The festival collates a shining array of artists from around the globe for a day of choc-a-block music, swaying from hard-core rap to bucolic fantasy.

Fair Play was my introduction to Manchester and what a warm welcome it provided. After a day swanning underneath a sturdily blue sky and wearing sunglasses out of necessity rather than suave, the bottom line from more native scenesters appeared to be, “It’s not usually like this”. How right they were. Whilst the rain did eventually return, the atmosphere around the Northern Quarter was not dimmed. Fair Play festival had bought with it a bucket-load of musical delight to Oldham Street.

The all-dayer insists upon its values; fair artist fees, affordable tickets, and a brilliantly diverse array of artists, creating a sense of community effortlessly. Fair Play stands as an encouraging example for how live music can be done. The curation of venues requires attendees to walk no more than five minutes between gigs, and yet the abundance of quality acts dotted between them had us walking from Oldham St. to Tib St., to Swan St. and back again endlessly. I could navigate from The Peer Hat to Band on the Wall with my eyes closed. If you didn’t feel part of something important, from familiarity alone, you at least felt like one of the locals.

Band on the Wall, a new addition to the festival, was our first destination. We collected our wrist bands from the exceedingly friendly ticketers and headed into the iconic venue. Band on the Wall can feel like walking headfirst into a vacuum from lack of light, broken only from a sci-fi worthy luminous red sign abutting the stage. Loose Articles did not help remind me which planet we were living on. The four-piece were dressed like 80s wrestlers, tiger print, fish nets and leotards abounding. Post-punk fuelled, fiery and a fun to watch, the band shifted us from tourist to slightly reticent rocker. After watching their guitarist run a red stripe across their guitar strings, which added to the well-known punky, shouting, havoc, we thought we could do with a pint.

Gullivers, another venue from the roster, was our host. On walking in, Leo Robinson’s folk charm intertwined itself with the hum of fellow arrivers. Listening just below the gig space upstairs, we sipped on Guiness and Fair Play’s very own IPA (gluten free and impeccably trendy). We indulged in pockets of Robinson’s inward and delicate melodies from his album ‘The Temple.’ Amidst the slow but surely growing bustle, we were pinned into an atmosphere of calm. Robinson reminded us that winter was over and gave us the vitality needed to head back over to Band on the Wall.

After a quick chat with the bag check woman, with whom we had become fast friends and who knew the contents of our luggage better than we did ourselves by the end of the day, we headed into the void. This time Skydaddy, a London favourite, crested the stage. Band on the Wall boasts a cavernous space which can make an audience of 30 feel scattered, adding to the intimacy of Skydaddy’s performance. With two teenagers swinging each other gleefully around in the left corner, we enjoyed the secretive aura. 

Characteristically versatile, the band oscillated from uplifting, Emitt Rhodes-esq campy ballads to the outré analogue discordance of tracks like ‘Everything’ from his recent EP ‘Pilot.’ Said discordance was heightened by their guitarist’s knee swinging dance bops during the more staccato tracks, like ‘Mushroom,’ which, we were duly informed, was not about the sort you can eat. The set was deeply satisfying, with each track resolving its tension with resounding and elegant harmonies. To prevent our total succumbing to the sentimentality of ‘Tear Gas,’ they ended with ‘Sweet Child of Mine,’ which was cut off by the sound technician in a memorably comical fashion. Turning our heel to rush to the next set, a consensus of “ooh that was nice” was earnestly murmured.

The Castle Hotel was a radical change in vibe from the vastness of Band on the Wall. The pub sits opposite Gullivers, at the core of Oldham Street. Now approaching the golden 5:30PM, festival goers and musicians alike were spilling from its chocolate tiled façade. With little room to move around the bar, a trait any reputable tavern should posess, we headed down underneath the decorative gothic ceilings to the venue tucked behind.

Despite having turned up a little early to catch leather.head, we found ourselves careening our necks and tiptoeing for a good look at the five piece. The stage felt like an alter in a country village church, with wooden beams keeping the arched ceiling up and holding the crowd together like a congregation of sardines. With a “move up!” shouted from the very back, the set began. leather.head proved to be a highlight of the day. The pure force of their saxophone-charged, funky math rock was outstanding. It felt at points as if they were tearing the fabric of the room’s air open, releasing a frenetic and screaming essence, as if the fiery passion of the universe had bled out. Dedicating their last song to the genocide in Gaza and draping the stage with the Palestinian flag, the set was a deeply moving watch.

Gravitating back to Gullivers for another pint, we enjoyed a snippet of Group Listening, a Welsh duo showcased by the festival’s co-curators, PRAH records. Fair Play twins with an independent label every year, and they bring a handful of their artists with them. We were excited to watch, having caught them at ‘Dig That Treasure’ festival last year and being fans of their 2020 collaboration with Cate le Bon. They were surprisingly sweet and electronically transportive. In what was becoming a clear pattern, we downed our pints (no cups outside), put out half smoked ciggies and headed back to Band on the Wall for Ugly.

Riding the wave of their EP, ‘Twice Around the Sound’ release tour, Ugly, to no surprise for those who have seen them before, were unquestionably tight and evocatively bizarre. Playing a 50/50 split of released and unreleased tracks, the set oiled between choral arrangements and beeping guitar riffs. Some of their new tracks sounded like hearing your alarm playing through a dream and inventing a song around it. Dressed a little like a “where are they now” retrospective for actors in a 2000s children’s TV programme, their sound was eclectic yet effusively casual. With one fan stood before the stage mimicking the actions of an orchestral conductor, the set was a lot of fun and deeply impressive.

From there, the next few hours were a blurry phantasm of acts, with hardly a whisker of time to spare before heading to the next act or venue. Staying with Band on the Wall; The New Eves were an entrancing pleasure. The stumbling rhythm, jovial strings, and talk of origin stories made their set feel like witnessing the creation of sound or finding a melody of unknown origin. One second you will be taking in their white cotton dresses and theatrical stage presence, the next you’ll return to your body after a few moments entirely transported. It’s almost frustrating how little control you have over yourself when watching them play: The occult is real when the New Eves are about. Recent single ‘Astrolabe’ was immersive and driven, they are truly a must-see-live sort of band.

After dinner at Oldham Street’s Turtle Bay, surrounded by young women getting ready for a night out clubbing, we frantically watched the last few minutes of uh’s set in Gullivers. The brother/sister act provided fizzing electro beats, colourful siren-like melodies and messy hardware improvisation which all synthesised into a bouncing wall of synth. I was a little disappointed with the degree of head nodding going on: uh could make even the most wooden of dancers want to move. I was not deterred. The singer’s microphone was held just in front of her mouth, which at some angles looked as if she was chewing on a large ball of treacle. Surreal, excellent.

Due to the ill-fated train strikes, our time at Fair Play ended earlier than intended. We ended the night with Denzel Himself at Soup, the most painful decision of the evening but not one we could come to regret. In a space which felt unfathomably deep underground, Denzel opened his treasure chest of hardcore rap. After an afternoon of folk-leaning indie rock, his set was like a punch in the gut. Golden grill gleaming under strobes of red and white, Denzel catapulted lyrics moving from his experience living with autism, goth cowgirls and getting stoned. Perhaps more used to a crowd willing to form a mosh pit, there were points were Denzel seemed a little deflated. Even so, he never let his cowboy hat slip, his energy was infectious, and it was a musically explosive end to the day.

Weaving through a bizarre collection of men wearing matching argyle sweaters toward the last tram to Rochdale, I had to say goodbye to Fair Play all to soon. Reflecting on the day’s whirlwind of music, laughter and unexpected delight, Fair Play had been a raucous success. The festival’s commitment to fairness and community, coupled with the careful selection of venues, made it an bubbling example of what city all-dayers can be.