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On the weekend of the 5th of September, Skillmega and the extended Flash Fry fam hit Lodz, Poland for the Outline Colour Festival. The OCF is a 6 day celebration of graf and music drawing in top artists from Poland and much further afield, writers included Mode2 and Astek from the UK, NDEC repping Japan and many more from all over the world including Poland. The music line-up was no less impressive with MOP and Jeru The Damaja topping the bill, a hometown show from Polish hip-hop legend OSTR and, of course, us lot.

We arrived in light drizzle at Park Baden-Powell (never did find out why it was named after the founder of the Scouts), Jeru was already there selling CD’s out of the merch tent and doing healthy business, we got our lanyards and hit the backstage area hoping for the obligatory free booze and palatial dressing rooms, well, that wasn’t to be, but we did get some buses to sit in, which was pleasant. To the soundtrack of Polish dancehall we went to explore the site where we found sausages, Lech beer galore and a growing number of inebriated Polish youngsters getting irie to the super reggae party vibes.

As darkness began to fall the time for mooching around was over and it was time to hit the stage. We needed to make an entrance and we certainly did. Big Reps literally hit the stage hard after walking into a monitor but being the top pro that he is he got up, bruised but not beaten to deliver a top notch set alongside his loyal henchmen Nozeeny, Rupert and DJ Rod Dixon from the mighty Skillmega, who were up next. As Big Lew, the official Flash Fry sales rep, got busy shotting CDs and becoming a minor festival celebrity. Dan Fresh joined Reps and Rod Dixon on stage to deliver exclusive tracks from the forthcoming album and old favourites to an increasingly rowdy and drunk crowd: let’s just say it went off big style! When Rup and Nozeeny jumped back on stage for the show closer, Hands Up, there were people singing along and shocking out from the front to the back.

The rest of the night descended into a Lech and pork fuelled haze. Needless to say OSTR tore it down in front of his hometown audience.  Jeru dropped classic after classic: Come Clean, The Bitches etc still sounding immense after all these years. MOP got stupendously drunk, constantly referred to Lodz as Warsaw and then, after being corrected, as Woosh. They screamed BUKKA-BUKKA-BLAOW a lot and were generally awesome. No surprise that Ante Up got the crowd going totally apeshit - a few fools may have got kidnapped, that’s how gully it was.

After the festival things got increasingly strange: an endless hunt for a shop, an almost-fight with a very large man, a butter fight and various other things which are probably best forgotten. After a day of recovery we all stopped by at the HQ of B3 Clothing on the way to the airport, they sorted us out with some lovely garments, translated what the Polish internets were saying about the show (which mainly seemed to be about how big Big Lew was) and then we were on our way home. Sweet.

Big up the organisers, OSTR, B3 Clothing and all the people of Lodz