Photo Credits: Lost & Found Festival
Back for its fifth year in St. Paul’s Bay, Malta, Annie Mac’s Lost & Found Festival, kicked off the summer season with great music, fun stage productions, and castle and boat parties. The event is curated by the renowned BBC Radio 1 DJ who recently has presented the award from Malta’s Minister for Tourism, a testament to how the locals are genuinely happy to have so many Brits come and enjoy their beautiful island.
Lost & Found requires some prior preparation in order to landing and dancing. Flights, accommodation, festival passes, boat, beach, and castle party tickets, then finally pre-paid festival credit. The upfront work and organization can feel a bit much but it all pays off once you’ve picked up and loaded everything onto your wristband. I highly recommend you do this in advance to minimize logistics and maximize partying.
The beauty of a sprawling destination festival set up like this is you get both a sunny holiday and wicked fun. We stayed in a hotel 5 minutes from Cafe del Mar, where the day pool parties were being held. This allowed us to sleep in comfortable beds, enjoy a big buffet breakfast and chill in the poolside sunshine prior to the adventures of the day. Eat, sleep, rave, repeat, is key when you’ve got 4 full days and nights of great acts and events to plough through.
The crowd at Lost & Found was from far and wide across Britain and not just the usual Londoners, no matter where came from, they were there for the love of music. Their festival fashion was punchily provocative and their raving was powerful.
To kick things off, Annie Mac headlined on the Cafe del Mar terrace, which was turned into a giant buzzing opening party. The vibe was friendly and everybody was in top form! We made plenty of festival friends and danced until the lights came on.
Friday was met with dark ominous skies and strong winds, not promising for a beach day. I was excited sunshine dancing and revitalizing dips in the clear waters but it was freezing. A brave few ignored the rain and powered through Koffee’s short set. Just as I was vibing off Honey Dijon’s house set but my crew felt the need to escape to drier and warmer surroundings, gutted!
Come sunset, a storm rolled in. Despite the winds and torrential rain, the night time venue was packed and pumping. Denis Sulta kicked it strong with techno beats on the paradise stage with the crowd moving as one under the unity of rain. I wondered randomly into the Factory to find the club going off to Artwork and Horse Meat Disco, who played 6 hours back-to-back. Some serious shapes were thrown down with sweat dripping off the ceiling. Who doesn’t love a good sweatbox disco rave?
Saturday’s daytime event was the “boat party”, which I would more accurately dub, the “Ferry Go Round”. The boat was just an old people ferry docked in an industrial harbor. My expectations were low but the sun was about to peek out and this gave me hope. There’s something special about a captive audience with a united goal of smashing good times! Skream played tune after tune and the crowd knocked the paint off the roof as they rocked the dance floor. 3 smashing hours of sunshine, techno and boat rocking with some new found friends, whose group motto was Love and Nonsense, they truly embodied this outlook. We were all in agreement that despite drab first impressions and a ferry that went round in circles, we had been delightfully proven wrong.
Peggy Gou was highly anticipated and smashed it as expected in the evening, with many revellers exclaiming that she was their favorite for the weekend. Annie Mac followed suit strongly and delivered a heavy and hypnotizing set, which rounded off an awesome day. I was beat!
Unfortunately, I had to cut things short on Sunday, but from reports from the Love and Nonsense crew, Heidi closed off the final pool party with a banging set, building the crowd back up for one last night of raving.
If you’re looking for a destination festival and have never been to Malta before, I would recommend Lost & Found. Be prepared for a bit of hard work, some industrial venues but a fantastic weekend of music and dancing. Tickets for 2020 are already available for those keen to lock it into their diaries.
