act to kick a festival off with.

Melodownz was the first Hip Hop act we saw of the day on the arena stage accompanied by a live band. Melo proved once again why he is one of the kings of the current New Zealand scene. He had the crowd in the palm of his hands with his tracks such as “Peace Signs & Gang Signs” where he had everyone singing along. Towards the end of his set his live band kicked into an instrumental of “Still D.R.E” and “Bad Boys for Life” where Melo starts freestyling to the roar of the crowd and even calling out some other rappers in the New Zealand scene. This followed with Melo throwing the crowd off their feet with “No Mercy” which features Denzal Curry whose verse was played from the big screen.  

One of the best sets we saw of the day was from Australia’s own HP Boyz. Meldownz came out to introduce them to the crowd and hype everyone up on the arena stage and HP Boyz started arriving one by one to their opening track “Loyalty”. HP Boyz definitely had one of the most hype crowds we had witnessed of the day even with one of the HP members doing a “Shoey '' right in front of us out of one of their fans' shoes. HP Boyz had Nelson singing, moving, and moshing throughout their whole set. I am glad we had them quarantine for the festival.

Hometown Hero LMC took over the doof stage which was definitely going to provide a bit of a change of tune for the crowd as the stage had been mostly drum and bass till his set. Although LMC took over mixing both trap and electronic so well and even having Indyah hit the stage throughout his set. LMC was given a huge welcoming home as he even crowd surfed through the front row. Te Pune and I have both been following his journey for years throughout the scene from producing locally to internationally, and it was an awesome moment to witness, LMC will change the future for producers coming out of New Zealand.

As the day started packing up so did the crowds and with a change in setup, it did start getting harder to get into the arena stage after 5 pm so if you wanted to make sure you caught a certain set, you had to make sure you were on the ball and in there before their performance. Although with a sold-out festival and the setup change there is always gonna be that demand which people also need to expect.

One of the final sets we were able to witness from the pits was Dreamville’s very own Earthgang. Earthgang came out to a pretty electric reception at “The Field of Dreams”. “We spent two weeks in Christchurch for this moment right f***king here.” The crowd was lit up ready for this set, Earthgang kicked off one of their first tracks with “Top Down” where the crowd sang along the whole way and then played “Proud of You” where they also stated how proud they were to be in New Zealand and in a country that reacted and handled Covid like it did “This is the only country in the world with some beautiful shit like this at the moment”. Earthgang sent the mainstage into high energy and prepared them for the rest of the night.

Congratulations to the Bay Dreams team on another massive sold-out festival I can’t wait to see what Bay Dreams in 2022 looks like.

Reviewed by: Aidan Treston