Supersonic Festival’s 2024 first lineup announcement, includes Bonnie “Prince” Billy, ØXN, One Leg One Eye, John Francis Flynn, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Mary Lattimore, Smote, Emma Ruth Rundle, Gazelle Twin, Upchuck and lots more.
The first lineup announcement for the 2024 edition of the Supersonic Festival, which returns to Digbeth from 30 August to 1 September, was recently announced, and it’s fair to say that we’re pretty excited by what they have in store. A walk through the lineup is also a great excuse to revisit some of the albums we’ve reviewed here on KLOF Mag over the last year or two.
After last year’s sold-out 20th Anniversary edition, the festival clearly has a full wind in its sails as it charts a course through some of the most rewarding DIY and underground music of today. Leading the charge is Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, a humble DIY champion who’s been plugging away for thirty years (more on that below). His collected lyrics, Songs of Love and Horror, belong on every bookshelf, and his latest album, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You, in every vinyl collection.
Extract from Thomas Blake’s review of Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You:
I read an article about Taylor Swift today. The author was attempting to explain Swift’s longevity and consistent popularity in an otherwise fickle music business. It seems remarkable, almost miraculous, that an artist can stay at the very top for more than a decade and a half. The article made me think of a number of independent artists who have been releasing high-quality music for a much longer period. It made me think, specifically, of Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), whose first album (under the Palace Brothers name) came out thirty years ago, when Swift was only three years old.
The comparison between Swift and Oldham doesn’t tell you much, except perhaps that the world of indie music is more forgiving, more tolerant of change and more concerned with substance over style than commercial pop. But you knew all that anyway. It also tells us that maybe we should value our indie darlings, that we should never take them for granted: for every Oldham or Bill Callahan, there is a David Berman, gone far too early, or a Joanna Newsom, whose utterly captivating albums seem to come around like comets, once in a generation…
…These songs have a life-affirming quality to them, a willingness to exist in the present, and as a result, this is one of Oldham’s most rewarding albums.
Ever wondered what’s on Will’s shelf?
Lankum performed at last year’s festival following their fourth release, False Lankum, released in March 2023 -‘challenging, raw, brutally honest and always rewarding’. This year they are bringing in two projects that involve members of Lankum: ØXN and One Leg One Eye.
In 2022 Ian Lynch surprised us with his solo album. “He has helped introduce elements as disparate as drone, music hall and krautrock to his band’s otherwise folky repertoire. But even knowing this, it is unlikely that the average listener will be quite prepared for Lynch’s new solo album, recorded under the name One Leg One Eye. …And Take The Black Worm With Me is not for the faint of heart, it is certainly worth taking the plunge: its immense depths are as emotional as they are musical and conceal a haunting beauty.”
“Last year I had the great honour of (finally) playing and attending Supersonic Festival for the first time. From the get go I felt an amazing energy and sense of community that brought me right back to all my favourite DIY punk and hardcore festivals over the years – something I have largely been missing with the bigger kind of festivals that Lankum plays these days. Environments like that don’t happen by accident and I left the festival with a huge sense of awe and respect for the organisers in making such an event possible. In the following days I told myself that I would come back every year as a punter no matter what, so imagine how delighted I was to be asked to come back this year and perform as One Leg One Eye! I can’t wait and already know that it’s going to be a highlight of my year.” – Ian Lynch, Lankum, One Leg One Eye
ØXN, a new quartet that’s impossible to pigeonhole, features Lankum’s Radie Peat along with singer/songwriter/composer Katie Kim, Eleanor Myler of kraut-shoegazers Percolator, and producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist John ‘Spud’ Murphy. They delivered their debut album CYRM last year.
..the sheer ambitiousness and ØXN’s unwillingness to conform in any way to stereotypes that make them something of an outlier, even in a scene that is open to experimental music. It also makes them one of the most vital acts in that (or any) scene. This uncompromising debut album is like a monolith looming through fog. – Thomas Blake on CYRM
Maybe not surprisingly, Supersonic 2024 is exploring a fascinating range of folk artists upending the traditions of the genre – there’s a growing number of them.
Close on the heels of OXN’s release was the second album from Dublin singer John Francis Flynn – Look Over the Wall, See the Sky.
Look Over the Wall, See the Sky is also an album that explores freedom of movement and, by extension, the breaking down of borders. Its title refers to a world beyond, a dream of freedom. It’s easy enough to draw parallels between Flynn’s boundary-breaking approach to music and the concepts he espouses. Easy and probably correct. And Flynn goes even further: there is something refreshingly, vividly utopian behind the darkness in these songs. If there were any doubts as to whether traditional songs can still be sharply meaningful in a contemporary musical setting, this album lays them to rest. – Thomas Blake
Earlier last year, Scottish small pipes player and native Gaelic speaker Brìghde Chaimbeul released Carry Them With Us, on which she enlisted the help of Canadian saxophonist Colin Stetson.
It is a quirk of musical fate that some of the most traditional forms can produce the most experimental sounds. Brìghde Chaimbeul is an instrumentalist from Skye who is steeped in the musical and oral traditions of the islands and highlands of Scotland but whose music is as invigorating and new as anything currently being produced in either folk or contemporary avant-garde circles. Her chosen instrument – the Scottish smallpipes – enables her to create two simultaneous drones and pick out a melody over the top, a technique that gives equal space to modernist composition and generations-old folk song, merging the two seamlessly and with dreamlike clarity. The Reeling, her 2019 solo debut, was met with unanimous praise from across a vast spectrum of critical outlets, and Carry Them With Us looks set to gain even greater acclaim.
Of course, it does your avant-garde credentials no harm at all when you’ve got a genuine giant of experimental music as your sideman. For Carry Them With Us, Brìghde Chaimbeul has enlisted the help of Canadian saxophonist Colin Stetson, who may not be a household name in folk music circles (featured in Folk Radio’s KLOF mix series here) but is royalty in the pages of The Quietus and The Wire. His job here is twofold: he plays alongside Chaimbeul, thickening the overall sound, solidifying it, and bringing out the subtleties and complexities that Chaimbeul hears in her head. But he also provides a sense of tension, occasionally departing from the melody and ranging around it for a while. Chaimbeul has spoken about wanting Stetson’s saxophone to be an extension of her pipes, and moments during the record where the two threaten for a few seconds to pull away from each other serve as a reminder of the closeness and affinity that underpins these compositions. – Thomas Blake
LA-based harpist and composer, and one of today’s preeminent instrumental storytellers, Mary Lattimore will also be performing. Last year saw the release of ‘Goodbye, Hotel Arkada’, taking its name from a hotel on the island of Hvar in Croatia facing modernisation and renovation. While transformed, memories of that old hotel live on in cherished memories, which will inevitably be lost; a fitting reflection for an album that celebrates and mourns the tragedy and beauty of the ephemeral.
We shared the lead single “And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me,“ on which Lattimore was joined by Meg Baird and accordionist composer Walt McClements. It was inspired by a memory from Lattimore’s childhood:
As a child, Lattimore won a drawing contest through a country radio station and got to see Sesame Street Live! in Asheville. She and her mom were invited backstage, and there the benevolent icon Big Bird “gave me an incredible hug with his scratchy yellow wings.” The trio channel the enveloping warmth of that portrait, the feeling of innocent escape, flying away towards a childhood dream that is just out of reach, surreal, and tinged with sadness. In a rare vocal passage in Lattimore’s library, Baird softly hums with the rolling washes of harp above McClements’ tranquil drone; just for a moment, we are held in a sublime canary yellow embrace.
I recently wrote about Ireland’s Nyahh Records, founded by Willie Stewart. This label has one of the most eclectic and unexpected rosters of artists to come out of Ireland or anywhere else in recent years. It was this label that released Ian Lynch’s, aka One Leg, One Eye debut. The label’s offerings range from the traditional (last year’s compilation A Collection of Songs in the Traditional & Sean-Nós Style), to the experimental (the delightful otherworldly sounds of Natalia Beylis) and some hauntological remote lost-in-time moments (Under the Island: Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 – 1994).
More recently, they released an album by the Irish-based Kurdish/Syrian singer and Bouzouki player Mohammad Syfkhan which has received a lot of attention. His sound takes elements from Middle Eastern and North African music to create an atmosphere of joy, love, and happiness.
Since arriving in Ireland, Mohammad has used the language of music to integrate into the local community by playing at private parties and concerts. He regularly plays at weddings and events for the Kurdish and Syrian communities all over Ireland and Germany. He has collaborated with Irish artists like Martin Hayes, Cormac Begley, Eimear Reidy, Cathal Roche and Vincent Woods. In 2023, he opened for Lankum at the Cork Opera House and received massive applause from the packed-out room.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne Smote’s flute-and-drum-driven music conjures up a feeling of bleak magick, reaching for transcendence through repetition and opening up uncanny new psychic pathways.
The brainchild of Daniel Foggin, Smote has evolved seemingly of its own volition. “I had the idea for years,” he relates. I love Pärson Sound, Träd, Gräs Och Stenar, Traditional Irish Folk, and all sorts of different Drone and Folk music. It was simply finding the opportunity to sit down and get recording. A very heavy influence that affects Smote is fantasy as a genre and the atmosphere that can be created via story-telling.”
Supersonic also shared:
Emma Ruth Rundle is an artist who creates delicate atmospheres which are imbued with an unparalleled emotional heft. She will return to her roots at this year’s festival, performing her debut album, Some Heavy Ocean, 10 years after its release. Some Heavy Ocean is a collection of impassioned, cathartic songs, exorcising the ghosts of one of life’s dark detours. Melancholic, but equally hopeful and devastatingly human, the album wears its emotions on its sleeve.
“I am delighted that I will finally be playing Supersonic fest this year; and in honour of the 10 year anniversary of Some Heavy Ocean, will be performing an intimate solo set that includes most of the album’s material. I love the supersonic community and am so thrilled to be part of this year’s most excellent line up.” – Emma Ruth Rundle
Performing their debut collaborative music for the first time are The Body & Dis Fig – the perfect synthesis of two forces, twisting melodicism and intoxicating rhythms, layering a dense miasma of distortion with intense beats, and a soaring voice clawing its way towards absolution. Senyawa will also perform, powerfully combining Indonesian tribal and primitive sounds with industrial music. Gazelle Twin makes a return to Supersonic in support of the new album, Black Dog – a plunge into darkness rooted in the theatrics of the séance and the phenomena of ghosts.
Supersonic relishes in presenting opportunities for communal catharsis through joyous, raucous metal and punk, and bringing high energy to this year’s edition are Melt-Banana with their unorthodox, unclassifiable, and utterly brilliant speed-of-light grindcore. Also playing are Agriculture (signed to The Flenser), whose sublime subversion of the black metal tropes evokes awe-inspiring sublimity. The None are a band comprising members of Blue Ruth, Youth Man, Bloc Party, Young Legionnaire, Cassels and Frauds, their uncompromising vision of noise rock with melody at its heart, channels the spirit of The Jesus Lizard, Silverfish and Unwound. The upcoming Atlanta five-piece Upchuck are a kinetic force of youth and enthusiasm, churning out brutally honest, boisterous tracks that blur the lines between psych rock, punk, and hardcore.
What would Supersonic be without some down right dirge? This will be brought to audiences in the 2024 edition by The Shits with their sludgy amalgamation of guitar grit, trashy drums and UK82 era street punk growls.
Unable to perform last year, Supersonic Festival is delighted to invite MC Yallah x Debmaster back to the festival, bringing high-energy performance and delivering her rapid and tightly controlled flow alongside futuristic hip-hop, grime, punk and trap with Debmaster.
More of the programme will be revealed in the coming months.
In the meantime, for further information about the artists + tickets visit: www.supersonicfestival.com
