Transcending Mediocrity: We The Fest 2018. Lorde, alt-J, The Neighbourhood, and more bring pure performance to the capital city of Indonesia.
One of the biggest music festival in Asia, We The Fest always returned bigger than before each year. The three days music festival is the brainchild of Ismaya Live, a renowned event promoter in Indonesia, famous for their big festivals such as Djakarta Warehouse Project, Ultra Bali & Sunny Side Up Tropical Festival. This year, We The Fest serves us not only a great line up but also a a lot of surprises from local and international artist. From Alt-J, James Bay, Nick Murphy FKA Chet Faker and Albert Hammond Jr. successfully rocked out the stage on Day 1, to our personal favourite local gems such as Polkawars who happened to also dropped two new singles ‘Rekam Jejak’ and ‘Mapan’ and the always multi-talented singer/songwriter Petra Sihombing accompanied with awesome visual made by her lovely wife.
Move to day two of the festival, the most anticipated day and probably the most packed day ever. We started off with Efek Rumah Kaca, this legend is no need for an introduction, they have been in the independent music scene since 2001 and still going strong despite all the controversies, this time they bringing visual into their show to complement the sound that left us in awe. Next we have our soulful singer, Andien who prepared a special moment for We The Fest 2018. She released a special music video collaboration with Tomorrow People Ensamble called ‘Warna Warna’, directed by Sharon Angelia.
The most awaited performance of the night was Lorde. It was the first time she came to Jakarta and she was overwhelmed by the warmest welcome from the crowd that night. Lorde gave us 1,5 hour of non-stop emotion and energy singing and dancing to her songs from recent album Melodrama and a few from her ‘Royals’ era. For a brief moment she even asked the crowd to express all the emotion, from pain, happiness and heartbreak, many in the crowd yelled out in agreement. The crowd and Lorde herself was really feeling it that night, it was magical and pure performance but powerful at the same time.
We The Fest 2018 ended with a day full of big headliners such as SZA, The Neighbourhood, Miguel and Vince Staples on day three. We The Fest has grown to become one of the biggest music festival in Asia in five years span. “Music unites all in We The Fest 2018, we hope that the unity can motivate us to be better so we can give the best festival experience to all of you in We The Fest 2019,” said Sarah Deshita as the Assistant Brand Manager of Ismaya Live. We were surprised with the field management that done properly and tidily, too!
So many great things and surprises in We The Fest this year, and we hope we still can expect the same raw and organics emotions from the crowd as well as good music and real performance from future headliners for next year We The Fest.