If it’s August it must be ArcTanGent, and this year’s iteration, with an astounding line-up of one-offs and headliner coups, is perhaps more brilliant and bewildering than ever. Jody Dunstan and Nick Dunn are your guides, with a raft of personal picks to cut a path through the long grass and the inevitable stage clashes.

A very late look back at Roadburn 2026, where redefining heaviness once again meant something different for everyone.

It’s a celebration of mood, simplicity and versatility. . . No encore, no pandering, just three guys holding a room’s undivided attention and having fun while doing it. Hard to think of a better way to spend a Thursday evening.

Three days of heavy riffs, psychedelic journeys, crystal-clear rivers, and discovering your next favourite band in the Croatian wilderness. Bear Stone Festival continues to prove that the spirit of desert rock is alive and well, just a little further from the desert.

Excess and minimalism, violence and restraint, chaos and bliss – Agriculture are all these things, and they’re a bloody great time to boot.

Bear Stone 2026 is back on the banks of the Mrežnica River in Croatia with Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Altin Gün, Elder, Nightstalker, and more. A psychedelic, stoner, doom-heavy weekend of river-side sets, off-grid vibes, and serious underground discoveries.

Hater’s set glints darkly with shoegaze. . . But within Hater exists the clarity of pop too, a bright heart. Even in this slightly close, slightly jigsawed night, and even from my view at the back of the venue, their performance resonates identically to their recorded music – polished, coolly reverberative, deeply felt and, ironically, loving.

This year, only able to attend for two days, I ventured out on a mission to the atypical fringes of the fest. . . Finding myself at The Dev a lot, easily the best dive bar in London and the smallest venue of the fest, I largely replaced the breezy grooves of the California desert with bruising industrial, weird and putrid death metal, and incendiary mathcore. And, dearest gentle reader, it was glorious.

Portland’s finest absolutely killed it tonight and, judging by the blissed-out smiles on folk as they leave the room, no-one could say otherwise.

Death metal is alive and well in Cardiff on a Monday night, and as the tour progresses through the UK and into Europe you sense that each band will carry on picking up new fans

It has been, I think, one of the best StrangeForms fests ever. If not the best ever festival, then possibly the best ever single day. . . The wildly varied line-up has been most excellent, curated to near perfection. . . I’m going home tired but happy, and my life is just that little bit better for having been here.

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.

Sander van den Driesche went to see the excellent mixed bill of loacl(ish) bands at the Wee Red Bar in Edinburgh.

From here on I lose track of song breaks and starts; Aoba has frozen time and barely a breath is drawn from the audience for the rest of the night. . . To continue to describe the performances by Aoba, Umebayashi and 12 Ensemble, I’m in danger of listing all the synonyms for ‘beautiful’ or sounding like I’m reciting that much-memed Lady Gaga quote (“talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular”), but both of these are applicable.

Weekends like this are a beacon of light in darkening times. . . Supersonic is a gem, don’t take it for granted.