The sun is shining, c’mon, get happy!
The Supersonic nation are pooling on the streets of Digbeth, blinking mosh-pit survivors, tote-bag carriers wincing in the warm sunshine, pale degenerates and music nerds itching for a new kind of kick. My people. Dazed by the cartoonish levels of villainy on display by the world’s leaders, we seek a little jolt of life, music and art – human connection. The nation’s most essential small festival welcomes us with open arms. Although a smaller scale, “limited edition”, event this year, there is no shrinking of ambition, and something like twenty performances are squeezed in to the two days.
So, who’s yer favourite?
From the hot bright pavement to cold standing stones and cosmic drones. We scurry into the darkness and begin with MMM. A new trio of possibly familiar faces (Elizabeth Still, Gayle Brogan and Nick Jonah Davis) are easing us in to proceedings with steady, meditative, music inspired by a lunar standstill at the Calanais stones in Scotland. Images of the stones play behind them in case you’ve not consulted your programme. It’s beautiful, but I can’t pretend it’s not an adjustment I may not have aligned my consciousness sufficiently to fully absorb it yet. Eventually there’s a huge chord, the guitars buzz, the voice wails, and the sound ascends, roaring into the sky.
MMM. Photo: Robert Barrett
The experimental music goes clang. It goes zip, skronk, crash ‘n’ scree; but mostly, today, it drones. Supersonic has many colours, its rich tapestry weaves many strands. The intermingling of folk traditions with more modern approaches has been fertile ground in recent years, and Saturday is right down in it, crouched in the long barrow singing into its smartphone. Matthew Broadley (late of anarchist black metallers Dawn Ray’d) brings his Greet project of harmonium and voice. He lights incense, plays barefoot, and generally has a strong Stone Henge festival vibe that carries through into Thorn Wych’s mix of self-made stick instruments and loop pedals on the second stage. My consciousness folds its arms and stubbornly refuses to align.
Thorn Wych. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop
Not to worry, here to sort that out are Bong II, keeping it drone but turning their amps up to eleven. A sonic wipe of the third eye. Reanimating doom-droners Bong was always going to be a “can’t step into the same river twice” type of thing but that’s all to the good; Bong II is a fitting sequel that may well surpass the original. New boy Dan Foggin (Smote) is a fine addition and they play a wonderful set, a patient, immersive, rise and fall; one of my favourites of the weekend.
Bong II. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop
The louder bands are squeezed together between the folkers, but could not be more different in tempo. Traidora have the distinction of the first drummer of the day to strike the kit with anything like vigour. And they go at it some, playing fierce crust/d-beat punk about “being gay, being radical” while a slideshow of inspirational trans women plays behind them. Amid the calmer sounds of the day it’s an exhilarating burst of righteous rage. At one point Eva Leblanc tells us she’s now forty-five, and while she’s not going to stop playing she feels like punk is young people’s music and we should pass it along. It occurs to me she wasn’t born when Discharge defined this sound and I wonder, is d-beat folk music now?
Traidora. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop
Out in the tricky space of the canteen, Lucifer Sky is representing for Coventry noise. It’s a bundle of electro scrunch and squeal in a balaclava. I tend to think noise artists ought to be fighting their gear a bit, mostly for the theatre of it. She’s waving about a small chunk of stage scaffold wrapped in chains and a contact mic that looks interesting but clearly isn’t doing what it should sonically. She gets a lot more out of the mic in her mouth/attached to her throat. It’s a fiery performance though, a lot of potential.
Lucifer Sky. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop
Milkweed achieve the most marmite set of the day. I find myself in the “came hopeful, really tried, left annoyed” camp. I liked the album, but live it seems more mannered than it needs to be; pompous, arch. I can’t get along with it. Today has not brought us much by way of joy or whimsy; it’s been a stony road of pagan folk drone, sorrow punctuated by bursts of fury but, as it’s Saturday night, here’s ØXN. Now, I’m aware some people feel about them much as I did about Milkweed, but each to their own, they were amazing.
Radie Peat, OXN. Photo: Robert Barrett
When Radie Peat opens her mouth to sing ‘Cruel Mother’ it gives me shivers. ØXN pull together the musical threads of the day in a singular and captivating way, their sound somehow very specific and at the same time wide and far reaching. They play the lion’s share of the Cyrm album plus ‘O Death’, and there’s also a new song making its live debut. Which suggests there may eventually be a new album and, on this basis, much in the same vein as the first. ‘Farmer in The City’ expands to something even more epic, and they end on murder ballad ‘Love Henry’ which seems fitting.
Katie Kim, OXN. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop
OXN. Photo: Robert Barrett
Sunday kickstarts with the invigorating electrical shock of Guttersnipe to get the blood pumping. After a few years away, their re-emergence finds them well-loved elders of noise; but onstage they still seem like gleeful kids, delighted by the vertiginously accelerating spasm-rock they coax from their instruments. At one point they stop playing and perform some kind of improv mime/dance interlude to shake the excess energy out of their bones or something, and it’s as charming as it is hilarious. Then they compose themselves and shake the room with tunes from new album Extinction Burst! Fantastic.
Guttersnipe. Photo: Sam Frank Wood
The mellower sounds of guitar-and-fiddle duo Peiriant can’t help but fall in their shadow but they have a few surprises up their sleeve. Among them, a song that bubbles out more like an up-tempo modular synth-jam than a fiddle tune about the Welsh landscape. Feeo takes things even mellower, to the point of chillout. She has a lovely voice, and the tracks are pleasingly downtempo and sparse, but I’m not really in the mood for it.
Peiriant. Photo: Sam Frank Wood
I’m more looking for the loud, colourful, electro-wonk party Monoxide Brothers are throwing in the canteen. What was I saying about joy and whimsy? They’ve got my little pony berets on, which ought to make you smile, and an enjoyably high level of chaos within their set up, including live, coded visuals. The beats are strong and they’re just generally a lot of fun. While there’s a good portion of anger in the lyrics of their songs, there’s more joy in their performance as they’re clearly having an excellent time doing music together; it’s infectious.
Monoxide Brothers. Photo: Sam Frank Wood
There’s a lot of that with Microplastics as well. A trio born of the friendship between 96 Back, Jennifer Walton and aya, star turn of last year’s festival. This is their debut performance. They’ve only got five songs so they do some of their solo stuff as well. I don’t think anyone really knew what to expect, and it isn’t easy to describe, but it’s a thrilling show. They all do vocals, Walton and aya switching places now and then on guitar and drums, casually demonstrating their ability in a way that ought to be more annoying than it is. A lot of elements are crushed together in their songs making them lively and unpredictable while still holding shape and sense. After yesterday’s line up working with long traditions it feels as if everything informing it is from this century, an attention-deficit dash through a newer set of forms and sounds, mashed into hyper-concentrated bursts.
Microplastics. Photo: Sam Frank Wood
Thanking us and the organisers for welcoming them, aya mentions the risk they’ve taken in putting them on. She’s right about this: the boldness of the programming is impressive and it’s based on faith in the artists and trust in the festival’s audience. This is not common practice but it has a lot to do with what makes Supersonic so special. As Digbeth gentrifies around it, the festival refuses to submit or soften its approach. This year’s line-up doubles down on its core stance as a radical, underground, space for community and cultural exploration
Ameretat. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop.
Ameretat are a powerful, hardcore punk band whose songs and music are coloured by the Iranian heritage of the core members. Aside from what I take to be an oud featuring here and there – and a short, humble, speech about the personal impact of the war – this isn’t very apparent. Their music is visceral and rousing, really enjoyable. I tend to forget how much I love close-harmony singing done well so I’m not quite prepared for the calm beauty of Ancient Hostility. Reasons for the resurgence of folk forms are many, but with minimal accompaniment they illuminate the need for emotional connection, shared experience that resonates, human voices, frailties and ingenuity. This is a crowd that loves blank sheets of abstract sound, but with the world on fire it’s also good to feel that we’re less alone.
Prostitute. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop
Tonight’s headliners, the first act announced for this year, are mid-western noise-rock/ post-punk band Prostitute at the start of a run of UK dates. A decent but low-level buzz around their brilliant debut Attempted Martyr has brought them here before an expectant crowd, but if truth be told they’re still a slightly unknown quantity. Confident and commanding, they completely deliver on the album’s promise. The songs may burn with fury and hurt but the music makes for an exhilarating live show. Noise, rage, menace, good times. Letting his band do the talking, all vocalist Moe has to say to us this evening is, “I came to dance, so let’s dance”; and dance he does. So do we. This is never a given with noise rock, but Prostitute have grooves; not only can you dance to it, it hits you in the body so that you can hardly help it.
“Let’s dance!”. Photo: Sam Frank Wood
It feels like a perfect end to the weekend, the madness of the world is burning ever hotter but we can still dance. The dull forces of capital are looking to mulch culture into profitably beige AI slop. We can’t be having that. Supersonic is not in the business of making its promoters wealthy, it’s about the life-enriching power of art and music. It gets ever more difficult to make events like these happen but they are not going to lay down, once again delivering an amazing weekend, a victory in the face of adversity.
Lisa Meyer. Photo: Joe Singh @snaprockandpop
