Bay Dreams
2nd January 2019
ASB Baypark Stadium, Tauranga, New Zealand.
Review by Courtney Newbold. Photography by Ngamihi Pawa.
Bay Dreams has great timing, coming along while we’re still celebrating the New Year. The fourth annual Bay Dreams festival started as every great festival should – scorching sun, a HUGE lineup and, well, plenty of glitter bodies and glitter beards glistening in said sun. This year offered a great balance of multi-gendered local and international acts, as well as live graffiti art, camping, spectacular light shows and a well-controlled bar.
By 1pm punters are already transporting themselves in a dance party held by Todd Doyle on the ‘Mind Twist’ themed Arena Takeover Stage, complete with a great light show which continued to the same standard throughout the day. The Arena takeover stage was also the place to cool down with the excellent air conditioning. Several people are already dancing their hearts out and props are given to Todd for holding down a great time so early in the day. Outside on the Baypark Stage Kwame is killing it with his own loyal crowd and the bass is pumping.
This year saw some neat little improvements to the festivals functionality and flair – the stage placement of the acts was more thought out this year, leaving the big-name crowd draws to the outside stages preventing the massive bottle necks experienced last year.
The Baypark stage was surrounded by futuristic industrial fire cannons suitable to the Mad Max theme, exploding in synchronicity to the hooks of the music ringing out through the venue. The cannons were one of my favourite stage embellishments I have ever seen in my concert going, transposing a regular festival experience to a fantasy party, along with a light house and several other light sculptures. Bay Dreams certainly has a knack for the optimal festival atmosphere!
During the day the local Kiwi acts absolutely shone, with SWIDT, Ladi6, Katchafire and Homebrew being standouts – while the crowd were even treated to the embattled Kiwi hip-hop legend Scribe (in prison orange overalls and white singlet) throwing down his hit track ‘Not Many’ live during P-Money’s set.
In the evening $uicideboy$ were one of the acts I was amped for. These boys changed the face of music in New Orleans, merging hiphop with dark emotional themes. $krim and Ruby Da Cherry boasting the modern rapper look, face tattoos and all. It was definitely a unique and beautiful experience watching a crowd get lit to expressions of suicidal feelings. Closing the divide between music used for partying and music used for emotional healing of our more negative emotions – $uicideboy$ take traditional emo lyrical content and puts it to modern trap beats.
An interesting phenomenon with hip hop that I have noticed as someone growing up on the heavier side of music as well as in music production is that often rappers have backing tracks of their own vocals, and as such some shows can be more hype parties than musical performances. $uicideboy$ doubled their vocals with the backing tracks, vocally dropping out of the tracks at times. But given that they produce their own music as well as rap, and the prolific rate at which they produce music, I’ll let them off on this one.
Despite Migos and Rich the Kid – both major headline acts, pulling out of the festival, the sold-out crowd still turnt up in droves, with noticeably more people arriving to the venue in the early evening.
Cardi B was my most anticipated act for the day and she delivered. A woman with many accolades and arguably the worlds most successful female rapper, she displayed her talent with both dance routines and live vocals. Cardi is unashamed of her exotic dancer background, her backing dancers and Cardi herself showed us their moves much to the crowd’s delight. I was wishing however that she had come on stage on time, as her set seemed fairly short. Despite that, the crowd still enjoyed her quirks and undeniable vocal talent.
I ended my day with Joey Bada$$ while Peking Duk partied the night out on the Alice In Wonderland themed Field of Dreams stage. Joey was a confident performer with great crowd interaction, making sure they knew his name. His beats are highly enjoyable and were a nice way to end the day. As with many of the acts, Joey also had a dj/hype man. The hypeman has been an interesting concept for me as someone who is only beginning to explore hiphop as a genre. Chiming in as backing vocalists and warming up the crowd with snippets of the artists’ hits, these guys are professional partiers with a unique set of musical skills. It looks like a pretty dope job, perhaps I need to change careers?
What was a great day overall came to an end with festival goers drawing traffic to a halt as the masses streamed out of the gates, which while laughable as a punter was annoying to the traffic surrounding the stadium. Nevertheless, everyone seemed in high spirits on their journey home. Baydreams was one epic party and while I will be nursing my sunburn for a few days to come, due to the great sound people, my ears are not ringing. It’s the small things like this that elevate Bay Dreams to the top of the yearly summer festival calendar, and I for one can’t wait to come back next year!
Were you there at ASB Baypark Stadium for this magnificent summer festival? Or have you been to a prior version of Bay Dreams? Tell us about it in the comments below!
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Bay Dreams 2019 was epiiiic and easily the best festival I have been too. One of the staff told us the mad max stage had shorter drink lines so we were sussed for the entire event. Will be back next year for sure and looking forward to the line up!