Unequivocally ‘doing what it says on the tin’, FAIR PLAY festival serves as a communal, collaborative event, featuring a diverse lineup that’s fair and accessible welcoming musicians that are dubbed as ‘alternative’ in all its multiple forms.
Following the sell-out success of last year’s event, FAIR PLAY is back and bigger than before, having added the iconic long-standing Manchester venue, Night & Day Cafe amongst its roster of event hosts.
This year’s festival is taking place on the 1st of April and has already gathered a broad range of talent from across the country, including; Brighton-based alternative seven-piece KEG, folk singer-songwriter / multi-instrumentalist Naima Bock, experimental / jazz quintet Lunch Money Life, Irish alternative-electronic singer-songwriter and producer piglet, post-punk five-piece Silverbacks and more.
Each year the festival also hosts an independent record label from elsewhere in the country to curate one of our stages. It only felt fitting this year that we chose Bristol-based Spinny Nights.
Back in 2021, to launch FAIR PLAY, its very first event was a one-off headline show with Spinny-represented artist Grove at The Castle Hotel. As well as this, at the festivals initial all-dayer in early 2022, Nukuluk and Robbie & Mona were selected as part of the line-up, who are both signed to the label.
To bring everything full circle, this year, after a hugely successful couple of years amongst an array of local festival line-ups including Homobloc, Bluedot, Sounds From The Other City, Fat Out Fest and more, Grove is now set to be one of Spinny Nights headline acts, with a late-night, live closing set at one of our venues.
Over at its curated venue, Spinny Nights will bring fellow artists from their roster and label friends; one-person punk-techno-hiphop-folk opera-cabaret Biped, London-based alt-rock, experimental electronica and film soundtrack-inspired Me, Charles, post-punk meets post-folk three-piece Minor Conflict, gritty pop producer and vocalist Tlya X An and a couple more surprises, that are yet to be announced.
This year’s FAIR PLAY 2023 venues are SOUP, Gullivers, The Castle Hotel, Night & Day Cafe and The Peer Hat. The latter of which will both be its late-night venues, featuring closing late-night live sets, DJs and the wildly successful FAIR PLAY karaoke.
The Night & Day stage is also supported by local independent brewery, First Chop, whose beer selection will be available to purchase, including the festival’s uniquely designed can / drink of choice, FAIR PLAY beer.
FAIR PLAY also has The Peer Hat being supported by The Rodeo Magazine, who will be DJing throughout the day and operating a one-off pop-up shop of their recent issues and merch.
