Another mini-list before we're wrapping music of the year season 2025 up with my favorite albums. While I'm still unfairly ignoring everything I don't own in a physical format, other than that this category includes everything which is not a studio or live album (except split releases) or not a reissue. I once again have been pretty focussed on all of these however and not so much singles, EPs, compilations... so a longer list just wouldn't make much sense. And while four isn't a high number this quartet is a really strong selection - pinky promise!
The crazy Japanese Psychedelic Prog Punk trio Green Milk From The Planet Orange are surely one of my most exciting new discoveries of 2025. From delicate songwriting with wonderful melodies to total power trio jam excess and pained panic this one track EP encapsulates everything which makes this group so spectacular. What a fun ride!
More increasingly insane Progressive Death Metal! More unhinged bonkers Jazz Fusion with trumpets, keytar and upright bass! Sarmat are back with the spiritial successor to the 2023 "Dubious Disk" EP and deliver one of the best bastards of Avantgarde Jazz and Extreme Metal ever. There's no doubt - we need more - and longer! - releases of this delightful madness.
Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, the core duo of Sunn O))) released their latest EP on Sub Pop Records, old home of their greatest inspiration Earth. And just as that move feels like a throwback, you shouldn't expect these three tracks of the guitar-only essence of their Drone Metal to reinvent their sound. Instead this nicely packed record feels like a perfect rekindling of their initial spirit.
Fuck yeah, what a killer split release! On side A Whitehorse pummel you down with their misanthropic Sludge powered by awesome riffs and seemingly recorded in a giant dystopian dome of torture. And that was only the warm-up for the trip through psychological hell and back - with surprising moments of remembering the existence of sunlight - by Noise artist Uboa.
Are we still spinning tapes here? Of course we are! And we're starting the haul of my latest bunch with one of the many reasons I haven't even decided what my TOP 25 albums of the year are, because this is yet another burning hot candidate...
AGRICULTURE - The Spiritual Sound(2025)
I recently listened to most of the new Deafheaven album. And in shocking contrast to my previous experiences I actually liked it. So that kind of ruined what I wanted to say about the work at hand here, which was that Agriculture actually redeem what Deafheaven promise... Well, at least they're still doing it better.
"The Spiritual Sound" is made of Black Metal and Shoegaze, of hopeful celestial melodies and wild Rock star shredding. It comes pure, raw, radical and in your face, but it can also be quiet and fragile. It's beautifully brutal and brutally beautiful, half-way between Alcest and Boris. If you understand the term beyond a specific subculture and music genre, Agriculture are most definitely Punk. This is a serious work, but it's so much fun to listen to! The wild energy it radiates has such a cleasing yet life-affirming quality - just an album unlike any other. And surely one of the prime Metal releases of 2025.
The tape looks good, I especially dig the back cover. Putting the track titles only onto the cassette shell itself is a minor annoyance though.
AGRICULTURE - Agriculture(2023)
While I was ordering "The Spiritual Sound" it was a no-brainer to also get the Californians' 2023 debut album. Relatively speaking the Ecstatic Black Metal on the self-titled "Agriculture" may not take as many detours in style and intensity yet, but the difference is actually not that huge. All the trademarks including super sparsely instrumented ballads and the brute yet perfect production are already in place.
Other than its successor, which only has Emma Ruth Rundle on its final track, the debut even features several guest musicians on violin, saxophone (hey, it's Patrick Shiroishi!) and lap steel guitar. So both albums have their unique details. And while yes, Agriculture are even better today, this shit already fucking rules!
TERZIJ DE HORDE - Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone(2025)
We're not leaving (Post) Black Metal territory yet, but we're moving from The Flenser to Tartarus Records, and from the US west coast to the west of Europe with the Dutch steamroller Terzij De Horde.
"Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone" contains more and shorter tracks than their last 2022 album "On One Of These, I Am Your Enemy" and adds to a ten minutes longer total playing time. A little over fourty minutes still aren't Swans dimensions, but for the angry ferocious high-speed assault this group delivers it's really more than enough.
With a vocal performance closer to Hardcore than to Black Metal, this album feels seriously pissed off - and the melodic layers in the killer guitar riffs are not designed to tame, yet rather to amplify that relentless, never pausing anger.
An album with long and winding song titles like "A Hammer To The Great Matter Of Birth And Death", "The All-Consuming Work Of The Soul's Foreclosure" or "Justice Is Not Enough To leave The House Of Modernity" of course deserves a seperate booklet for its lyrics. This comes with the tape in one of those Tartarus-typical black deluxe boxes with golden hotfoil print. Nice.
I don't know if it's just my copy of this edition of 100, but it features the classic switcheroo with sides A and B being interchanged. No biggie, shit happens. The music of course still absolutely rips!
UBOA & WHITEHORSE - The Dissolution Of Eternity(2025)
If Black Metal is too light and upbeat for you, Tartarus Records also has something more malicious for you with this Australian split tape of artists who really give down under a double meaning.
Side A features two tracks of nasty life-hostile Sludge from Whitehorse. Slow, deep and soul-crushing their Doom strikes with inhumane vocals, crawling killer riffs and great supportive electronic effects, as well as a giant drum sound. These two songs are surely among the best of this genre released this year. I assume it has something to do with line-up changes at the time, that these recordings from 2017 had to lie dormant for years. Good this sick shit is out there now!
Still not brutal enough? Enter Harsh Noise artist Uboa with five recent tracks on side B! She starts off with flavours of hardly and then even less musical mayhem, filled with tons of tension and destructive expression. The interesting turn however happens first with the piano interlude "Dreamwalker, Fuck I Miss You" and then the shoegazy "Pareidolia Shadow", both drowned in Ambient sounds and Noise, before "The Apocalypse Of True Love" summons the whole spectrum of both beautiful and uncomfortable textures in Uboa's repertoire and even evolves into a Post Rock hymn for a while - before descending into hell and finding peace there. Cathartic.
NOIR NOIR - Black Curtain / Divine Swelling (2016/2022/2025)
We're continuing with another solo artist, Noir Noir from Spain, who also incorporates Electronic Noise into his sound, but all in all leans more into Industrial, als well as Dark Wave, while being rooted in Death and Black Metal. This cassette released by Sentient Ruins Laboratories combines two EPs from 2016 and 2022, thus giving us a good overview of the range of low-fi raw and rather polished majestic noises. Be ready for some extreme shifts! This is a weird one. But it's dark, double dark, one could even say. And definitely not your ideal soundtrack for going to bed.
While the outburst of drum computer Old School Black Metal in the middle of these apocalyptic soundscapes still confuses me a bit, as a whole - or the sum of two wholes if you will - "Black Curtain / Divine Swelling" is as evil as it gets and a pretty powerful and overwhelming experience.
RITUAL ASCENSION - Profanation of the Adamic Covenant(2025)
This next ejection of Dissonant Death Metal and Doom has already been reviewed by me back in February, when it came out. But as so often with Sentient Ruin releases it took a while until the tape was available within Europe and found its way onto my shopping bag.
Since my opinion about this album hasn't changed, I could only repeat myself here. Ritual Ascension's filthy journey into the swamp is still as foul, mouldy and ghoulish as ten months ago. Some listeners may have decomposed already, so my advise comes too late for them, but I suggest at least one thorough shower after listening.
TEMPÊTE SOLAIRE - La Précession Des Équinoxes(2025)
Last but most definitely not least a tape I bought at this year's last show for me, which was Thisquietarmy x Otay:onii. This is the second release of Eric Quach's bass, drums and saxophone trio Tempête Solaire.
Even bolder than on "Heliospheric Dialogues"Quach, Eric Craven and Elyze Venne-Deshaies are exploring their explosive take on Free Jazz, which includes traditional Jazz trio aethetics as well as broader Fusion and Post Rock sounds, electronic effects, Drone textures, doom-ish heaviness, Punk, Prog, Ambient and Noise. It's a wild mixture that comes together much more natural than one would assume and even in its most abstract and experimental passages like during the seventh track "Manicouagan" always stays enganging. A brilliant album!
Halvcirkel, Darsombra, Blues Pills, Clipping., Arthur Brown, Yīn Yīn, Myrkur, Messa, Spidergawd, Fange, Asphyx, Body Void, even Triptykon... I could go on and on and on with names of artists whose shows would be absolutely worthy best of the year material, but somehow still didn't make it into this selection of my favorite 12 club/solo shows + 12 festival shows of 2024.
The state of the world may suck, but except for a disappointing open air experience with King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard and missing several shows (P/O Massacre, Otay:onii, Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree, Lili Refrain...) due to clashes with other tours, at least in regards of live music there has been little to complain about this year.
So here - cast in stone for all eternity (or at least as long as this servive isn't bought and spoiled by a certain kind of billionaire) - is for you my annual live music ranking:
I know, I know, somehow the Slovenians always seem to end up here. And always with a different kind of performance. It's not an automatic given though. Laibach's celebration of their most popular album in Copenhagen was great, but would have "only" made it to the third or fourth place on this list on its own. A couple of months later however their powerful display of Industrial Retrogarde mastery completely blew me away without any circumstances diminishing the experience. Perfection.
What a tribute to Sean Reinert and Sean Malone! Cynic performed their legendary "Focus" album in full. And if you know only the smallest thing about how much this unmatched timeless masterpiece means to me, it should come as zero surprise to find this show so high up here, even though the sound could have been better. But with amazing musicanship, stellar songs and a packed room like here a show will of course survive that. The great Prog Death / Sci-Fi Thrash tour package with Obscura and Cryptosis was the icing on the cake.
For a time they had been so formative for my musical taste, yet somehow I not only stopped following their discography, but also waited decades to finally see the German Experimental / Industrial icons live. The presence of Blixa Bargeld, his sonorous chanson voice, dental drill screams and humour, the incredible instrumentation and great songs, mostly from the most recent albums... Dang, am I happy that I could finally strike Einstürzende Neubauten from my bucket list!
I love shows on the MS Stubnitz, I love the Canadian Noise Rock Droners Big|Brave. And when those two come together and give their best, what else can be the result than complete bliss? This might have been the best sounding Big|Brave show I've seen so far - and that means a lot, considering that includes several Roadburn performances. Ultimately I can only repeat what I asked myself before, bathing inside this sea of deep frequency: Is this how a baby blue whale feels inside the womb?
An event intrinsically too large for me, with too much drama and bullshit inside the pit and the hyped support Jinjer being a rather sobering disappointmenting. Well, that last part had already been counterbalanced by a killer show from Death Metal titans Obituary, when the headliners hit the stage. Sepultura on their farewell tour - even with a young last minute drummer and me not being too familiar with most material past "Chaos A.D." - were an unpolished force going out with a spectacular bang!
A mystical musical theater with drummers, dancers, shamans. A fantasy melange of Northern and Eastern European, Tuvan and Mongolian, New Zealandian and probably even Klingon traditions. A show you could disrespectfully call Wagner for mediaval market fans and LARP players. In truth however Heilung's show was a perfectly crafted, overwhelming transcendent experience. Absolutely breathtaking! And seeing Zeal & Ardor as a support act was a more than welcome bonus.
No doubt, 2024 was a Chelsea Wolfe year. With a strong focus on material from her new album "She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She" her long-awaited return to Europe became a stunning glimpse of Contemporary Goth heaven. And as if witnessing the court of the dark queen alone wouldn't have been enough, finally seeing the Icelandic trio Kælan Mikla as her support act was a great addition to this already magical night.
Sometimes you had to ask yourself how only three people could unleash such an overwhelming inferno of Heavy Psych, fuzzy Doom and Post Metal. Or if it was just the ridiculous overkill of epileptic lights and videos. But then the answer was right there: This is Slift. And this French trio simply is a space force like no other right now.
Even though the English Grindcore titans delivered a ferocious killer performance easily worthy of being listed here on its own, this has to be the show where I also include both support bands in the heading. Because with fellow Grinders Wormrot and Sludge devestators Primitive Man it was the perfect package deal, which made this insanely brutal night extra memorable. And the wild audience responce made sure my body remembered it for a while as well. Madness!
Spoiler: Dool are one of two band you'll find in both this and the festival shows list below. Sorry, but I just couldn't resist! The feverish live performances of the Dutch Dark Rock group have been one of the most magnetic experiences on any stage for years and with almost the whole new album in the setlist this intimate club show was no exception. In hindsight I only should have stepped back into the third or fourth row to here significantly more of Raven van Dorst's fantastic vocals.
Happy Birthday to me! Normally I actually don't celebrate, but this year I did it in style by treating myself to an outstanding show of Korean Jazz vocalist Youn Sun Nah, accompanied by the also very unconventional piano player Bojan Z.. And while the singer's studio albums may have become a little too Pop and tame for my taste, this evening of her interpreting Nina Simone, Björk, Jefferson Airplane, Tom Waits and many more absolutely deserved the flush of standing ovations it got.
From a birth-day show to one in my birth-place in the northernmost North of Germany! It had been five long years since I had last seen Johanna Sadonis and her hard rocking merry band of Black Sabbath and Heart worshippers live - and it seemed unfathomable how I could have let it come to that. Their mission is not to reinvent the wheel, but when it comes to writing great straight Rock'n'Roll riffs and songs and performing them with a singer in the driver's seat, who just keeps getting better and better - you can hardly surpass Lucifer.
"What a super heavy wall of fuzztastic riffs, Psych lead guitars and tasty analogue synth and organ sounds! Full Earth turned the concept of Rock music into an elemental force, an earthquake and storm, shaking, levelling, pulling apart and flooding the room and everyone who was in it." That's what I said in my festival report. Or in other words: The extended version of Kanaan delivered what their debut album "Cloud Sculptors" had promised. And it was glorious!
The Belgian collective entered the stage with fewer members than the previous time I had seen them. No second drummer and saxophone, which translated to less Tribal and Spiritual Jazz elements. Instead Neptunian Maximalism brought more Drone, Doom and Black Metal in an immersive larger than life ritual of primal sound, which made me completely loose my grasp on the flow of time.
The return of Rebecca Vernon (SubRosa), performing one of my favorite albums of 2023 was a show I knew I could under no circumstances cut short, since missing the incredibly epic finale "The Truth" would have haunted me for the rest of my days. Lead by the singer (also on keys and guitar) and violinist Andrea Morgan The Keening's whole show was beautiful Gothic/Doom/Folk bliss.
They didn't have any bad intentions! Hedvig, Ellen and Ivar were just playing in a packed Jazz club - but as soon as the Norwegian trio started the roof caught fire and kept burning on for over seventy minutes. HMT definitely is the correct unit of measurement when it comes to determining the addictiveness of Heavy Prog / Jazz Rock. This Paradox show was an absolute blast!
Ok, since Big|Brave already have a high position in my club show ranking, I could have easily saved this (or the other) spot for another artist, right? They even played the same show consisting of "A Chaos Of Flowers" songs, didn't they? Yes. Yes. But come on, the Drone was just so transcendent and blissful! There's no way around it, this band deserves the double honour.
Yeah, see Big|Brave! Same same. Dool just always deliver. The festival appearance was shorter than the club show later in the year, but both had similar as well as distinct qualities. With a strong focus on "The Shape Of Fluidity" the Dutch group once again proved to be an excellent reason to visit the prehistoric Balve Cave.
Yin and Yang. Two days, two shows, two parts of an incredible whole. First the fearlessly drawn-out Tangerine Dream-inspired Ambient experience, then the murderous Progressive Death Metal inferno, which made the crowd go completely mental. No doubt, even before the release of "Absolute Elsewhere" Blood Incantation proved that they are a league and cosmos of their own.
I don't think anyone was really prepared for how intensly her show would hit them right into the feels. Australian Experimental Noise artist Uboa performed in the middle of the audience, an intimate Electronic set of calming Ambient with an eery undercurrent, which directly corresponded with the physical and mental exhaustion of the crowd, so close to the end of four festival days. The air of the room was thickened with palpable pure emotion. No other show this year even remotely felt like this.
Irish Folk is not a genre I'd normally ever expect ending up in this list. But Lankum's take is of course very special. Their profound, earnest approach, their vocal pitch perfection, mesmerizing instrumentation and haunting Drone made this 013 Main Stage show one the highlights of Roadburn 2024.
Desperate, mourning, scornful and annihilating. Dymna Lotva singer Nokt Aeon lived through it all as a bleeding saintess of peace amongst a raging Post Black Metal storm. The exile Belarusian band impressively delivered what one of the finest albums of 2023 had promised.
Hey! Finally a chance to see them outside of the Netherlands! Temple Fang, who have released multiple live albums, yet only one studio EP so far are without a doubt a band made for the stage.
The mastery of their timeless Psychedelic Prog/Blues/Heavy Rock epics will always take you beyond the stars. Hamburg, which they graced exclusively with brand-new material, witnessed no exception from that rule.
Cirith Ungol's abbreviation CU stands for CULT. Them headlining the ten year anniversary party of the German Deaf Forever print magazine on their farewell tour was my last chance to finally see the influential Heavy / Doom / even Proto-Death Metal legends in the flesh. The band around eccentric shrill singer Tim Baker played a frenetically celebrated show which fired classic after classic and also allowed post reunion material to shine.
- Mijn maximalistische Zondag and andermans lost in music faces -
feat. JEGONG, GROS COEUR, LASTER, MOJO AND THE KITCHEN BROTHERS, NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM and UBOA
Ok, here I am after a couple of days of me being lazy about writing (that exhausting 24h blood pressure reading the other day surely helped), ready for the final Roadburn report of 2024!
The festival has grown to be such an immersive thing and there are so many details and detours, so many possible shoutouts and little observations to be made that it's impossible to mention everything noteworthy. I'll just try to concentrate on looking back on the music as good as I can after a couple of weeks and won't bore you with a conclusion that even tries to to encapsulate everything.
Let me just repeat that we need the Paradox also on Sunday, even though I cannot complain about not having seen enough outstanding performances through all the four days plus Wednesday night. This Roadburn blew my mind once again, so here's a heartfelt Thank You to Walter, Becky and everyone else who has a part in making this wonder of an event happen again and again under increasingly difficult general circumstances!
Sunday started in The Terminal with the three skull-helmet-whateverthisis-wearing Dutch dudes called Lasterperforming their album "Andermans Mijne", which translates to "someone else's mine". Coming from the vivid Avantgarde Black Metal scene the band has morphed into something different now, a catchy, sometimes even danceable mix of Metal and New Wave, which connects the two elements through its dissonant (call it voivodish of jazzy) chords we know from bands like Virus, Kayo Dot, but also Joy Division or Killing Joke. The quirkiness of "Neonism" Solefald also came to mind through this all around great performance, which left me no choice but to buy the album afterwards and make it the first merch purchase I spun in my car on the way home on Monday.
Compelling, memorable and strangely addictive weird stuff. A great way to begin the day.
This cannot be a reliable review, since I only took a small glance at the biggest Main Stage setup for a commissioned show in Roadburn history yet, including even more members of the Metropole Orkest on stage than during Triptykon's "Requiem" in 2019.
"Lux Tenera - A Rite To Joy" started very minimal with Electronic sounds from Die Wilde Jagd which made me think of the possibility that they could be trolling the audience at first. Just imagine: All that orchestral shebang, only for the musicians to sit perfectly still for an hour during some silent bleeps. That would have been more performance art than Spinal Tap at the puppet show! Of course eventually the orchestra started to play, we got some heavy German accent vocal introduction and it got big... but honestly I just filed it under may check it out if it's being recorded and released afterwards, because... you know what's coming now...
CLASHBURN:
Leaving such an impressive production very early because you have more important things to do. That's Roadburn. In fact I should be glad that there was a mistake in the Timequare App announcing the Neptunian Maximalism show around twenty minutes too early. Otherwise the Next Stage might have already been completely packed when I decided to move my ass over there. Who knows?
Let me repeat it for the sake of spreading the word in defense of the band, who will probably be haunted by this mistake for a while: Neptunian Maximalism did not start too late. They did not drag during their soundcheck. The timetable in the app was just wrong.
So if you couldn't get over to Grails or see Deathcrash in the Hall of Fame immediately afterwards - it hasn't been their fault.
Personally I found everything today at least interesting, so the whole day was a clash, including the secret shows in the Ladybird Skatepark, which were a thing again this year (albeit the park has moved to another building) and parts of the Offroad program.
Most painful to miss was right now Fear Falls Burning including Dirk Serriesand Colin Webster, who were both part of the fantastic Martina Verhoeven Quintetin 2022. I also really would have loved to see Habitants, Hilary Woods and one full show which will be adressed further below. In hindsight however I'm still satisfied with all my choices. And if there was one performance this applies to above all others, it was the following:
By far my most anticipated show of the day was "Le Sacre du Soleil Invaincu", a Raga inspired eighty minutes mighty suite heralding a new phase for the Belgian collective Neptunian Maximalism. The players were all familiar from the 2021 Roadburn Redux performance as well as from the amazing show I witnessed live in Nijmegen at Right On Mountain Festival 2022. It weren't as many though, since the line-up has slimmed down to just six musicians; no two drummers plus extra percussionist and - even more noteworthy - no Jean-Jacques Duerinckx on Saxophone. So it seems as if the tribal and Spiritual Jazz elements of the group have completely moved over to Zaäar at this point.
Rest assured though, the "Maximalism" in the band's name still applied, especially to the droning heaviness and uncompromising huge scale of the composition, which at first - and for quite a long time - threw me back ten years into the past, to that formative experience when the second Roadburn Festival I attended introduced me to the idea of crushing yet meditative Drone Doom with Indian elements with the mighty Main Stage show of Bong.
Even down to the very rare primal vocals of the project's leader Guillaume Cazalet and the sitar-esque lead ornaments (actually played on an amplified saz) Neptunian Maximalism's performance was very close to Mike Vest's super heavy Psychedelic Doom sound.
But that was only the first third or so of the show, which would eventually become more brutal with a huge Black Metal crescendo, but also included more chaotic as well as Ambient passages and an evil incantation by bass player Reshma Goolamy.
It's impossible to adequately recount the grandiosity of this whole performance, not only because of the passing of time since then, but also because this was a thing just to lose yourself in and I haven't been in a very analytical watching mode to begin with. "Le Sacre" has been recorded in a church in London last year, so I already can't wait for it to be released as an album. Without a doubt this was one of the greatest highlights of Roadburn 2024!
I didn't feel like immediately going into another already packed room, but went to the queue behind the Hall of Fame to at least catch a little bit of one surprise show in the Skate Park.
Yeah, this show shouldn't even be included above in the header, because I didn't actually see enough of it to have an impression complete enough to justify a proper review, but hey, I have a decent title picture for once, so let me write a couple of lines about Mojo and The Kitchen Brothers anyway!
In the last-minute announcement they were sold as a kind of Belgian King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, and as soon as I saw the setup with two drumkits in the new skate hall, it already seemed appropriate. And it instantly got backed up once they started to play their fast and energetic uptempo fuzzy Psychelec Rock. Just good times!
For the second track they slowed it down to a trippy Blues atmosphere and one of the drummers got on the microphone instead. Super cool and promising stuff. I'm sure the whole fifty minutes of their performance must have been awesome, but I really wanted to make sure that I got a decend spot in the Hall of Fame, so I had to cut this criminally short. But at least I've been inside the Ladybird Skate Park once. *check*
Next up was JeGong, a band which only exists because its members met at Roadburn once and found out about their matching musical interests. Two albums of great Heavy Psychelic Post Kraut Ambient Rock instrumentals have come out since then. (I still have a sealed spare CD copy of "The Complex Inbetween" for sale btw. Hit me up, if you want it!)
This was supposed to be the first ever live appearance of the duo, but drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla (Mono), who I had seen last playing for Årabrot in January, and Sum Of R's Mäder (bass, electronics) sneakily brought a guitar player (who you cannot see sitting next to the drums on my pictures) with them, so technically this was a indeed a trio. Still their first live show though.
And what a good one it was! I cannot really tell what exactly it was, but I really don't think that any other show had flown by so fast, and I wasn't alone in that assessment. I guess this succeeded my expectations. I could have easily watched half an hour more than the fifty minutes we got.
After JeGong I was having a snack and a final chat with one of my we-always-meet-at-the-same-shows pals and so it happened: I forgot a show! Of course I had checked the beginning of the next thing on Timesquare, but I didn't take a look at the Offroad stages, where I had marked the Crust / Grind / Black Metal of Radeloos///Ziedend, who were playing just a few meters away in the LOC Brewery.
Yeah, totally forgot about that one. Shame. On the other hand this failure allowed me the closest possible spot at one of the for sure most surprising shows of the week....
I witnessed her earth-shattering "Meltdown" on Thursday, yet didn't attend "The Origin Of My Depression", the centerpiece of Uboa's performances as Artist in Residence on Saturday, so I was mildly worried about the possibility of me having missed a crucial piece of the puzzle to get into her final performance called "Calm Down". Fortunately I was wrong, because boy, how intense was this?
On paper this electronic set made of one continuous piece was supposed to be a calming (duh!) healing experience. And while I won't deny that it indeed had that quality, there was an undeniable eery undercurrent. You must also add the exhaustion of everyone at this stage so shortly before the end of the festival. The manageable pain from my soles was already creeping up my legs and my eyes and mind had gotten weary. And whenever I looked up I saw my condition mirrored, since similar to Lingua Ignota's 2019 performances the small stage was set up in the middle of the room, so we stood there in a tiny circle around the artist, facing our weird lost in music and emotions faces.
Weirdly enough this experience gave me a quite powerful alternative context for the much criticized official video art of the festival. As creepy as much of the physical approaches in those films had appeared before (Are we really expected to behave like this without being accused of harassment?), this was the raw and real version of it.
And it was an important part of the impact of this show. It was also fascinating to stand right next to Uboa and see exactly what shewas doing to create her sample-based sound - and still having almost no clue about it. I just know that a good part of it consisted on operating within a software on her desktop, which probably was one of the most anxiety-inducing things I've ever seen. Having to quickly do stuff like that on stage would make me sick with tension, haha.
Interestingly, while many impressions of this show are still plainly embedded in my consciousness, I don't have much actual aural memory of it. Yet I still rank it among the most powerful performances of all week. (It actually only isn't included in my list further below because I opted to just feature one show per stage.) What a cleansing experience!
Well, just like Uboa entering the bigger Engine Room stage on Thursday this ended humourously, as the Ambient piece finally got noisier and heavier, just to very suddenly end, her saying "Yeah, this was the thing." (or something along the lines) and quickly disappearing through the crowd. *micdrop*
Since I stayed until the very end I had little time to get from the Hall of Fame to the 013, but conveniently my legs acted as if they had been horribly restrained and needed to release kinetic energy, so I almost had no other choice than to powerwalk really fast. And there I was, perfectly in time, ready to be thrown into a completely different emotional state once again one last time.
Many of my now ten Roadburn Fetsivals have ended in this room and it's pretty much guaranteed that the last Next Stage performance will send the audience off into their bleak normal lives outside of this special sphere with a giant party. And Gros Coeur from from Belgium were not going to be an exception from this unwritten rule!
The quartet's sound could be hypnotically psychedelic or an excessively rocking freak-out. But their music also was extremely funky, sometimes in a tight in-the-pocket groovy way, sometimes evoking a Seventies disco fever vibe with Afro-Beat and Asian influences and a sunful of infectious positivity. More than once this show reminded me of the fantastic Dutchploitation of Yīn Yīn, with more focus on the Karkara / King Gizzard / Kikagaku Moyo Psych Rock elements. In other words: a perfect closer! Similar to JeGong it felt es if the show had only just started when the fifty minutes were over way to soon.
Why did this have to ever end? How am I even coping in a daily routine without Roadburn for over almost three weeks now? Questions Gros Coeur can't and didn't answer. But they did their very best in providing a happy goodbye.
As I said earlier, no long essay about my final thoughts. As much as this will spin around in my head there will never be final thoughts anyway - ir at least until next year.
But here's for all the ranking freaks out there my recent feeling about what moved and enthralled me the most, just like last year with the special rule of only including each stage only once. I give you... *drumroll*
my TOP 6 favorite shows of Roadburn 2024:
FULL EARTH (Hall Of Fame)
NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM (Next Stage)
a tie between THE KEENING and BLOOD INCANTATION "Timewave Zero" (Main Stage)
Fuck yeah, what a killer split release! On side A Whitehorse pummel you down with their misanthropic Sludge powered by awesome riffs and seemingly recorded in a giant dystopian dome of torture. And that was only the warm-up for the trip through psychological hell and back - with surprising moments of remembering the existence of sunlight - by Noise artist Uboa.
