AMP Lost & Found Festival review: An unforgettable weekend

The line-up is rich and diverse, with old favourites performing alongside first-timers

Lost and Found Festival returned to Malta this summer (AMP)

Malta’s very own Café del Mar serves as the unofficial hub of AMP Lost and Found Festival, which celebrated its fourth birthday earlier this month with another unforgettable weekend in the Mediterranean sun.

It’s where the daily pool parties are held, and the main meeting point for the shuttle buses which ferry punters around the rocky island, from boat trips and castle raves in the afternoon to the festival’s four main stages at night. Coincidentally, the achingly cool café also shares a complex with the island’s sprawling National Aquarium, leading to the endlessly amusing sight of weary ravers jostling for space with rather bemused Maltese marine enthusiasts each evening.

This rather endearing cultural clash is a theme played out time and again over the weekend, which feels oddly befitting of an island that has been conquered from everybody from the Phoenicians to the Romans, the Normans to the sun burnt British. Lost and Found is impossible to define: a true fusion of musical styles which attracts an attractively diverse crowd, who all play their part in making the weekend such an exciting experience.

After all, at what other festival can you chill out around the swimming pool to a soundtrack of house and techno provided by Moxie, party at an ancient castle clinging to the beautifully rugged Maltese coastline, and watch a sweat-soaked J Hus throw himself headfirst into an adoring crowd — all in one day?

Of course it helps that Annie Mac is the one putting everything together, a DJ with more numbers in her phonebook than the Yellow Pages. As a result the line-up is rich and diverse, with old favourites (The Black Madonna, Heidi, Kölsch) returning alongside a clutch of festival first-timers (Jamie xx, Diplo, Midland). It’s a generously stacked bill, but with the vast majority of DJs cropping up more than once across the weekend — as well as emerging from behind the decks to disappear into the soup of bodies on the dance floor — the festival manages to retain an impressively laid-back vibe.

Annie Mac presides over the electronic music festival (AMP)

The entertainment start early. The pool parties begin at midday, with a chilled soundtrack befitting of the Café del Mar brand gradually transforming into something else entirely, as the bar grows busier and more gym-honed bodies begin to fling themselves into the water. Mike Skinner’s set on the Friday is an early highlight, packed full of garage classics ahead of his headline appearance later that night. There are also two boat parties spread across the weekend — with sets from Peggy Gou, Artwork, Mall Grab and Denis Sulta — as well as a one-off beach party, headlined by Annie herself and featuring rising star Stefflon Don.

Then there’s the castle rave. It’s not for the faint of heart — it turns out the Knights Hospitaller didn't account for the needs of a crowd of weekend thrill-seekers when littering their fortifications around the island and so cover from the unrelenting early summer sun is in short supply. But those who make the short trip inland are well rewarded with standout sets from first Heidi and then Patrick Topping, who captures the mood perfectly with the Karizma Edit of the Bill Withers classic "Lovely Day".

Ultimately though that’s all a warm-up for what’s to come. And after a brief pause in proceedings, to allow for everybody to eat and grab another layer, the crowd re-emerge into the gloaming to head for Numero Uno, a large open-air club tucked away in Ta' Qali that houses the festival’s four stages. As a festival site it’s on the smaller side, but with their own lighting and theme the stages each have their own distinctive character and it’s easy to hop around sampling everything Lost and Found has to offer.

Saturday's castle rave is a highlight (AMP)

All of the big hitters appear on The Palace stage, the biggest of the four. Four Tet and Jamie xx set the bar high on Friday — with the former’s remix of Bicep’s "Opal" arguably the highpoint of the evening until the latter drops "Gosh" a couple of hours later — while Diplo and Ms Mac are on blistering form a night later. A special mention also to Kölsch: who brings the festivities to an appropriate climax with a series of huge anthemic house tunes.

And yet it’s J Hus, on the neighbouring Tropicana stage, who truly steals the show. The Stratford lad follows on from a high-octane set from fellow grime star Novelist, drawing perhaps the biggest crowd of the weekend with his dizzying cocktail of dancehall and Ghanaian Afrobeats. "Bouff Daddy" goes off. "Lean & Bop" goes off. And "Plottin" goes on and on — with the 21-year-old vanishing into the throng for most of the track, briefly reappearing under the strobe lighting crowd surfing his way back to the stage.

If anybody is to rival him as the star of the weekend it’s Malta itself, a small spit of an island that has dropped off the coast of southern Italy to fortuitously land slap bang in the middle of the Mediterranean. The weather is ideal — low twenties throughout much of the day before growing cooler at night — while local prices are low compared to festivals back home. (However it’s also worth noting the beach and boat parties as well as the castle rave aren’t included in a general admission ticket, something that anyone planning to attend next summer will need to factor into their budget.)

J Hus re-emerges from the crowd (AMP)

But perhaps the greatest trick up Malta’s sleeves is the complete lack of a language barrier. There’s no half-arsing it with a discount phrasebook or speaking exceptionally slowly and loudly to bemused locals here; everybody speaks perfect English — most probably better than you — which makes moving around the island at any hour a completely painless experience.

It’s another string to the festival’s bow. Lost and Found has a rich line-up and even richer setting; an early summer serotonin shot that kicks off the European party season in style. Big things are already expected of its fifth iteration next year.

AMP Lost & Found will return on the 2nd - 5th May 2019 and super early bird tickets are available now