An arbour of musical delights in a community garden centre…
If you’ve been tuned into Manchester’s local music scene over the last five years, it’s pretty likely you’ll have heard of Green Island. The 1,500-capacity festival has an ardent cult following, not least because it’s the polar opposite of something like Parklife, a swaggering behemoth that transforms the city’s biggest park beyond recognition. In stark contrast, Green Island emerges out of its location organically, filling it with up-and-coming local artists for three separate days of the year – and that’s all the more impressive when you consider that its location’s a garden centre.
Yet Hulme Community Garden Centre is, against all odds, the perfect place to host a festival. The layout’s full of unexpected nooks and surprises: we turn one corner to find a camomile bed (which you’re literally invited to lie down on), while another brings us to a jaunty bandstand with a DJ booth, and a third to a limbo competition amidst seedlings. It’s genuinely astonishing what the organisers have managed to do with a small space, and a testament to what a maze of tall plants can do for sound isolation.
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The main stage isn’t actually in the garden centre per se: it’s in the Niamos Centre, an erstwhile theatre over the road that’s had a second life as a community arts space. We’re here for the second (August) date, and Conor & the GreensKeepers make this stage their own in the afternoon, their soulful jazz-rap propelled by a loose but endlessly creative rhythm section. Everyone on stage seems to be enjoying themselves, including a random person in three-quarter lengths whose only contribution seems to be some funny dancing. We’re here for it.
The Niamos suffers from undercrowding at times, while some other stages are packed to the open-air rafters: we have to fight our way into the Marquee to see Lemon Soul, whose sound encapsulates the jazz/funk/soul melange that’s Green Island’s calling card. The vibe in here is cracking, and Malah Palinka keep it going with their own horn-led grooves and warbling vocals—the latter delivered with wonderful panache despite the fact that the singer’s sporting a cycling injury on their face.
The other three stages host DJs of various stripes, including the vinyl-only Selectors (curated by Léna C and peddling everything from psychedelic to post-disco), the aforementioned Bandstand (curated by High Hoops) and the Street Stage. The Bandstand is the lowest in energy, although things pick up a bit with Max Ctrl’s closing set, a flurry of 808s and chopped-up vocals that makes the most of the space.
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But it’s the Street Stage that rightly draws the big crowds: it’s a literal street party here, turning the road between the garden centre and the Niamos into a day rave lined with food stalls and comfortingly out-there hairstyles. We’re drawn back time and again to La Rumba’s set, which starts as tempo-shifted salsa and evolves into some truly hectic jungle/D&B. The Venezuela-to-Sheffield DJ has no time for purists, bastardising the Prodigy, Roy Ayers and everything in between with some mischievously unhinged remixes—but somehow Riria’s closing set manages to one-up him on that front, her own tastes ranging so widely that it’s hard not to cackle. We come for the wobbly basslines, stay for Skrillex mashed up with Robin S, and scream along so loud to a remix of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” that a little bit of piss comes out. (Just kidding, of course, of course.)
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It’s almost enough to outshine Reuben James’ headline slot on the main stage, if James weren’t so exceptional an artist. He captivates the room for an hour, deploying not only buckets of charisma but a slick, impeccably rehearsed band, whose skills give James the opportunity to show off as much as possible: even when he’s trilling ‘Wonderwall’ into a talk box it’s hard not to adore him. Of all the fantastic jazz/funk/soul Green Island has given us today, this is the undeniable high point.
People bandy about the word “hidden gem” a lot in this industry, but Green Island actually encapsulates what the phrase is supposed to mean: it’s small, unabashedly local and designed with humble yet passionate vision. And it’s in a fucking garden centre. What’s not to love?
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Words: Tom Kingsley
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