Rather than give a play-by-play review of ArcTanGent, I want to write about a few of my personal highlights of the festival. The beauty of the setup is that you can dip in and out of sets; nothing is more than a few minutes’ walk away. . .

The night offered a chance to cast off the weight of the contemporary world and revel in the sounds of the 90s and early 2000s, a time when life was perhaps less stressful, hectic, and alienating.

So was the first instalment of Core. Festival a success? In almost every respect, yes.

ArcTanGent, the Bristol-based, independent festival starts tomorrow, with a variety of over 50 acts. Jody Dunstan steers carefully through the clash-finder and picks out his personal favourites.

With anchors lifted, Von Till’s ensemble led Le Petit Bain deep into the shoreless distance, where one’s faced with the anechoic chambers within our mind.

Rejoice friends! If the endless rain doesn’t wash us all into the filthy sea then Supersonic festival will be upon us in less than a month’s time. An undoubted pinnacle of underground music’s calendar, this year it will be celebrating its twentieth birthday. . . It’s going to be quite a party, come ready. If you’re still dithering about that now is the time to commit.    

Day number three. The wild ride was nearing its conclusion, having lined up some its heaviest hitters for a real knockout of a grand finale.

Day number two at Pointu Festival held promise of a slightly heavier-hitting set of performances. I resurrected in a puddle of drool and crumpled notes scattered across the apartment floor, feeling sore but ready to face the last ten hours of a sunny festive Saturday in the south.

With its killer line-up and heavenly setting at the far end of France, Pointu Festival’s seventh edition seemed a fitting destination to question my life choices.

£10, five bands, one of Glasgow’s best smallest venues. The line up did not disappoint on a memorable night of hardcore, sludge and banjo punk!

A GWAR show is indeed a hugely fun metal party, in the most ridiculous, theatrical manner. But it would fall seriously flat if they couldn’t smash through new tracks like ‘Berserker Mode’, cementing their creds as a bone fide 80’s thrash band.

The underlying characteristics of Gabriel’s tour 2023 are courage, humility and trust. . . in an individualised, alienated, competitive political economy it was an evening that subtly pointed to other, better models of society.

Ukrainian feminist fortitude and fury delivered in a righteous, riotous punk gig in baking London.

Ripley Johnson is a superb, unflashy but technically gifted lead player – quicksilver runs and bucolic plucking is all accomplished with seemingly no effort whatsoever, that beatific grin, scarcely leaving his face.

A new exciting underground heavy music festival in Glasgow.