After an arduous year of waiting, the time had come again for potentially the most anticipated festival on the SEQ electronic music calendar.

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Now in its third year, Manifest has rapidly become one of the most talked about festivals and its easy to see why. With the amount of love organisers Praxis have thrown into this event over the past few years it has come along in leaps and bounds from its hopeful beginnings to the roaring success we witnessed over the weekend.

With an impressive international and equally incredible local line-up of acts from all across the musical universe, the punters in attendance were certainly not left wanting for a variety of incredible music and equally entertaining performance pieces. 

Production-wise Manifest easily shows up festivals twice its size: everything from the decor, a plethora of market and food stalls (thank you to the Ja Joint for one of the best festival meals I have had in years!), amazing performance art, two beautifully-tuned Nexo rigs and an incredibly friendly vibe — the Praxis crew truly deserve more than a thanks and a few hugs for the effort they have put into this party.      

Unfortunately a word limit will not allow me to mention all the amazing acts so I apologise for not being able to mention everyone but the following certainly deserve a mention.

Daily Meds absolutely killed it, throwing down in a style all of their own — super tight rhymes, top notch production and absolutely mean basslines showing that Australian hip hop is certainly in a healthy place right now.

Lotek and the Rebel Hi-Fi & Mista Savona rolled out some of the sweetest dub inspired hip hop I have heard in a long time, obviously heavily influenced by the dancehall movement — both of these acts were certainly some of the more memorable of the day and the crowd responded with many a pair of feet compacting the earth below them.  

A fair bit of time was spent checking out our local talent on the Forest and Chillout stages and special mention goes to ResistoR, Electrocardo, Dusty Fungus and Blatwax for some absolute dancefloor business. Although there were numerous great acts on this stage, I feel that these four brought something truly special to the event and I hope to see them all making more appearances at future Manifests (of which I am certain there shall be many).  

As the night moved on the main stage was in full force with The Mank bringing an incredibly memorable set absolutely dripping with soul. Beautifully put together soulful hip hop vibes with a touch of dub and an incredible vocal performance these guys were close contenders for the set of the weekend, but I do have to save that accolade for the incomparable Mr Bill.

With production values on par with a Dave Tipper show, it truly makes me happy to see this kind of talent pouring from Australian shores. The crowd was absolutely heaving to Bill's incredibly melodic, bass and glitch heavy brand of electronica.

By the time Circuit Bent took to the stage to show off the wonky off-kilter wares of yet another brilliant Australian act both stages were absolutely packed with people for the final sets by Slackbaba and Tranceducer who both delivered killer sessions to polish the night off.

The quiet period post 12pm is certainly an interesting (though I understand required) move at an outdoor party but the Praxis crew had this well under control with a wealth of live performances from some incredibly talented groups and hours of psytrance on a smaller stage bending minds with its custom 5.1 surround sound system.   

At 7am on Sunday the generators were back online and the sound systems were yet again made live with the final day of festivities underway. Local monsters Kosha D, Hydrophonics, Duos and the Pushy Vagrants have forever changed the idea of a wakeup call rolling out some serious basslines straight off the bat.

The Main Stage had switched into psy mode for the remaining sets with Logic Bomb being an absolute standout. Unfortunately a move had to be made back to reality and we reluctantly made the (thankfully) short drive back to Brisbane only to wish I didn't have to wait another 362 days for next year’s event.

Again many thanks to all the promoters, organisers, DJs, market vendors, performers of all shapes and sizes and every person who was just up for a chat and a jam on the dancefloor.  Without any of you the event wouldn't have been the roaring success it was. Big ups to you all!
James ‘Hifire’ Paramor

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