Falls Festival // A Year In The Making

So December was decidedly one of the best endings I could have had to the year 2018. It was a great month filled with hanging out with friends and family, going out to celebrate birthdays and the big gear up towards what I had spent the last half of the year waiting for, Falls Festival.

If you read my wish-list post from a little while ago, you may recall that I was absolutely shattered when my best friend and I missed out on tickets last year to scalpers who basically bought up the bulk of all tickets. If you then read my updated wish list post, you’d know that this year we managed to snag five tickets for the festival, which takes place over New Year’s Eve, from the 28th of December to the 1st of January.

So the remaining months of 2018 were spent in wild anticipation. This was only made even better when one of our tickets opened up and your favourite blogging superwoman Mia, ended up joining our group of gals!

Three days of live music, camping with my best friends and a road trip that Mia and I had wished for since the start of the year that somehow manifested itself into existence? Yes please.

The drive to Lorne was beautiful. I’ve never done the drive myself before, I’ve always been a passenger with my family, but getting to drive down with Mia was great. We had great music playing and highly intellectual conversations about Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Aquaman and other thought-provoking topics.

The car line to get into the festival was a lot better than I had expected and all our efforts of hiding alcohol in moisturiser bottles, setting spray bottles and Victoria Secret sprays went to waste when they waved our two cars through without a second glance.

One of the downers for the camping situation that wasn’t so much of a downer more so  huge nuisance, was the fact that we were the first car on our lineup for the hill, meaning we were right at the bottom of the hill, meaning our tent was on a noticeable tilt. As in it was a decent workout putting it up while staying upright, let along sleeping without sliding all the way down to the end of the tent. It was a great laugh if anything.

 

 

After setting up our campsite and sorting our stuff out, we got to work getting ready for the rest of the day, which meant changing out of our T-shirts, into more festival appropriate outfits and using the mirrors in our cars to do our make-up.

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Processed with RNI Films. Preset ‘Technicolor 2 HC’

Unfortunately we were only able to get three-day tickets, meaning we missed out on acts like Hockey Dad, Ocean Alley, Mallrat and Dizzee Rascal but the remaining acts on the three days we were there were all fantastic.

If you’re not into reading about all the details for each day, first of all, why? And second of all, I got you, with this minute long video I literally made the day we got back because of how much I loved the entire experience. Hopefully you like it, and hopefully it inspires you to keep reading because I would greatly appreciate it.

 

 

The first day was a shorter day considering a large bulk of the people at the concert came that day as well, but it was incredible. Okay, so I wasn’t completely down with 88 Rising and Rich Brian and the fact that they performed their last song, then came back and performed the same song as their encore, but Anderson .Paak more than made up for it. The mosh pits we found ourselves in throughout the entirety of the festival were some of the best I’ve ever been a part of and the energy throughout each day was fantastic.

 

 

That night was, to put it lightly, a struggle. Sleeping on such a slant meant I was waking up every half an hour or so to shimmy my way back up the tent after sliding down to the bottom and on Sunday morning the rest of the girls shared my frustrations. However, we soldiered on, and after a lazy morning eating fruit, drinking Up-N-Go and chatting about the night before, we decided to get started with our day and get ready. It was a very relaxed morning/afternoon, having some drinks and chatting with the people around our tent, before making our way into the festival at 3:30 to see what was going on inside.

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Processed with RNI Films. Preset ‘Technicolor 2 HC’

We got to see Ruel, who’s name you might recognise from a few of my playlist posts in the past, and right after him was Dermot Kennedy. Both were incredible acts and we managed to get quite close to the front, with only a few people in between us and the barrier.

 

 

Honestly, I have to say that seeing Running Touch next was the highlight of the entire festival for me, with Anderson .Paak the day before being the only one who came close. Running Touch was one of my most listened to artists of 2018, and I was super ecstatic when I found out he was added to the lineup a few weeks before the festival started. To make a good set even better, as we walked into the tent about twenty minutes before he could start, my eyes zoned in on the practically empty barricade, with the perfect amount of space for the three of us who were still left together, and I basically sprinted from the back of the tent to snag the spot.

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Runnin Touch’s set was incredible. It was so different, very intense and energetic, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him the whole time. As well as his stage presence, his bass player and drummer were superb, and matched his energy the entire time. I got some of my best photos and video footage from that set, but enough to still have my phone away for majority of the set and really enjoy the music, head-bang to some of his heavier stuff and have a boogie to all his dance tracks.

We decided to stick around for the next act in that particular tent, Cashmere Cat. I haven’t listened to a lot of his songs that aren’t on the radio, but his set was very energetic as well and he packed the tent completely.

From Cashmere Cat we left the tent to join the hoards of people filling the main Valley Stage grass area for Hilltop Hoods. Flight Facilities were next and we decided to move as close as we could to the front, but when that got a bit too much, I pulled us over to the side, near the speakers where we ended up finding a huge group of our friends as well as one of our friends from our group who had been split up from us earlier in the day. Flight Facilities were fantastic and a great set to have a dance to.

They were the perfect way to end the day, and we were very pleased as we made the short walk back to our tent. That night Jess and I made the decision to test out sleeping in the cars, so we split up and dragged our bedding into the cars for the night. Let me tell you. Much more comfortable. So good. 10/10 in comparison to the night before.

The next day was our last full day and we were keen to make the most of it. We got up a bit earlier to get our outfits and makeup on, have a few drinks and chat in front of our tent, and we were inside the festival by 1:30.

 

 

We decided to have a fairly early lunch, and by 3:00 we were in front of the main stage, drinks in hand, ready to see Bishop Briggs. She was another one of the standout performances for me and I loved watching her set. After Bishop we split up and it was just Jess and I for a bit, so we decided to grab our final lunch for the festival, and sit down to enjoy Odette’s set, another singer you’ve probably heard me talking about it a bit on here.

After Odette, we caught up with a much larger group of friends for The Vaccines, before a short break back at the tents, after which we caught the end of Toto, making sure we were there for Africa and Rosanna of course. DMA’s were next up, and their set was fantastic, a set where we pushed ourselves a bit further into the moshpit.

 

 

After DMA’s, we headed back to the tent to grab our jumpers as it was getting a bit colder, before returning to the festival grounds to get a good spot for Catfish and The Bottlemen, who were playing at midnight, right after CHVRCHES.

 

 

Catfish and The Bottlemen were one of the most hyped up acts of the festival, and for good reason. They played an amazing set, counting down to the New Year with everyone in the middle of their set before welcoming 2019 with some new music that got everyone jumping and cheering. The mosh-pit was just like many of the others I’d been caught up in throughout the festival, welcoming, energetic and loud.

 

After Catfish and The Bottlemen, Jess and I decided to hang around for Golden Features, a bit of a different style of artist compared to the others we had been hanging out to hear, but it was definitely an experience that we shared.

The entire festival was one of my favourite experiences of 2018, and an incredible way to end a very busy year.

Honestly, sign me up for next year already.

x

Priya

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