The magic unfolds. Lost Village 2024 delivers an unforgettable Bank Holiday weekend.

The August bank holiday is, without fail, crammed with some of the summer’s greatest music events and festivals. The difficulty lies every year in deciding which field, street, or venue will give you the least amount of FOMO when you log back into Instagram on that dark Tuesday back at work.

This year, I decided to venture out of the big smoke to the wooded land of Lincolnshire for Lost Village. This festival feels like a delightful mishmash of some of my favourite UK festivals – set in a magical woodland like Houghton, with a plethora of creative workshops and boujee food tents akin to Wilderness, and out-of-this-world set designs that could have been lifted straight from the fields of Glastonbury.

The week before, I caught up with DJ Scarlett O’Malley to get the excitement brewing. Scarlett was set to play for her fourth year in a row:

“The whole setup is amazing. If you go to the Junkyard stage, you’re dancing on old minis. If you go to Airbase, you can sit in an old plane – the production is just absolutely insane and there’s no stone unturned. The festival itself isn’t massive, so you can get around. They’ve got a bowling alley, an arcade, an old petrol station…you can find any hidden corner and get lost in it.

“They also give you really long set times. You get to play for three hours, which is so unheard of but really nice because you get to work through all corners of your music collection. You can really go on a journey instead of getting a power hour to smash through some bangers. You just feel that energy from the crowd. Everyone is dancing when you look out, all you can see is hands in the air and that vibe is infectious. It’s the best way to end summer for me personally.”

As the heavens opened on Saturday, Scarlett delivered tons of big energy tunes at the Airbase stage. It goes without saying that one of the greatest things about Lost Village is its lineup. She was joined by heaps of other big names, spanning a range of musical genres. Many of my standouts blended original sounds with nostalgic bangers—there’s nothing quite like an entire arena of grinning faces singing along to the songs you had on repeat as a kid. Tiga b2b Hudson Mohawke treated the crowds with the classic crowd-pleaser MGMT’s Kids at the Forbidden Cabin stage, whilst Ross from Friends threw in an unforgettable Madonna remix at Airbase.

Habibi Funk at the Forgotten Cabin was also a real highlight, blending Arabian sounds with old-school bangers from Gorillaz to David Bowie. Despite a last-minute stage change, the nostalgic masterpiece that really had people in euphoria was Shee closing Saturday night with Peter Bjorn and John’s Young Folks. Francesco del Garda and Lulah Francs also put on huge performances, and Dan Shake’s extended set still has partygoers reminiscing days later.

At Burial Ground, the festival’s main stage, Solomun and Bicep drew massive crowds on Friday and Saturday evening with their own unique stamp on dance music, and as the sun set on Sunday, Folamour’s disco-infused set was nothing short of magic. The main stage also saw performances from iconic bands such as Crazy P and indie icons Bombay Bicycle Club. I realised two things: 1) this is the fifth time I’ve seen Crazy P in 2024, and 2) I would quite happily see them another five times this year – I was just sad to see Heartbreaker missing from their setlist.

With such an epic schedule, the only downside of this festival was the 2 AM finish, but that being said, perhaps the energy of the crowds was always so exceptional because everyone got a good night’s sleep.

Lost Village was everything I wanted from my Bank Holiday weekend, and safe to say it has kept the FOMO at bay.

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