OTT is a festival defined by its people. It’s a small, bijou bash, but its heart is huge. The air crackles with the sheer humanity of the thing. For a late festival season weekend, it becomes the epicentre, for our FFA Reviewers at least, of everything that is good about the festival scene, and festival people in particular. Even after thirty something years, it remains below the radar for many, but like many hidden gems, once discovered, those in the know consistently make the yearly sojourn back to the source. There are multiple facets to the pull of OTT; the audience it attracts, the truly unique location, the depth and breadth of its yearly slice of music offerings, it’s healing fields, and kids stuff, the list goes on. All those threads and more help create that famous OTT vibe. You can feel it, taste it, touch it, as you approach the site. Once savoured, it’s magic seeps into your very bones. This review will hopefully bring you at least a flavour of that.

Let’s get the mechanics of this thing addressed up top: The venue, at Donington Park Farm House, is absolutely superb and imparts a key element of OTT’s unique character. For a full breakdown of what this excellent venue offers, you can read FFA’s standard blurb HERE. In a nutshell, it’s a heavily diversified farm, offering a large, permanent camp site with comprehensive shower and toilet facilities, pub, extensive function rooms, and large diner. The festival utilises all this, plus the various farm buildings surrounding the farmyard. It’s all under cover too!  Making OTT an ideal end-of-season festival. OTT host a beer & cider festival across the weekend, whilst the diner even sells venison (if that’s your bag), from the farms 12th century estate. The farmyard itself is bedecked with alfresco tables and chairs, to further enhance OTT’s famously chilled vibe. This reviewer always trots out the same catchphrase that OTT is more House Party than Festival, but trust FFA on this, it is all as cool as it sounds.

Now, to business…If you think festivals are all about the bands, then you’ve been going to the wrong festivals. Those are just branded events in fields. At the truly great festivals, of which OTT is in the top echelon, the festival itself is the thing; it’s bigger than its yearly roster of artists. OTT is its own living, breathing, fiercely independent entity, it exists, in its own right, as a thing, a multi-faceted concoction – the various elements bound together by its people… and the wonderful OTT people create the Vibe, the spirit at OTT which sets this little bash in the East Midlands apart. All sorts of human life rock up to OTT, this mash up of wildly disparate folk; they gel, bond, leave their prejudices at the door, give everyone a listen. They get on. They are FFA’s model for what an ideal festival crowd should be.  

Now don’t get this Reviewer wrong – of course the bands matter, but they are transient, an ever-changing facet, but the festival persists – OTT marches on majestically, year upon year. It’s done this for thirty odd years. This year’s batch of artists excelled. Never heard of many of them, but it’s really not an issue; this is OTT we are talking about – there is always quality here.

Here's a take on some of what worked for FFA. It’s not complete, many fine acts and scenes didn’t even make the final cut, for many others, we’d be drinking, or away with the fairies, getting side-tracked, talking bollox. Meet some random dudes in a corridor, you get on, and end up talking for ages about ladies climbing drainpipes, haute couture, wild swimming, baccy pouches, or Rory Gallagher. It happened all the time. It’s not distractions, it just another facet that actually helps make OTT what it is!

Friday

OTT 2025 kicked off with some splendid Hindustani soaked rock from the excellent Karma Sheen. Blimey, OTT, you’ve only gone and done it again; it’s only the first band, and you’ve already set the tone for eclectic musical offerings. Classic rock malarkey with Theremin to boot. FFA know what game you’re playing, OTT. This weekend is going to be another wild rollercoaster musical journey, isn’t it?... oh, and with a diverse roster of excellent artists spanning virtually every musical genre? Thought so. No change there then. And so it begins.

The stage programming is all point-counterpoint. But nothing jars, it all flows, taking in a global musical landscape. The OTT guys are past masters in scheduling and pacing – the radically different acts merge, becoming one complete, wonderful whole. That fusion, my friends, is just one element of the multi-faceted OTT experience. You want diverse?  Running concurrently in the Black Barn, Southbound knocked out everything from Southern country rock to classic rock and roll, with great effect. FFA were already dancing.

The Celtic Social Club were a powerhouse of twin fiddles, gob-irons, and distinctive vocal style. A fine outfit seamlessly covering a lot of bases – go check ‘em out. Festival favourites Transglobal Underground headlined the Marquee with delicious dub heavy soundscapes, with Mukherjee positively excelling on sitar. Skanking heaven in parts – with the trip-hoppy ‘Temple Head’ taking the absolute biscuit. A throbbing atmosphere, with the well up-for-it OTT crowd a swirling mass of good times. Now THIS is an OTT Friday Night.  

Midnight offerings ranged from EDM to classic rock singalongs. The mellow laid-back electronica of Mirror System was to die for. A cracking vibe in the Black Barn, with the fabulous crowd one slowly pulsating mass, oscillating to the beats… plus Hillage + Guitar + Gliss = Absolutely Wonderful. Big Up too for the sound and light guys – the A/V across all the stages were right on the button; excellence is the norm at OTT.

In the Stackyard, Hard Rockin’ Amigos had the crowd eating from their hand, they always do, with some damned fine classic rock covers amongst much else. The band have their own relaxed style, know how to please an audience, and enough differentiators to set them apart. Throw in some excellent trance fuelled beats from DJ Templehead in the Threshing Barn, and the (in)famous OTT Friday Night shenanigans absolutely nailed it… and nailed FFA for that matter. 

Saturday

No messin about on Saturday early doors with OTT’s first offering - Big Band. Big Sound. The Social Ignition! Mob handed and brass heavy. Skanking good times from the off. Loved it.  Brace yerself, they’ve only gone and let ‘em out together: Its Phil Cudworth & Boz. Don’t let the multi-talented Mr Cudworth fool you; behind the homespun façade, there lies tales of biting political satire, piercing social observation, and a rock-solid moral compass… and he also happens to be hilarious! If ever there is a song for our times, then ‘Don’t Be A Dick’, is up there. Ably supported by festival organiser Boz Borys on beatbox, this pair produced laugh out loud moments and subversive food for thought in equal measure. Top. Ellis J Barraclough, young lad, only nineteen, but could be Neil Young. A raw talent sure, but musically mature way beyond his years. Neo-psychedelic rocker ‘Time’ stole the show. Excellent. FFA will be watching your progress, young fella. Gorilla Riot. Charismatic front man, dirty beats, honest to goodness Rock, with enough raunchiness to be a telling differentiator. What’s not to like? 

You could feel the buzz beforehand; the Black Barn was packed out before Galdorcræft even sparked up… and, importantly, they never left. Admittedly, many had drop jaw for the first couple of songs – so stunning and leftfield was the whole set! If ever a band summed up OTT’s gift for assembling a collection of artists so diverse and talented as to make your hair curl, then Galdorcræft are your go-to outfit. Deeply dark, unsettling, and brooding, but interspersed with elemental shards of pure bliss. This pagan, erm, gothic, Norse, erm, folk-fusion ensemble, erm, erm… OK OK, I give up, this reviewer simply doesn’t know what it is, so unique and out there are this crew (medieval lyres to jaw harp, log drumming with antlers, to one dude playing percussive twigs. No. Seriously). But Unique alone means nothing. Unique and Excellent means everything. In a truncated set (do get your stage setup sorted, guys), splendid debut album NINE featured, and new songs like ‘Merlin’ excelled.  This band are in creative phase and surely going places, see them soon before they really take off. You’ll either get it or you won’t – if you do - they will mess with your mind. For the second OTT running, one of FFA’s sets of the festival.

Another genre shift with Muddibrooke. A band of exquisite contrasts; driving rock, interspersed with the sweetest of vocal harmonies. It all meshes. FFA loved ‘em. Mr Irish Bastard! Punk-folk Celtic heaven. Amidst some great musicianship and stage presence, resides other layers; there is an edge, a deeper, darker element to the lyrics, which locks you in. Intrigues. An absolutely cracking band.

Same same but different - maintaining the Celtic lineage, Scots outfit Talisk excelled. They had the Marquee bouncing as this powerhouse of a three-piece laid down a tremendous wall of sound. They took the ‘folk’ genre to its limits and beyond. A class act, OTT, and a worthy headliner to close off the Marquee stage. The night was still young, even if FFA weren’t (the arenas close at 3:30 am), and what was the call? Hillage and Giraudy again gracing a stage, fronting a truly seminal outfit and one of the earliest exponents of UK Techno, in the superb System 7? DR Matt & DJ Lipglossboss at the Silent Disco? (love it!!!), Beggars Bliss rocking up the Stackyard? or the brilliant Ovni and Purusha – two fantastic dudes knocking out blissful live instrumental overlays to sweet beats, over on the Dreams stage? FFA floated around the site like butterflies to nectar, taking it all in. All different. All complementary. All excellent. All worked. This is an OTT Saturday night.

 Sunday

Chill Out Sunday they call it. And it was - at the beginning. OTT had scheduled the day to progressively ramp up, and lordy, did it ramp. For this old, wizened cynic of a Reviewer, it also became a tad emotional too. Why that? There are good people walking this earth, and there are bad people. It’s in their soul. It’s nothing to do with their skin colour, orientation, birthplace, or belief system. It’s down to the individual alone. Yet we live in brutal times, where those in power play on our base emotions, for their own ends. In a world where even our national flag is becoming a political weapon, they constantly seek to divide us. Well, on that Sunday, the good people of OTT fought back. This was a global day. An inclusive day. A melting pot. The OTT community as one. Organisers, Stewards, Artists, Crowd. Together. United.  

The Wigornia String Quartet, quintessentially British, started it all. Some beautiful melodic renderings, not least a stunning ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ to close off a delightful, mellow set. Next up, the splendid Mas Y Mas, and their pulsating Latino rhythms from across the planet. Where next, OTT? Zimbabwe as it happened. Linos Wengara Magaya & Zimbaremabwe Mbira Vibes cooked up a storm. It was ramping alright. The Midlands air was full of the haunting sounds of the Mbira, coupled with hypnotic afro-beats. A great band that had the crowd in a spin.

OTT closed the festival with the splendid Kissmet. The band as much a melting pot as the fabulous OTT crowd. The Punjab meets Jimmy Page. Bhangra fusion. It was a stunning set, with the crowd locked on to it from the off. The atmosphere was electric. One of the best OTT Sunday’s this reviewer can recall for many a year. The gaff was jumping. Just people. Together. Loving life. No divisions. No barriers. (Literally, as it happened, with many in the crowd joining the band on stage at the end!). The guys ended with a stonking ‘Govinda’ and the message of One Love. One Universe. It was a beautiful and powerful life-affirming scene. This reviewer came over all Old Hippy, and must have got some grit in his eye. Maybe, just maybe, there is some hope for this rotten species of ours after all. OTT won’t change the world, but it can perhaps make your own world a better place. A fabulous festival.

Article by Barrie Dimond

Images by the always splendid Graham Whitmore – check out his OTT portfolio HERE.