Flow Festival 2023: huge headliners and avant-garde experimentation in Finland

In partnership with Flow Festival

Flow feels like a number of festivals rolled into one. On one hand, the inner-city Helsinki event is a destination for the world’s biggest bands and pop stars, having welcomed the likes of Cardi B and Frank Ocean in recent years. Head a little off the beaten track though, and you’ll find cutting-edge experimentation and avant-garde noise. Team that with its strong eco initiatives – in 2022, the festival cut out red meat and poultry from its menus – and it becomes an event that stands out from many on the cookie-cutter European festival circuit.

A daily capacity of just 30,000 makes Flow feel like a uniquely intimate venue to see the stadium-dwelling likes of headliners WizKid and Blur, and also allows the rest of its line up to thrive in smaller and more unusual spaces. The most striking of these is the Balloon 360 stage, a seated tiered amphitheatre where jazz and ambient musicians perform in-the-round below a giant inflatable balloon. Elsewhere at the Suvilahti venue, a brutal abandoned power plant in the middle of the city, you could see a solo bagpipe player in a pitch black room or dive into the always-buzzy Front Yard stage, which features excellent sets from Auckland-via-Peckham house duo Chaos In The CBD and techno heavyweights Eris Drew and Octo Octa.

In the festival’s bigger areas, comprising three larger stages, a pleasing mix of next-generation names, modern superstars and old-timers are rolled out. In early evening main stage slots, both Suede and Devo show they have enough energy for their continued resurgences to continue, while Friday night sets from Jockstrap and Shygirl see their Mercury-nominated debut albums continue to impress. To end their raucous set, the former premieres new music in the form of a frenzied slab of electronic noise, promising a suitably unexpected next stage of their evolution.

Other highlights at Flow come from Caroline Polachek, whose magnetic and dramatic show behind ‘Desire, I Want To Turn Into You’, continues to grow and evolve across the summer, and the effervescent Sudan Archives. “You don’t need to be Irish to get jiggy with it!” the latter beams before launching into a traditional jig on the violin, either side of her rowdy pop-rap anthems.

Rock is also well catered for, with Amyl & The Sniffers whipping up a storm on Saturday night, so much so that Amy Taylor has to become an impromptu security guard, helping crowdsurfers safely over the barrier. The following day in the same tent, High Vis’ remarkable ascent continues. “We’re used to playing to 20 people in a pub, and 10 of them hate us!” frontman Graham Sayle tells the crowd, utter disbelief on his face. The London quintet’s mix of hardcore grit and Britpop melody is a gorgeous combination, and has the tent in a sweaty mess within minutes.

For its headliners, Flow has also gone broad. Friday sees WizKid top the bill, with extensive use of pyro feeling slightly at odds with his largely mid-tempo offerings. Regardless, he’s the pop star of the moment, and his global appeal continues to grow. In terms of looking towards the future, though, it’s Lorde whose set is the most revealing. After ending the ‘Solar Power’ era earlier this year, the singer returns for a short run of festival dates that clears the decks and makes way for what comes next.

Playing out like a greatest hits megamix, she meshes one song into another throughout, barely pausing for breath and interpolating tracks from her back catalogue into one another. Previously serene, acoustic ‘Solar Power’ cuts ‘California’ and ‘Mood Ring’ are given snappy 808s and a sonic aesthetic closer to debut LP ‘Pure Heroine’, and the two new songs she previews also point in this direction. The untitled tracks are both carried by propulsive beats and keep the warmth of ‘Solar Power’’s vocals while welcoming back the harsher, more club-ready energy of 2017’s ‘Melodrama’.

Blur, who close the festival out on Sunday night, seem giddily happy in the here and now. Though many might try and hide it, reunion tours that are done purely for the pay are easily identifiable from those by bands who are actually thrilled to be back together. The Britpop icons’ latest comeback falls firmly into the latter category, as they roll through highlights from recent chart-topper ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ and all the requisite hits from the back catalogue.

Whether you catch any of these world-beaters, or choose to spend the evening in any of the quieter, weirder corners of the site, Flow is a festival unique in its appeal and superb in its execution.

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