A festival in the foothills: how Bilbao BBK Live showcases the city’s appreciation for the arts
The bus ride from Bilbao Airport to the city centre graciously passes under the red arch of the La Salve Bridge, affording visitors a brief glance at the complete cultural hub they’re about to enter. A giant puppy made out of petals. A stainless steel spider measuring just under nine meters tall. A riverside modern art museum that somehow dwarfs both creatures. It’s a breathtaking sight, particularly for a Brit who has witnessed continual defunding and dismissing of the arts closer to home.
The allure of the city doesn’t stop there. Bilbao feels like a feat in architectural alchemy and in walkability. It’s home to countless bars serving small plates called pintxos, each and every one of them spilling out onto the street even on a mid-week evening. Like all the best European cities, there’s a preserved and pedestrianised old town where Palestinian flags hang from windows. And for one weekend a year, it’s home to Bilbao BBK Live, a long-standing festival nestled in Kobetamendi, one of many hills that adorn the city.
The festival barely scratches the surface of what Bilbao has to offer in terms of arts and culture, but it’s a good place to start. Bringing together a lineup of household names, local talent, and a whole host of DJs, Bilbao BBK invites city dwellers and music fans from further afield to gather around seven stages in the mountains to celebrate the electronic and alternative sounds of the past and present.
We reach the top of Kobetamendi at about half six, which would make us fashionably late for most UK festivals, but here it feels as if we’re early. Some sort of metallic obelisk sits at the centre of the Nagusia stage, waiting patiently for the arrival of Spanish artist Sen Senra. He graces the stage wearing a towel over his head and a tiny tee that reads “best man” before warming the crowd up with a set of sultry pop laced with R&B influences.
As walkable and beautiful as the area that hosts it, Bilbao BBK already feels like a distillation of the Basque city’s cultural incubation. Though there’s a tight turnaround between Sen Senra and Air’s sets, getting to the San Miguel stage for the latter poses no issues. The two main stages almost face one another, and a crowd quickly gathers for the French duo. While we await the spacey sounds of Moon Safari, a girl in front of me spots my portable charger and asks to borrow it. Her friend quickly runs off to grab me a beer in repayment, and the sun shines a little brighter.
Air delivers a set of elevated elevator music in the most complimentary way possible. Their lazy twangs and alien synths provide the perfect soundtrack for sunset, the ambience only enhanced by the chatter of the growing crowd. But it’s the staging that sets their performance apart from the rest. Donning all-white outfits, they play from a backlit box of light that feels like it could just as easily belong in the modern art museum just below us.
From song to song, the colour behind them changes, matching the orange tones of the sky for ‘La femme d’argent’ before plunging us into outer space for ‘Sexy Boy’. The sparklingly subdued set gains some momentum as it hurtles from Moon Safari into more electronic and prog-influenced offerings, providing the perfect run-up for the undisputed stand-out set of the entire weekend: Massive Attack.
As the sky struggles to decide between an orange hue and nightfall, the seminal trip-hoppers deliver a performance that extends far beyond sampling and slowed beats. A lighting show designed by founder and multimedia artist Robert Del Naja takes the focus away from the musicians themselves, an impressive feat given that Horace Andy and actual Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser are on stage. There’s minimal talking, as if they know that their staging and sound are enough.
Their sound is, of course, seamless. Andy’s voice sounds all the more gritty and raw two decades on, and Fraser’s all the more airy, and the accompanying trip-hop sound pulses through the mountains, but it’s the visuals that give the set its gravitas. A montage of cultural and political clips splices references to Elon Musk and Molly Mae-Hague and footage of Gaza and Ukraine with clips of Furries and trashy BBC 3 reality shows.
The crowd collectively resist the urge to blink until the final moments of ‘Group Four’ ring out, at which point I’m left wondering if Massive Attack just might be the best band I’ve ever seen live. They’re certainly the perfect headliner for BBK, and their set seems much more like an art piece than a gig. Fellow 1990s staples The Prodigy and relative newcomer Shygirl cap off the night with dance-worthy tunes and modest crowd interaction, but they pale in comparison to Massive Attack.
Crowds pour out of the exit for a sobering wander back down the mountain at 3am, and the skyline of Bilbao glimmers with the promise of more art to sink your teeth into. Friday plays host to Khruangbin, who are unfortunately graced with less rays of light than their sun-drenched sound deserves, and Parcels, who attract an unexpectedly mammoth crowd. I dip out of their feel-good set to venture into the forest where electronic stages Lasai and Basoa reside, currently hosting Rinse FM and DjRUM.
There’s a view of the entire city from the former, while the latter surrounds festival-goers with trees and strobes that bounce off of a disco ball and seem to run into the horizon. Providing a home for much heavier forms of electronic music, it’s a haven for those attendees who spend their days listening to NTS. It’s also the perfect precursor to Underworld, a look at the electronic stylings of the future before a nod to the past.
But first, Ezra Collective garner a huge crowd of jazz lovers while Grace Jones forges art out of fashion on the main stage. She’s 30 minutes late for her set, but it’s worth every second of the wait as she kicks things off with ‘Nightclubbing’, strutting around the stage and encouraging us to party. She gets through almost as many costume changes as she does songs, her skin quite literally glittering as she grinds up against the railing as if it’s still the 1970s. “Do you wanna go home?” she asks, “I don’t wanna go home.”
Neither do we, and we stand firm in front of the main stage in wait of Underworld. Their set is pure electronic euphoria, offsetting the impatience of those attendees who only came for ‘Born Slippy’. Still, when it does come, it marks the height of that feeling, kaleidoscopic flashes illuminating the faces of those singing along to every word while Karl Hyde throws his arms around on stage. It’s a different form of art, but it’s art all the same.
Like many festivals, the final day of BBK is a little more subdued. It plays host to seminal shoegazers Slowdive, whose screensaver-style visuals feel somewhat hollow compared to the artists that preceded them, to Noname, who rightly implores her crowd to give her the love she deserves, and to Alvvays, who pack out the pyramid-shaped Beefeater tent with indie kids. No one makes quite the same impact as Massive Attack or Underworld, but they don’t intend to.
The last bus trip down Kobetamendi provides one last birds-eye view at Bilbao, a trip down the winding roads that lead to the mountainous festival site, as well as a look at the cultural hub that exists below. At Frank Gehry’s massive and metallic architecture for the Guggenheim, at the equally impressive San Mamés Stadium, and at fine arts museums in grand buildings and spaces for daytime gigs. Bilbao BBK may be what draws so many to the Basque country each July, but it’s just one element of the city’s appreciation for the arts.
With a lineup that traverses genres and generations and performances that focus on striking visuals and meaning beyond music, Bilbao BBK feels like an aural addition to the cultural landscape of the Basque city rather than something separated from it. It’s just as concise and curated as the art museums and the pintxos menus that line Bilbao. Just behind Massive Attack’s blistering headline set, the most striking element of the weekend was the city’s complete understanding that the arts are integral to human happiness.
