Friends! Comrades! Brothers and sisters! Supersonic Festival 2025 hastens towards us, a tasty samosa in one hand and an overloaded sackful of musical adventures in the other. Once again overcoming the petty misery and grind of the city to bring us dazzling, immersive, live experiences. Supersonic is a beacon of oppositional culture offering a sense of underground community and a brief glimpse of a better way to do things. A notably supportive space for all involved, it’s little wonder that it is beloved of both artists and audience alike. This year’s line-up continues the now familiar blend of returning friends, new performers and unique collaborations across a range of styles.
Among the bigger names Rich(ard) Dawson returns with songs from his gorgeous End Of The Middle album from the start of the year and there’s a UK exclusive from Backxwash, which ought to be unmissable. Also a rare chance to catch veteran US free-form crew Jackie-O Motherfucker doing their thing. Hotly tipped newer names include the expanded post-punk meditations of Moin, and wild electronic mangling from Aya (she of the year’s most upsetting album cover). The more you look at the line-up the more remarkable things it throws up for you to see, and the more confusing it becomes. Impossible to see it all, here’s a quick six-pack pick.
In the festival’s never ending shape shifting dance of venues, Friday night will find us at Norton’s, an Irish bar just a notch further up Digbeth towards the city centre. I think one of the band’s playing there will be Water Damage, an expanded collective of time-served musical explorers from Austin, Texas who set forth under the flag of “Maximal Repetition, Minimal Deviation” hammering on a riff until it becomes a transcendent drone. The records they’ve made are great but it certainly seems like the kind of band that really exists in live performance – sure to be an early highlight of the weekend.
“SHITHOUSE!” Big Special come from just up the road and seem well on their way to much wider appeal. Last month they surprise released a new album, National Average, with a picture of egg and chips on the cover. It’s the follow up to their debut Post Industrial Home Town Blues and so you should be getting a strong ‘does what it says on the tin’ vibe by now. It’s not too far off all that talky post-punk business but they’ve got their own identity. A duo, Joe Hicklin’s vocals are half spat half sung over Callum Moloney’s drums and a backing track. Have fun seeing how long it takes for someone to mutter Sleaford Mods in earshot just because they can count how many people are on stage.
Rún’s video for ‘Your Death My Body’ recently featured here on Echoes and Dust, and their self-titled debut album releases a week before. So it’s a big moment, but on paper they look set to take the festival by storm. The album is a rich and heady brew of sonics, evocative, atmospheric, seemingly limitless. There’s drone in it for sure, and a delicate strand of folk mostly felt in Tara Baoth Mooney’s vocals, but it’s possibly a misdirection to think of them that way. Rún feature Diarmuid MacDiarmada whose brother Cormac will also be appearing over the weekend with the much more folk-inclined Poor Creature, who also promise to be excellent.
OMO are an ugly noise beast, a ‘doom cabaret collective’ heading down from Glasgow. Recorded evidence so far is thin on the ground for this lot, just a couple of demo tracks on Bandcamp, but they were sufficiently excited about playing the festival to add a cover of local heroes Head Of David, and there’s dates booked until the end of the year so we should be hearing more from them. Comprised of members of Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, Desalvo, Aereogramme, and fronted by P6 of the legendary Stretchheads. The forecast is for good times with sludgy, filthy, noise.
Coming over from Ireland, Hedgling have a slighter online presence and are even more of an unknown quantity than OMO to be honest. It is however the latest project from Willie Stewart and Natalia Beyliss who have played the festival together before as part of Woven Skull and produced all manner of fine music to earn your trust. Hedgling, they say, will bring “pounding rhythmic constellations, dissolving tape hiss, mic’d up objects, creaking drones…” which sounds grand and is sure to be interesting at the absolute minimum.
Last year the nonsense up on the rooftop reached a new pantomime peak and the programme up there seems to have expanded even further. There’ll be sets from ZD Grafters, Karl D’Silva and MADRIGIRL, a Smote x One Leg One Eye collaboration that’s sure to be rammed, DJ sets including Palestinian Sound Archive and whatever those lovely Pocket Signs boys cook up for us. As part of Sunday’s NeoAncients x Weird Walk takeover Dawn Terry will be bringing the still space of the drone. Formerly of drone metal institution Bong, Terry has embraced acoustic sounds building her dense pieces with hurdy gurdy and accordion, topped off occasionally with almost equally droning vocals.
