Like previous years, we’re back at Rotterdam’s annual showcase event to get to know some new artists ready to make a splash in the circuit. It all goes down on October 23-25.
Let me start by saying that Left of the Dial‘s Luchador Skydancers are fucking neat, and I hope they will forever be part of Rotterdam’s noisiest shindig. I don’t know, there’s something about seeing one of these beady-eyed bozo’s flab around before you go and witness the latest Irish indie rock sensation (tons of those!), that hot new free-jazz-punk whatever from the Windmill Scene (tons of those this year too!), a high-wired Canadian art punk act or some local aces just happy to be here.
Left of the Dial is all grown up now. No longer that scruffy block party between the bricks that happens to have some bands stampeding through. Shit has become real now. They’ve become, as they say, ‘accidentally important at work’ and are now hoovering up the majority of bands – particularly from the UK and Ireland – hoping to break into the bigger live music circuits.
The team deserves huge kudos for doing things irreverently, humanly and with a great deal of care, especially considering the mounting logistical load the festival has to bear. The organisation has been refreshingly transparent about everything from ticket sales and the use of streaming services: the challenge to keep the event as artist friendly and low-threshold as possible has been met with a lot of can-do gusto.
The stakes and scale of things at Left of the Dial may have been raised, those delightfully gauche Skydancers are here to remind us to stay in the moment, to embrace our infant selves, and to show that bands will always be cool, regardless what industry trends are saying. Be that as it may, every year we see the lineup becoming more and more eclectic and expansive in both genre and demographics.
So it makes sense to focus on the acts that are a little harder to pin down. It sure as heck was a pain in the behind to try and narrow our selection down to 14 acts we are excited about.
Maddie Ashman
Those pegging Maddie Ashman as another twee singer-songwriter will leave with a lot of question marks. Ashman has name dropped La Monte Young and Michael Harrison in interviews, so ‘conventional’ is most certainly not in the playbook. Eerie and beautiful nonetheless: her music sounds like folk songs gone through the digital wood chipper, glued together like some odd collage, and then replayed and sung organically again. Her music feels oddly emblematic to the desire to escape technology’s clutches, and the yearning for something more human and imperfect.
Silverwingkiller
Suffice it to say, this dungeon crawling duo from Manchester already had me at “schizoid synths”. Silverwingkiller serve up a post-apocalyptic mix of noise punk, breakbeat and ambient. Music for fans of a good William Gibson novel or Cronenberg’s Scanners. I’d buy that for a dollar.
October and The Eyes
Kiwi avant-pop artist October and The Eyes actually isn’t that far off from what Maddie Ashman does. She too is a deconstructionist at heart, except the music itself is maybe a bit louder and more volatile in its nature. Psychic TV, EMA, Zola Jesus, and Suicide type beat.
Digital tools are wielded like black magic, modern instruments like prehistoric tools of our evolutionary forebears. Walls of noise hit you like a Steven Adams screen, plus she’s got that signature Siouxsie yelp in her bag as well. The casual viewer would say it’s fucked up, the dabbling scholar would find odd rifts of beauty between all that chaos conjured on stage. We are here for it all.
ultra caro
“Ultra! Ultra! Ultra! Ultra!” I loved playing Killer Instinct as a kid. But we have a surplus of sweet ultraviolence at Left of the Dial. Plus we’re not masochists: love and peace of mind are forever paramount in these troubled times. And ultra caro dips in the same pure shores as other PC Music notables (you know who they are!), luxuriating in woozy synths, blips and bloops – plus a voice like a siren from Homer’s Odyssey – and wow, the stock adjective ‘ethereal’ need not be uttered. We’re predicting a Supreme Victory for ultra caro at Left of the Dial.
Midding
Anytime a band’s sound reminds us of shoegaze GOATs A.R. Kane and The Jesus and Mary Chain, we’re buying stock. Midding are a true throwback, and unapologetically so. Noisy feedback and melody fornicate like jungle insects, drums sound like they are recorded in a slaughterhouse cooler… well, you know the fucking deal. Somewhere underneath all this fracas, you can hear a lovesick pop song trying to gasp up for air… something to clutch onto when those fair weather friends cop out on you again.
Restless Taxis
We already said in this article that bands are still fucking cool. And Restless Taxis are an example of a really cool band. Their iridescent dream pop ignites the impossible thrill of riding a satellite in the vacuum of space like one of those mechanical bulls at god knows how many miles per hour.
Restless Taxis sound like a band, but a band inviting a lot of different sensibilities into the void: emo, UK rave, the chromatic pop of Good Sad Happy Bad, pre-Loveless My Blood Valentine and the familiar indie rock staples. Long story short: you hear a lot of possibility of where their music can potentially go. Restless Taxis are also scene instigators, mingling in their own Fuzzbrain troupe down in East London: young bands already paying it forward, what’s not to love about that?
Sean Trelford
This is some real impressive hazy alternative indie pop of the Elliott Smith, Alex G and Atlas Sound variety. This kid is great: he has this song called “Naked” where he sings “I don’t miss the sex, I just feel dead”. It’s like Thom Yorke singing an Arab Strap song or some shit. Sean Trelford’s kitchen sink humor flies effectively with his juxtaposing of pretty and messed up sounds in a single song. If Tim Buckley had seen Larry Clark’s Kids, who knows, he might sound like this too.
Fellatio
There’s this children’s book I had as a kid that – retrospectively – should have freaked me out a lot more than it actually did (for one, one illustration depicted a man with three cocks). It’s called The Island of Nose by Dutch artist Jan Marinus Verburg and author Annie M.G. Schmidt, and has a lot of surrealist Baudelairean imagery.
I’m convinced Fellatio are a band transported here from the same universe as The Island of Nose. They are an abominable post-everything trio that supercharges kraut rock, noise and post-punk into a carnivalesque madhouse. Fans of The Birthday Party, Liars and Deerhunter at their most dangerous will love them unconditionally.
The Hobknobs
Arie from Lewsberg and Yaël from The Klittens have a fairly new project called The Hobknobs, which is as great as you’d expect it to be. Lo-fi songs of a generous economy that amplify everything else within their prone silences.
ZONBI
There’s nothing more powerful than language: especially an inherently queer language like Creole, invented in Haiti for the sole purpose of unshackling from its foreign oppressors. In Haitian culture the term ‘zonbi’ is pretty much what we call zombies in popular culture: beings caught in a purgatory between life and death. ZONBI’s music likewise has a haunting quality to it, Haitian folklore meets free jazz, played with a punk rock abandon. They describe each of their shows as a ceremony, the band’s players possessed by their own instruments. “When I am riding my horse, someone is bound to yell”. Amen, motherfuckers.
AKAI SOLO
AKAI SOLO is a rapper and producer from billy woods’ fantastic Backwoodz- imprint, which is pretty much all you need to know to circle his name on the timetable. AKAI SOLO’s easygoing flow and wordplay operate on its own singular wavelength, meditating on the metaphysical, the cosmic and the spiritual, while guiding his listeners to the deepest corners of his psyche. If you fuck with Madlib, Earl Sweatshirt,. Cannibal Ox, Armand Hammer, Ras G and Pink Siifu, AKAI SOLO is right up your alley.
Infinity Knives x Brian Ennals
We’d certainly love to see more hip-hop artists at future editions of Left of the Dial. Like AKAI SOLO, Infinity Knives and rapper Brian Ennals operate on a more leftfield hip-hop spectrum… an entire different spectrum altogether to be perfectly honest. There’s quite literally nothing quite like these dudes in hip-hop: old skool Oberheim action mixed up with cutting edge digital production – even sampling from neoclassical composers for some fresh textures. I guess it makes sense this bunch resides in Baltimore, a place notorious for free-spirited eccentrics. Why, they should feel right at home in Rotterdam, another port city known for such frantic foolishness.
Silver Gore
I think maybe Silver Gore should make friends with Silverwingkiller and form some sort of silvery supergroup. But, casting that thought aside, this duo offers plenty of excitement on their own. Ethan P. Flynn (who has been in cahoots with FKA Twigs, Nia Archives and Black Country, New Road) links up with artist Ava Gore to craft twisted, multi-layered synth pop tunes which fans of Fever Ray, Magdalena Bay and Blonde Redhead (in their more electronic era) will appreciate. Silver Gore songs hide canyoning big emotions behind flippant humour – how laughing something painful off helps to cope over the short term. Sad clown pop without the actual clowns.
Good News
Consistently brilliant, dry-witted, deadpan dance punk/no wave in the vein of ESG and The Raincoats. The fact that people still make this type of music is good news for people who love good news. No notes, go see ’em.
Left of the Dial takes place in the city of Rotterdam on October 23-25. For more info, go the the festival’s official website.
