Live Report: Bicep, Kojaque, Gemma Dunleavy and more electrify Saturday's Forbidden Fruit

It says quite a lot for the health of the music industry in this country that this year's sold out Forbidden Fruit was built upon a foundation of both emerging and established Irish artists from multiple genres across the musical spectrum.

First things first, it was great to see the sun out in force for the debut of this year's festival showcase, as the days before and since have been unseasonably miserable.

With three stages of premium live music on offer, there were difficult choices to make in terms of who to attend. I mostly stayed at the main stage, and thus got to see stellar performances from Dublin natives Gemma Dunleavy, whose hit song 'Up De Flats' had the entire crowd singing along in unison, and KOJAQUE.

Gemma Dunleavy at Forbidden Fruit 2022.

However, a trip across to 'The Undergrowth' stage was duly rewarded with an excellent set from French DJ extraordinaire Folamour, whose trademark house and disco was accompanied by truly breathtaking psychedelic visuals that transported all in attendance to another plane of existence.

After Folamour was another Dublin hometown hero, For Those I Love. I was lucky enough to catch his intimate set in the 3Olympia Theatre in the recent past, and it was very interesting to see how he had adapted his music to fit a festival setting. There was a more upbeat, electronic element to it than usual, although this was juxtaposed with visuals that underlined many of the capitals plights, including homelessness, drug use, and youth suicide.

While the day may have belonged to the aforementioned Dublin superstars, the night was well and truly captured by Belfast electronica king's Bicep. This performance came right in the middle of a worldwide tour for the duo who can stake quite a serious claim to being the biggest act in world electronic music right now.

Bicep at Forbidden Fruit 2022.

Anyone present at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on Saturday night would have little reason to doubt this, as they delivered an unbelievable audio and visual experience that seemed to extend into the heavens themselves with the setting sun shining an uncharacteristically deep shade of red.

It's not easy to describe the collective euphoria experienced by the crowd at this Bicep show, but to say the duo had them in the palm of their hand is an understatement. They effortlessly glided from one electronic genre to another, all the while blending their songs together with synthetic swirls and gushing beats. They finished with 'Glue', the most popular song off their debut, followed by 'Apricots', the most popular from last year's sophomore album Isles.

Forbidden Fruit 2022.

The June bank holiday weekend traditionally kicks off festival season, and it was great to see this year's Forbidden Fruit do that with a bang.

More than a showcase of musical and visual excellence however, it was truly heartwarming to feel, at long last, some kind of pre-Covid normality return to an industry which was the first to close and the last to reopen.