DOT TO DOT FESTIVAL
various venues, Bristol - 24th May 2025
For those who don't know, the annual Dot To Dot Festival takes place across multiple venues in two cities, Bristol and Nottingham, with each city taking a day each May Bank Holiday weekend. In 2025 it celebrated its 20th anniversary, with 2020 being the only year it wasn't held despite a full line-up being announced. I can't remember why it wasn't held that year, maybe a few people had the sniffles or something. Anyway, this was the first year MrsRobster and I decided to join in the fun, mainly because a couple of particular acts caught our eye.
We didn't really do a lot of preparation beforehand. We just knew it would involve quite a bit of walking. In hindsight, we could have made a lot more of the day than we did, but at least we got to see the two headliners we'd hoped to catch. Owing to MrsRobster working nights and sleeping in the day, we didn't get to Bristol until late afternoon, by which time a few venues had been on the go a good couple of hours.
The first music we heard was on a stage outside the Thekla when we went to get our wristbands. Ethan Tasch is a singer/songwriter from Los Angeles who does pretty standard indie-folk. To be fair, I wasn't paying a great deal of attention to him, MrsRobster and I were discussing where to start. We decided, as we were by the Thekla, that was as good a place as any.
Jasmine 4.T. was onstage as we entered. Not an artist either of us were familiar with. She's a trans female based in Manchester and signed to Phoebe Bridgers' record label after Lucy Dacus passed on Jasmine's demo to her Boygenius bandmate. So that's impressive in itself. We stayed til the end of her set, but I wasn't overstruck by her 90s alt-rock sound, although she had a decent audience who enjoyed it.
Our complete lack of planning worked against us as we wondered in and out of a few places without noting who was performing before we decided we were hungry. And this is where things went bellyup. MrsRobster fancied an Italian, and she's fond of a particular restaurant chain that shall remain nameless, so we headed there. Safe to say we experienced the slowest service of any place we've ever eaten. It was busy, but not as busy as we've seen it before. One guy just walked around the floor doing sod all, from what we can see. What does this have to do with the music? Well, it took a good 90-100 minutes from when we went in to when we left, which means we lost so much time. Next time, it'll be street food or a takeaway.
We headed straight for Electric Bristol next, which until recently had been called the SWX. We wanted to catch Sprints and knew it was going to be busy. Honeyglaze were part way through their set as we arrived. While they don't evoke any strong memories, I do recall they sounded good and the audience were really into them. Of course, the place was absolutely rammed for Sprints, and they played a blinder. We saw them the previous year at the Thekla, a much smaller place. In Electric though, they revelled in the space and they sounded spot on. The set consisted of the best bits from the first album, a handful from the at-the-time forthcoming follow-up, plus a couple of old faves, including Little Fix and How Does The Story Go?. Literary Mind was epic, Descartes blew us into the middle of next week, and their cover of Le Tigre's Deceptacon set the place alight. This was the Sprints I was hoping to see, and it made the entire day and ticket price worth it on its own.
But... we still had another headliner, and we weren't sure we'd be there in time. Big Special were due to play at the Thekla and with its space limitations, it was always touch and go if you could get in. The queue wasn't enormous when we got there, and we expected it to go down as other bands finished and fans left. We could hear electro-punk act Sextile from outside. Definitely not our cup of team, but there were plenty of people in there for them. During our wait, we learned that Big Special were going to be delayed and wouldn't be coming onstage until after midnight. This was something of a relief as we knew we had a much better chance of getting in by then.
When we did get in, we could hardly move. We got as close to the front as we could, but ended up on the fringes to the left of the stage. Then, at 11:30, a cheer went up. But it wasn't for Big Special. It was, in fact, for EDM DJ Nimino. With Big Special still delayed, we had to endure half an hour of horrid EDM music with a bunch of clubbers crammed in around us. Worse, turns out his slot had been extended to a full HOUR! It wasn't a lot of fun.
Finally, Big Special arrived. Apparently, they were on tour with Pixies at the same time and had played earlier the same night in Manchester, then hot-footed it down to Bristol for this show. Massive kudos for that. they took to the stage at 1am, a ridiculously late time for such an old fart like me. But jeez, was the wait worth it? The place was jumping so much, I wondered if the Thekla would sink, or at least capsize. The boys played a set which included all the faves - Shithouse, Black Dog White Horse, This Here Ain't Water, Dig!, etc. as well as a couple new ones from their upcoming second album. This band never fails to deliver and no one minded we had to wait and wait and wait for them to appear. It was the hottest and sweatiest show I'd attended in years.
Multi-venue events like Dot To Dot are great, but like any festival, you need to make a few plans in advance if you want to make the most of it. All the same, while we could have seen and done more in the time we had, we didn't leave Bristol disappointed.
Very little Dot To Dot footage online, strangely, so here's a couple of other live clips from around the same time. First, Sprints on Jools...
And now Big Special doing Trees the way they always do it live. Mayhem.
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