Ceremony East Coast + test plan
Sept
13

Ceremony East Coast + test plan

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Ceremony East Coast

+ test plan

Sunday 13th September

The Glad Cafe

18+

Ceremony East Coast -

Ceremony East Coast, or short CEC, is John Fedowitz on (bass-) guitar and vocal mic and Sandra Fedowitz on drums. You also might have seen them as the current rhythm section of A Place to Bury Strangers.

CEC loves relentless live shows and releases: Drone bass lines, white-noise guitars, savage drums and intense vocals. Nothing polished, highs and lows. The two of them insist on keeping their sound unapologetically human.

test plan -

test plan are looking for the sweet spot between dancing and moshing.

Formed in 2022 by Rory Dickinson (bass), Michalis Fragkiadakis (guitar), and Max Mason(drums/vocals), the London-based DIY trio cultivate a ferocious blend of noise-rock, dance-punk, and post-hardcore.

Winds of overloaded guitar feedback and distortion are punctuated by crunching drums andthrobbing bass, all bound together by howls of angst and chaotic energy. Their dynamic live performances beckon a meeting point where volume and energy collide - intense, visceral, and unfiltered, hitting like a punch in the gut: sweat-soaked, teeth-rattling, and gloriously unhinged.

View Event →
Frog
Sept
14

Frog

Pop Mutations presents:

Frog

+ Special Guests

Monday 14th September

Stereo

18+

Frog are a band from New York, described as everything from “Indie Rock” to “Americana” and “Alt-Country” to “Fifth Wave Emo.” Frog debuted in 2012 with their beautiful and bizarre self-titled record before finding broader acclaim (including from David Berman) with 2015’s classic ‘Kind of Blah‘ LP, and its follow ups ‘Whatever We Probably Already Had It‘ and ‘Count Bateman.’ After a four-year-plus hiatus, Frog returned in November 2023 with ‘GROG,’ which was praised by Pitchfork, Stereogum, Bandcamp Daily, BBC Radio Scotland and KCRW, while being the top debut for the North American College & Community Radio Chart. Their award-winning ‘Kings of Blah‘ documentary is available here, and their KEXP session is live here.

View Event →
The Tubs
Sept
25

The Tubs

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

The Tubs

+ Special Guests

Friday 25th September

Stereo

18+

View Event →
Locust
Sept
26

Locust

Pop Mutations presents:

Locust

+ Special Guests

Saturday 26th September

The Glad Cafe

18+

Mark Van Hoen's project Locust has been in existence since the early 1990s, acclaimed for their singular permutations which have taken in everything from IDM (Van Hoen has previously played shows with Aphex Twin and Autechre), My Bloody Valentine, Trip Hop to Eno, and their latest line-up began to take shape in 2024.

"Olive Kimoto (vocals, keyboards) instigated all this. I was playing a solo show in September 2024 and she came to that. She had been running a club called Heaven or Los Angeles, a Cocteau Twins reference which I immediately liked. When we met, she said how much she liked my music. She did a two hour radio special with me on my music and we decided to collaborate."

The new Locust played their first show in 2025, the first show back since opening for Massive Attack in the 90s, and since then they have fleshed out new material for a new album, Spectral+, with parts added as developed onstage.

"We're establishing this identity as a live band. We've really bonded, all really good friends, all rooting for it. People can see we're a tight band, they're not hired hands."

The band also includes Derek Mabra on guitar and Jaelyn Valero on drums.

Spectral+, which builds on the success of the previous Locust album, is an eclectic, uniquely slanted collection of songs which use classic influences as jumping off points into fresh waters. The album title reflects the sheer variegation, the range of colour across these songs, as well as implying something of the sense of spectres of pop's past.

"I'm much more interested in songs these days, the songwriting process," says Van Hoen.

So, "Shape Of Another", with its heavy, radioactive buzz, reminds faintly of The Bug as well as echoes of very early Locust material. "Long Distance Lover", with its chromium neo-synthpop and echoing guitar figurines, rings out with Neil Halstead's unmistakable guitar, while "All Of Them" feels like epic pop from a parallel universe, with vocals from Nick Holton of the group Black Hearted Brother (a project with Mark Van Hoen and Neil Halstead).

There's a dazzling intervention from left field in the shape of rapper Griff Spex, who appears on two tracks, including "Soul Sky", with its clustered backbeat and siren loop.

"He contacted me because he loved my very early music, the first album. His own music has an industrial electronic edge to it. He's from Queens, close to the home of rap music. He's a real New Yorker and likes investigating different styles of music."

"No Space For Love" features a blaze of old school synths in a fresh context (Van Hoen was impacted as a kid by the 70s productions of Giorgio Moroder), while "Going Nowhere" reminds a little of Boards Of Canada in its celestial trails of electronics, rolling percussion and reverberant, existentially forlorn vocals.

The reproachful "Face It", which features words no man cares to hear, "you are not doing enough", combines textures including idiosyncratic droplets of guitar to create a weave like no other.

Finally, the aristocratic swell of "In The Service Of Others", suffused with a sort of defiant melancholy, has its closest musical relation in Brian Eno's "Spider And I".

View Event →
Cory Hanson
Sept
29

Cory Hanson

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:
Cory Hanson
+ Special Guests
Tuesday 29th September
Stereo
18+

Like a sweet spring breeze after a long, cruel winter, Cory Hanson’s blowing through town again. And like the wind, I Love People comes from parts unknown. Need a ride? Long as you’re ready to find yourself wherever it dies down, jump on! Despite all the complications of life here in Central Casting 2025, Cory and the boys are happier than ever to be playing music at its most beautiful for ALL the people: eminent hipsters bellied up to the bar alongside the ropers, riders and all the other jokers for whom freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose or do. Followers of Cory’s twin arcs as solo singer and Wand member will be intrigued to learn that the lineup here is the same band that recorded last year’s Vertigo. Yep, Wand — their Masters of Unbounded Space robes traded in for Wrecking Crew trucker’s caps, as they reel out licks both tasty and smooth, like chopsmeisters of yore. That’s Robbie Cody co-producing behind the desk, Evan Backer playing bass and arranging strings and horns, Evan Burrows on drums and percussion and Cory on piano, guitars and voices and songs.

View Event →
Carla dal Forno
Sept
29

Carla dal Forno

Carla dal Forno is an Australian composer, songwriter and producer based in Castlemaine, Victoria. Working between post-punk minimalism, experimental pop and atmospheric electronics, she has built a dedicated international following through a series of acclaimed releases and extensive touring across Europe and North America.

Her albums have been praised by outlets including Pitchfork, The Quietus and Resident Advisor, alongside airplay on BBC Radio 6 Music. Beyond her recorded work, dal Forno hosts a monthly radio program on NTS Radio, where she curates eclectic selections spanning experimental electronics, dub, post-punk and leftfield pop - offering insight into the wide-ranging influences that inform her own practice.

She has performed headline shows and festival appearances throughout the UK, Europe and the United States, including dates in London, Berlin, Paris and New York City, as well as appearances at Unsound Festival and Le Guess Who?.

Her fourth studio album, Confession, expands her signature sound while maintaining the minimal, immersive qualities that have defined her work to date. On stage, dal Forno delivers a focused and atmospheric set that moves between brooding electronics and melodic immediacy - a performance that is both restrained and quietly powerful.

View Event →
Béton Armé
Sept
30

Béton Armé

Pop Mutations presents:

Béton Armé

+ Special Guests

Wednesday 30th September

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Béton Armé is a punk/oi! band founded in 2018. Having become a fixture on the global punk scene, the band stands out for its original music, with driving rhythms and haunting choruses, as well as its universally celebrated live performances. Since the band's formation, Béton Armé has produced a self-titled demo on the LSC records label in 2018, a debut EP entitled "Au bord du gouffre" on Primator Crew (France) in 2020, a split 45 with Buffalo band Violent Way, jointly produced by Primator Crew records and Contra Records (Germany) in 2021, and an EP entitled Second souffle released by Primator Crew (France) and Roachleg Records (New York, USA).

The band's numerous live performances have attracted the attention of the punk sphere around the world. In addition to performances in Quebec and Ontario, the band played a series of concerts in Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago in fall 2019. They also hit the stage on the U.S. West Coast in the summer of 2021, when they took part in the Lie Detector festival in Los Angeles and performed in two other concerts in Long Beach, California. During the same summer, they also went to Vancouver to play at the Have a Good Laugh festival. They also played a number of concerts in New York (4), Philadelphia (5) and other cities in the northeastern U.S., including Buffalo, Boston and Pittsburgh, during a tour with French band Squelette in summer 2022.

More recently, the band toured Europe on a 14-show European tour. This series of concerts took them to several cities in France, Belgium, England and Germany. Highlights of the tour included performances at the latest edition of Static Shock Weekend, in London (England), and Bal des Vauriens, in Vitry-sur-Seine (France).

The band also participated in a 10-show tour the US West Coast in March 2024, playing in front live audiences from Los Angeles to Seattle. They also went to Spain in August 2024 for the Beach, Beer and Chaos festival in the Barcelona suburb of Badalona. In September, the band embarked on its biggest tour to date, opening for Soft Kill. The 14-concert tour took them to the following cities: Portland, Reno, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Brooklyn.

View Event →
R.M.F.C.
Oct
1

R.M.F.C.

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

R.M.F.C.

+ Special Guests

Thursday 1st October

The Glad Cafe

18+

View Event →
GB
Oct
3

GB

GB is an artist from Copenhagen, currently based in London. His debut album “Gusse Music” was released in May 2024 on Posh Isolation. It is a 33 minute collaged symphony of explorative guitar songs offering a world heavy on texture and atmosphere but which nevertheless has a sheen of pop sensibility. His latest record will be released this Spring via AD93.

View Event →
Jake Xerxes Fussell
Oct
6

Jake Xerxes Fussell

Pop Mutations presents:
Jake Xerxes Fussell

plus special guest Naima Bock

Tuesday 6th October

St Luke’s, Glasgow

Unreserved seated

Reared in Georgia and now settled in North Carolina, Jake Xerxes Fussell has established himself as a devoted listener and contemplative interpreter of a vast array of so-called folk songs, lovingly sourced from a personal store of favorites. He has released five studio albums to-date, beginning with his self-titled debut album, released by Paradise of Bachelors in 2015.

His most recent studio album When I’m Called was produced by James Elkington and features the playing of Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), Joe Westerlund (Bon Iver, Califone), and others. Blake Mills contributes guitars on several tracks. Joan Shelley and Robin Holcomb provide backing vocals. In their review of the record, Pitchfork wrote: “No other American singer is repurposing our old folk scripts with so much authority or ingenuity.”

More recently, Fussell and Elkington collaborated on the music for Rebuilding - a feature film directed by Max Walker-Silverman and starring Josh O’Connor. A soundtrack of the same name was released on Fat Possum Records in November 2025.

“Critics love to call things unclassifiable, which can sometimes feel like a subtle admission of defeat. But Jake Xerxes Fussell’s music, which draws heavily from nineteenth- and twentieth-century vernacular folk songs and archival field recordings, is idiomatic, and entirely his own…he is a folksinger in the truest sense, collecting ideas and melodies and lyrics from distant and disparate traditions, looking for the things that unite us in our humanity.” - The New Yorker

“(Fussell) is one of the great magpies of American song, collecting forgotten, tarnished gems with a folklorist’s zeal…” – The Guardian

“…maybe the leading interpreter of American folk music right now.” – Ann Powers, NPR

View Event →
The Third Sound
Oct
7

The Third Sound

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

The Third Sound

+ Special Guests

Wednesday 7th October

The Glad Cafe

18+

Ever evolving Berlin based The Third Sound are back with their hypnotic blend of psychedelia and drone infused post punk. After a successful Australian tour in early 2026, the cards were reshuffled once again, and with a brand-new line up the band has begun working on a new album (their 7th), due to be released next year.

Before finishing the record, there will be run of shows this autumn testing out some of the new material, mixed with songs from previous albums, many of which becoming firm favourites with audiences everywhere during their live sets in recent years.

Their well-received most recent LP ́Most Perfect Solitude ́, was released on Fuzz Club Records in 2024 followed by stand-alone single ́Remedy ́, which dropped earlier this year. After touring extensively the last few years, both with The Third Sound and as a guitarist for the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Icelandic musician Hákon Aðalsteinsson is ready to take The Third Sound in new directions alongside recently joined fellow Icelander and BJM member Hallberg Daði Hallbergsson, Francis Broek (Goblyns) and Mike Denton (formerly of The Lucid Dream).

View Event →
Born At Midnite
Oct
8

Born At Midnite

Pop Mutations presents:

Born At Midnite

+ Special Guests

Thursday 8th October

The Glad Cafe

18+

Who is Born At Midnite and why is it so important to you?

Born At Midnite are not your garden variety drag and drop producers, they are a vertically integrated song machine. Employing samplers, fake drums, tape machine, and their patented ‘do it myself’ method; the Montreal based duo bring their tracks from ground up to thumbs up all from a low rent former tax office above a dress shop. Playing into, whilst poking fun at, our era’s omnipresent narcissism and self indulgence the group stitch together an unsponsored sort of ‘product-placement-punk’.

What are they doing now?

Since 2020 the self appointed town heroes BAM have been flourishing in their own Belle Epoque, casually dropping the shallowest of cuts, play it again jams, and booya bangers to cosmo and countryside fanfare alike.

Who’s in the band?

Amery Sandford is a visual artist and easy going pop songstress. She recently released her first solo record Amery - Continue As Amery on Night School Records. David Carriere is a producer, songwriter, and guitarist in the bands TOPS and Marci.

View Event →
The Hanging Stars
Oct
10

The Hanging Stars

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

The Hanging Stars

+ Radhika

Saturday 10th October

Mono

18+

London’s The Hanging Stars return with their sixth album, Just A Day – a dazzling collection of four-part harmonies, shimmering twelve-string guitars and chiming songs, touching on themes of longing, new beginnings and the fragility of the everyday. Recorded at Edwyn Collin’s legendary Clashnarrow Studios in the Scottish Highlands, the album marks a bold new chapter for the band, produced with the invaluable guidance of Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love.

A line-up change at the end of 2024 proved to be a galvanising moment for The Hanging Stars. “We needed to rethink things,” says guitarist Patrick Ralla. “A new leaner approach – bass, drums, guitars, four-part harmonies. Certainly worked for The Byrds, Big Star and Teenage Fanclub.” The result is a wonderfully energising record full of catchy hooks and a renewed vision. The songs are designed to take the listener away from it all… even if it's just for a little while.

Central to the record’s new direction was the involvement of Gerard Love – one third of Teenage Fanclub’s celebrated songwriting trio and the artist behind Lightships. Starting from demos exchanged between Glasgow and London, Love helped the band strip things back to their essence, ever so gently guiding them toward their finest work to date. He also joined the band for a week of recording, contributing vocals, arrangement ideas and by all accounts a mean vegan curry.

Just A Day is The Hanging Stars’ third album to be recorded at Clashnarrow Studios, Helmsdale located in the most idyllic setting imaginable, thirty minutes south of John O’Groats and overlooking the Moray Firth. The studio, owned and run by Edwyn Collins and Grace Maxwell, is a place the band describe with reverence: “a sort of mixture between Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and the BBC’s Repair Shop”.

The band recorded the core of the album in a single week in February 2025, using Edwyn’s vintage gear – including the Gretsch Blackhawk he used in his Orange Juice days and the Barnes and & Mullins fuzz box heard on a “A Girl Like You”. The Hanging Stars’ connection with Edwyn Collins extends beyond just using his studio, Patrick plays guitar in Edwyn’s band and they were invited to support Collin’s momentous 2025 Testimonial Tour – A Last Lap Around The UK with dates including The Royal Festival Hall in London and the Theatre Royal in Glasgow.

The new album was produced and engineered by longtime collaborator Sean Read, with overdubs and mixing completed at Read’s Famous Times Studios over the spring of 2025, and additional recording at bassist Paul Milne’s Seagull Studios in East London. Drummer Paulie Cobra anchors the record with his defining beat, lending his voice to the soaring four-part harmonies. A core figure in the band’s story, Cobra has embarked on a prolonged sabbatical, making way for their new live drummer Charlie Salvidge (TOY, Proper Ornaments, Great Silkie) who will join the band on the road.

Frontman and songwriter Richard Olson reaches a creative high point with Just A Day, which opens in a surge of optimism with “All Your Yesterdays”, to “The Glasshouse”’s twelve-string-jangle-meets-New-York-circa-1976 meditation on wealth and class, to “Let It Slide” a feel-good track with a sting in its tail, to the country gospel drone of “Big Red Car” and meditative title track “Just A Day” laments for the day just gone. There are additional compositions from Patrick Ralla (“Keep On Making Me Wait”) and the first inclusion for bassist Paul Milne who wrote the party track “Show Me The Way”.

Their sound evokes classic sounds from the past with an ear towards the future, from The Byrds via Big Star, to The Feelies, Spiritualized, Teenage Fanclub and Tom Petty. Or think Lou Reed and the Velvets jamming with Gorkys Zygotic Mynci. The result is an album that feels simultaneously classic and vibrant, their influences worn lightly giving the songs room to breathe.

View Event →
Kelley Stoltz
Oct
14

Kelley Stoltz

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Kelley Stoltz

+ Sarah/Shaun

+ Kim Logan & the Silhouettes

Wednesday 14th October

The Glad Cafe

18+

Kelley Stoltz is an American songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and DIY innovator whose career stretches back to the late 1990s, when he began self-recording lush, psych‑tinged pop and garage rock in his San Francisco home studio. Born in New York City in 1971, and raised in Michigan, Stoltz has released a remarkable catalog of albums on labels including Sub Pop, Third Man, and Castle Face Records often playing all of the instruments himself and drawing comparisons to the melodic craftsmanship of the major 60’s pop auteurs and the quirkiness of lesser known 80’s power-pop & new wave.

After issuing his 18th album, La Fleur in 2024 to critical notice, he returns in 2026 with his 19th full‑length release, If You Don’t Know Me, Buy Now, a collection that continues his long exploration of hook‑laden psych‑pop, introspective lyrics, and richly textured arrangements that both honor his influences and push his sound forward, reinforcing his status as one of the most prolific and singular voices in underground rock.

Guests Brigid Dawson of the Osees, Karina Denike of Dance Hall Crashers, Pete Straus of the Dwarves and Allyson Baker of Dirty Ghosts and other guests provide backing vocals on several tracks.

Long a favorite of MOJO, Brooklyn Vegan, and John Dwyer… Stoltz is also a onetime Echo & the Bunnymen rhythm guitarist and currently Robyn Hitchcock’s West Coast drummer. Stoltz is also now the host of legendary

radio station KEXPs weekly Bay Area Music spotlight show, “Vinelands”.

An extensive UK & European tour is scheduled for October – November 2026, with a key appearance live in session for Marc Riley on his BBC 6 Music show. West Coast USA dates to be announced.

If You Don’t Know Me, Buy Now will be released in May 2026 on LP & CD by Agitated Records in UK & Europe and Dandy Boy Records in the USA.

View Event →
Dead Finks
Oct
15

Dead Finks

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Dead Finks

+ Special Guests

Thursday 15th October

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Dead Finks is a post-punk group based in Berlin, Germany. Their music tows a fine line between the genre's typical ironic detachment and a genuine sense of emotional earnestness, something they have in common with The Replacements, Wire, Pavement and Protomatryr, who they've toured with.

The band started gaining traction in 2021 when the video for their single “(My Human) Extinction” was premiered on the taste-making Harakiri Diät channel, becoming a modest hit in underground punk circles.

Their songs range from the abrasive and intense to earwormy-y and accessible, with their 2026 effort "New Plastik Abyss" earning praise and plays from everyone; teenage TikTok influencers to NTS radio alike.

This is also the year that Dead Finks finally tour the UK for the first time, the ancestral home of many of their creative forebears and finest contemporaries, after years of touring mainland Europe, handpicked as support by the likes of Dry Cleaning, Stuck, Fuzz, Folly Group, Sheer Mag and many others.

View Event →
Hollow Hand
Oct
16

Hollow Hand

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Hollow Hand

+ Special Guests

Friday 16th October

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Max Kinghorn-Mills is the Brighton-based artist behind the psych-pop project Hollow Hand - and with a new record due this year - the latest signing to Loose Music. 2023’s Your Own Adventure received widespread acclaim (MOJO, Uncut, BBC 6Music, Brooklyn Vegan, La Blogotheque , Aquarium Drunkard, Shindig!) since then, Hollow Hand have toured extensively - serving as house band for Caitlin Rose, collaborating and performing with Aoife Nessa Frances, supporting MJ Lenderman across Europe, and joining Willie J Healey on his most recent UK tour.

“Enchanting and melodic third from folk-rock voyager… Max Kinghorn-Mills casts quite a spell on his third Hollow Hand album” - UNCUT

“Evoking everyone from Stealers Wheel to Jeff Lynne to Tom Petty, Hollow Hand is a shape-shifting beast.” - MOJO 4*

“Everything you ever thought you needed from '60s pop, and a little bit more.” - The Line Of Best Fit

“Beatles-esque… jangly country-rock and psychedelic pop epiphanies” - Shindig! 4*

View Event →
Iguana Death Cult
Oct
22

Iguana Death Cult

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Iguana Death Cult

+ Special Guests

Thursday 22nd October

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Iguana Death Cult’s latest evolution finds the Rotterdam band reflecting on hardship and doubt while facing a burning world. The result channels their early punk and garage roots, powered by Tobias Opschoor’s razorsharp riffs, Rennert’s relentless drumming, Jimmy de Kok’s groovy rhythms and Jeroen Reek’s raw, emotive vocals.

Formed in 2014, the band has grown from a group of friends into an renowned international act, touring with band such as Osees and Frankie and the Witch Fingers, supporting Jack White and performing at SXSW, Levitation, and Desert Daze.

Their new album Guns Out (Greenway Records) marks a return to punchy garage rock and features honest self-reflection, addressing escapism, mental strain, and creative renewal. Tough yet introspective, Guns Out captures a band coming to terms with its own evolution and the turbulent world around it.

View Event →
Deradoorian
Oct
24

Deradoorian

Pop Mutations & The Glad Cafe presents:

Deradoorian

plus Mason Lindahl

Saturday 24th October

Fusing elements of indie rock, avant-garde electronic music, dub, and dance rhythms, Deradoorian is the name Angel Deradoorian works under as a solo artist. She launched said solo career after making a name for herself as a member of Dirty Projectors and collaborating with artists such as Avey Tare and Flying Lotus. Her albums, including 2015's 'The Expanding Flower Planet' and 2020's 'Find the Sun', are cosmic song cycles informed by her spiritual journey. After collaborating with Kate NV under the name Decisive Pink on 2023's heavily electronic 'Ticket to Fame', Deradoorian added that sound to her already jam-packed approach on 2025's 'Ready for Heaven'.

‘Ready for Heaven’ deals with heaven and earth, damnation and salvation, and using intelligence against rampant, naked greed. It is a classic forty minute set of inquisitive pop songs, blessed with a lightness of touch and a sharp focus that can’t help but charm the listener. It conjures up some last, faint afterglow of the old belief that an electronic, programmed beat can smash itself - and you - into another, more egalitarian consciousness.

“Deradoorian’s voice is the main attraction. Wispy one moment, bellowing full-throated the next, and capable of dazzling melismatic runs, it remains her not-so-secret weapon.” Pitchfork

It is a remarkable fact that this bold and open-hearted record is made by one person, working alone. Repeatedly reworking the songs until they were complete is a painstaking process that generated an energy and space where Deradoorian could indulge in the arcana of her artform. “I love the production more than the songwriting. [...] In fact, I don’t even feel like a songwriter at times, I feel like someone who is just inspired by so much music. And I want to try it all out! Like Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Mingus, or ESG and Silver Apples, or making weird krautrock and industrial music. I love dub, and Sly and Robbie. I love the productions of those records and the collective energies released by their creators in the studio. It’s just a weird thing to do it by yourself!”

Engaging with past musical glories helps deal with a major theme of this album; the awful nature of the world around us. Deradoorian: “This album is partly about watching humanity erode. It’s about mental struggle, and it’s avowedly anti-capitalist. I mean; would we have all these identity labels we have to live by, if we didn’t live in a capitalist world?”

Guitarist Mason Lindahl — whose “unabashedly beautiful” (Aquarium Drunkard) sound “balances the romantic dynamics of flamenco and the meticulousness of Windham Hill with the unguarded qualities of improvised music” (Pitchfork) — will release a pair of new albums, Joshua / Same Day Walking, this fall via Mt. Brings Death.

Though packaged together, Joshua and Same Day Walking chart distinct worlds. Recorded in northern California and produced by Robby Moncrieff (Dirty Projectors, Zach Hill), Joshua is woolier and warmer, evoking haze, humidity, and overgrown Spanish moss. Meanwhile, Same Day Walking — recorded in Iceland and produced by Moncrieff alongside two-time GRAMMY-winning composer / sound designer Sam Slater (Joker, Chernobyl) — is, appropriate for its icier climes, windswept and beholden to the vast emptiness of harsh landscapes. As a pair, they provide a thorough portrait of Lindahl’s singular and versatile playing.

Described by friend and contemporary Hayden Pedigo as “the greatest living guitar player,” Mason Lindahl’s “austere, gothic flamenco…dares you to submit to this odd and immersive sonic universe” (Uncut). The North Carolina native’s solo instrumental debut Kissing Rosy in the Rain, released in 2021 via Tompkins Square, was praised as “gorgeous” (Petal Motel) and “a minimalist gem” (Everything Is Noise). Prior to that, his only other solo release is 2009’s Serrated Man Sound.

View Event →
Will Samson
Oct
25

Will Samson

Will Samson presents his forthcoming album 'Sings Again' at the Glad.

With the use of his beloved tape machines, Samson has been exploring the spaces between electronic, folk and ambient music for well over a decade, with releases on labels such as Wichita Recordings / 12k and touring with artists such as Efterklang, S. Carey, The Album Leaf.

'Samson's meditative mix of folk and electronica has an almost spiritual dimension’ - UNCUT

'the kind of smooth, shimmering palette that indie dreams are made of' - Loud & Quiet

'A beautiful, hushed and contemplative record, the falsetto reminding you of Bon Iver, the intricacy and tenderness recalling kindred spirits such as Nils Frahm and Sufjan Stevens' - The Sunday Times

'A delicate, persuasive balance between ambience and formal song structures… Minimal keyboard patterns are infilled with pattering, glitchy beats... Choir–like wash, pedal steel and double bass bring further colour.' - MOJO

'Gently cascading acoustics, country lapsteel and glitchy, crunchy tick-tocks, it might not just provide for want of serenity but for want of sleep: all the components shuffling quietly under the crackle of tape-machines.' - The Line of Best Fit

View Event →
Retail Simps
Oct
28

Retail Simps

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Retail Simps

+ Dragged Up

Wednesday 28th October

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

What if the Velvet Underground had written ‘Wooly Bully’ and Sam The Sham ‘Sister Ray?' If Ron House picked up some bongos and joined CCR or If Half Japanese and Hasil Adkins started a Meters cover band? This is the scrap yard of the Retail Simp's mind. Short on practice and high on ideas, thee Retail Simple Tones are 4 well traveled and unraveled individuals, bound by a musical adventure. This is the southern soul of Memphian tradesmen flipped on it’s snowy head, the sound of impure regionalism. An alternate kind of Northern Soul with a frosty Arctic sheen. More spazzed out guitar, more howling lunacy, more heat of the moment, turnt poetry and outside the box-isms. 3 LPs, 2 7"s, 1 2xLP, many tapes and shows in, the band remains unpredictable and ill content with stasis and the status quo. As the returns for REAL rock n roll diminish exponentially, so do the Retail Simps expectations, however, like the pious Eunuchs of Sumeria, their mission and core spirit remains strongly in tact: Get it or don't, they're on a mission.

View Event →
DUCK & COVER
Oct
31
to 1 Nov

DUCK & COVER

Bum Notes, Mono & Pop Mutations present : 

DUCK AND COVER 2026

Bum Notes’ annual COVERS BAND HALLOWEEN BALL is back from beyond the grave!!

We may have lost our hallowed grounds of The Flying Duck but tonight, Matthew, we're going to be at Mono!

Catch live bands featuring some of the most talented musicians cutting about Glasgow giving their best Stars In Their Eyes! 

Full sets from :

Charli XCX

The Cranberries 

The Cure

The Mountain Goats

The Pixies 

The Replacements

Yo La Tengo

And from 11pm you can expect demonic drag and killer karaoke from Bum Notes hosted by Pink Pound!

No tricks, all treats! 

£10 advance tickets available now!

More on the door/ once they're gone! We will be raising funds this year for FiveforFive (Materially supporting trans women and transfem folk).

18+

Saturday 31st October

Mono

View Event →
Wendy Eisenberg
Nov
4

Wendy Eisenberg

Pop Mutations presents

Wendy Eisenberg

plus special guest

Wednesday 4th November at The Glad Cafe

Wendy Eisenberg has spent the past decade as a fixture of independent music and an artist of inspired multiplicity. As a singer-songwriter, improviser, and virtuoso guitarist, the coordinates of their artistry are ever-shifting, from art-rock to jazz to blistering free improv and eloquent folk. On catalog highlights including 2020’s Auto and the 2024 free-jazz sprawler Viewfinder, they’ve made a signature of ambition. After spending the past five years experimenting in different bands, genres, and creative challenges, and following a period of self-confrontation that they liken to a personal exorcism, Eisenberg has arrived at a milestone. The poetic and formally daring folk songs of Wendy Eisenberg comprise their most certain vision yet.

The songs began to take root in 2020 when Eisenberg moved from Western Massachusetts—where they’d lived for a few years after attending Boston’s New England Conservatory—and relocated to Brooklyn. Longing for the pastoral feel of their former home, Eisenberg gravitated towards the warm sounds of country and folk. For an already renowned guitarist, these classic songwriting practitioners (John Hartford, Michael Hurley, Gillian Welch, John Prine, Willie Nelson) and what Eisenberg called “weirdo country interpreters” (Richard Dawson, the Mekons, Joanna Newsom) offered other kinds of timelessness and virtuosity, as did Eisenberg’s immersion into pop-folk orchestrations (Judee Sill, Jimmy Webb, Van Dyke Parks). “The songs are genuinely folk songs,” Eisenberg says of their record. “The production is less about seeing what the guitar might be capable of and more accepting the inherent strangeness of the languages it has spoken for the last century and a half.”

A personal reckoning between 2023 and 2024 imbued Eisenberg’s new music with evermore sturdiness, clarity, conviction, and beauty. “I had this weird, semi-mystical experience,” Eisenberg says. “I remember walking around for hours alone, having given up on some kind of straight love, straight performance. Much of what I thought I wanted felt totally irrelevant. The part of me that felt like I had to be legible to appease imaginary people finally needed to die.” On Wendy Eisenberg, the artist creates their own paradigm with a tight-knit circle of longtime friends and collaborators—including bassist Trevor Dunn, drummer Ryan Sawyer, and co-producer Mari Rubio, who handled pedal steel, synth, and string arrangements—recording often at Eisenberg’s home and bringing a gorgeous ensemble texture to each note. “I was finally around people who accepted me,” Eisenberg says. “Many of the songs on this record were written in that new feeling. I wanted it to be incredibly comforting as it describes some massive changes in self-understanding and self-regard. It’s about relief.”

Eisenberg explores this epiphany explicitly on “Old Myth Dying,” singing in a fevered register, over polyrhythmic guitar playing, about knowing what you can and can’t control. That renewed feeling is in the pedal-steeled lucidity of “Will You Dare,” a bracing tune about love and the passage of time, which “has a funny way of laying you bare,” they sing. “It pulls you and scares you and tangles your hair/Asking: will you dare?” Opening with inquisitive chords before blooming into visceral, baroque-pop grandeur, “Meaning Business” was written following David Lynch’s death—favoring the late filmmaker’s “alien sense of Americanness” over a codified “Lynchian” sound. “Vanity Paradox” evokes how self-examination in artmaking can paradoxically blur one’s self-image. A tension between unresolvability and a longing for steady ground abounds; as Eisenberg sings on “The Walls,” “I wondered, when I was younger/If I would feel this way forever/Or if this world would finally settle into something solid.” The boon of such solidity rings out between each player. “Working in a very homegrown way was essential—these songs came out very delicately and were allergic to false steps,” Eisenberg says. “This is the first record I’ve made with an extensive backlog of songs, and I chose these because they felt spiritually the truest to how I have been moving through this new world right now.”

The dreamlike centerpiece “Another Lifetime Floats Away” traces the sweep of a life, how the past inhabits us and tends to flood back at will. Its bittersweet ease remarkably describes the nature of time, which can never turn back, in a succession of vivid images—their mother making breakfast; their dad working; their adventurous 20s, touring Northeast highways—while also describing the present moment from which the song was crafted. “It situates me as my own parent now,” Eisenberg says. “It’s emotionally overwhelming to grapple with the feeling that you are now the person who witnesses and occasions your own life, like your childhood home or your parents.” It is possible to imagine people singing it forever.

The song that follows, “It’s Here,” is about “the consciousness afforded by true love,” of people and songs and learning to trust in both. The conditions of Eisenberg’s life have steadied since the “exorcism” from which they wrote, and the recording reflected these shifts. Eisenberg became a full-time assistant professor of songwriting and they live now with Rubio, their girlfriend. “These things being true have changed my songwriting voice. It’s just as urgent as always, but slightly more spacious,” they say. “I’d spent my life trying to wrestle things into existence. These are songs that honestly just emerged, miraculously.” Calling back to that lifetime of devotion to song, and the negotiation towards a realized self that is likely to last as long, Eisenberg ends with “The Walls,” originally penned for their free-jazz trio Darlin’:

A memory: when I was twelve, or thirteen,

I’d write songs close to midnight

And some of those would sound a bit like this one, even back then

I seem to be consistent

If rootless in this half-guarded impulse

I cannot find the walls

I trust that that’s a good thing

Sometimes I’ll need convincing

View Event →
Maria BC
Nov
5

Maria BC

Pop Mutations & Divided By Language presents:

Maria BC

plus special guests

Thursday 5th November at The Old Hairdresser's

18+ show

Ohio-born, Oakland, CA-based artist Maria BC (they/them) has slowly opened up their process over the years, moving from the one-room recording process of 2021 EP Devil’s Rain—careful not to disturb their roommates or neighbors—to the untreated apartment wanderings of Hyaline (2022, Father/Daughter) to the home of a family friend featuring an out-of-tune baby Steinway piano where they recorded their Sacred Bones debut, Spike Field.

Hyaline, was a 2022 ambient-folk highlight. It found the singer-songwriter crafting haunting tracks that played like they were beamed from the heart of some mystical, cobwebbed attic. Spike Field pushed their gauzy formula into increasingly manicured terrain, capturing the sound of a young artist who has quickly honed a singular voice. Strings, plucked guitar and buzzing swells accompany their classically-trained mezzo-soprano voice soaking their arrangements in a denser and more kaleidoscopic way than any of their previous work. Maria BC describes it as “filling out the sonic space,” as Spike Field builds on the intimacy of Hyaline through liberating instrumental embellishments.

In 2026 we will see the return of Maria BC with their third studio album, and sophomore Sacred Bones release, Marathon. Born from a sense of urgency, masochistic determination and endurance, Marathon reflects what it means to keep going whether you’re resisting or just surviving, you’re in it for the long haul. On this record, Maria BC delves into themes of resistance, environmental ruin, personal disruptions and destruction, all entwined in musical grit and drive.

View Event →
J. Zunz
Nov
13

J. Zunz

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

J. Zunz

+ Special Guests

Friday 13th November

The Glad Cafe

18+

Coming from Ensenada in Mexico, Lorena Quintanilla aka J. Zunz has been steadily, and without much unnecessary buzz, carving her own path in electronic music’s most adventurous trails. With albums on Rocket Recordings, home to ritual rock deviants like Gnod or Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, J. Zunz has that rare ability to insinuate herself among electronic music heads, noise/drone stoners and open-minded rockers through a psychedelic prism. ‘Del Aire’, released last year and recorded during a strict lockdown, is a confident assertion of Quintanilla’s vision, capable of embracing synthesized ambient passages, vocal meditations, noise rubble and martial rhythms that can be as enveloping as they are turbulent - a reflection of those times of juxtaposition between the calm intimacy of the home and the world outside on the verge of collapse.

View Event →
POP MUTATIONS x TINY CHANGES
Nov
13
to 14 Nov

POP MUTATIONS x TINY CHANGES

POP MUTATIONS x TINY CHANGES 2026

13-14 November 2026

The Old Hairdressers • Mono • The Glad Café • Stereo

Ten artists. Four independent venues. One weekend celebrating music, community and creativity.

View Event →
Tara Clerkin Trio (matinee)
Nov
15

Tara Clerkin Trio (matinee)

Pop Mutatons & The Glad Cafe presents;

Tara Clerkin Trio (matinee)

plus special guests

Sunday 15th November

at The Glad Cafe

Suitable for ages 12+ (under 18s must be accompanied by an adult) / Standing show

If – in some parallel universe (or perhaps a not-so-distant-future version of the one we’re already sentenced to living in) – the evil overloads of artificial intelligence were actually successful in their attempts to create convincingly enjoyable “original music,” more specifically tasked with wholly encapsulating my own personal tastes by data-chugging some cocktail of – oh, I don’t know – the posters on my wall, the records in my “most listened to” pile, the mixtapes I made for others, intensive physical scans of my auditory cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, heart strings, whatever else they have splayed out on their autopsy table with the intention of generating one all-encompassing “perfect band” based on the fruitful sum of their findings – that band, for me, would be (or would at least sound exactly like) the Tara Clerkin Trio. It is, quite simply, without exception, the music I wish to hear.

Formed in Bristol UK (where none of them are from yet all of whom are deeply engrained) in 2020, the Tara Clerkin Trio – as it somewhat democratically exists today, despite the singular authority implied by its name – consists of the titular Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Sunny’s brother, Patrick Benjamin. I’ll confess, I don’t know what their respective roles are within the operation and there’s only a very small part of me that cares to learn, as one of my favorite qualities in an objective listening experience is the mystery of who is playing what, which sounds are “authentic” versus synthesized, which chunks are performed “live” in a room together versus meticulously Frankenstein’ed from measure to measure, or how exactly the overall sound is so (seemingly) effortlessly achieved. Though, I suspect, if and when I do witness a live performance by this band at any point, my enjoyment of the music will not be lost in my better understanding of it.

With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 debut, this upcoming Somewhere Good LP is, in many ways, the band’s most realised work. In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic (*an overused adjective for which here there is regrettably no sufficient alternative) approaches, Clerkin & co. color in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes - never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification - allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before.

Of course, there are traceable influences herein, if one felt that such comparisons were necessary to properly examine and enjoy this music (they aren’t)… Being the big dumb American from the small boring town that I am, cornfed on ‘90s alternative radio with the enchantingly exotic sounds of Maxinquaye and Mezzanine emanating from my chunky tube television, I can’t help but to make a blatantly obvious reference to a “Bristol sound”, ie the whole trip-hop trip, the pastoral crooning over the suggestive urban grime of cracked electro/piano treatments, the digitally-yet-primitively reconstructed James Bond soundtrack string-beats, etc.. But the Tara Clerkin Trio is so infinitely much more than that. There are elements of avant-pop, modern classical, kraut-folk, audio verité, dare I say indie rock (and not of the beer guzzling, masturbatory fuzz-flex variety but perhaps more like a Trish Keenan-fronted Faust, Adrian Sherwood at the mixing desk of If You’re Feeling Sinister, or – in expanding on our alternate reality – a world in which High Llamas cut a full-length for Warp Records with Andrew Weatherall on coffee duty).

The hazy, unmappable skyline-mirage of droning harmonium, upright bass, peculiarly accentuated wind instruments, acoustic guitar, hushed yet literally mighty keys combine to hypnotizing effect. The band may make underlying nods to jazz, sure, but it’s not appropriation, it’s that they have the actual chops to build it out. Beneath the janky samples and oddball percussive embellishment lies actually great drumming. Beyond the manipulated vocal witchery and woefully reflective plain-spoke moments are Tara’s subtly inspired melodies, sung with what might honestly be the glue to the whole crazy equation. A calming consistency throughout the otherwise unpredictably dynamic, boldly intuitive, uniquely British exploration of this (their own) universe in song. – Ryan Davis (Chicago, February 2026)

View Event →
Tara Clerkin Trio
Nov
15

Tara Clerkin Trio

Pop Mutatons & The Glad Cafe presents;

Tara Clerkin Trio

plus special guests

Sunday 15th November

at The Glad Cafe

18+ show

If – in some parallel universe (or perhaps a not-so-distant-future version of the one we’re already sentenced to living in) – the evil overloads of artificial intelligence were actually successful in their attempts to create convincingly enjoyable “original music,” more specifically tasked with wholly encapsulating my own personal tastes by data-chugging some cocktail of – oh, I don’t know – the posters on my wall, the records in my “most listened to” pile, the mixtapes I made for others, intensive physical scans of my auditory cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, heart strings, whatever else they have splayed out on their autopsy table with the intention of generating one all-encompassing “perfect band” based on the fruitful sum of their findings – that band, for me, would be (or would at least sound exactly like) the Tara Clerkin Trio. It is, quite simply, without exception, the music I wish to hear.

Formed in Bristol UK (where none of them are from yet all of whom are deeply engrained) in 2020, the Tara Clerkin Trio – as it somewhat democratically exists today, despite the singular authority implied by its name – consists of the titular Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Sunny’s brother, Patrick Benjamin. I’ll confess, I don’t know what their respective roles are within the operation and there’s only a very small part of me that cares to learn, as one of my favorite qualities in an objective listening experience is the mystery of who is playing what, which sounds are “authentic” versus synthesized, which chunks are performed “live” in a room together versus meticulously Frankenstein’ed from measure to measure, or how exactly the overall sound is so (seemingly) effortlessly achieved. Though, I suspect, if and when I do witness a live performance by this band at any point, my enjoyment of the music will not be lost in my better understanding of it.

With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 debut, this upcoming Somewhere Good LP is, in many ways, the band’s most realised work. In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic (*an overused adjective for which here there is regrettably no sufficient alternative) approaches, Clerkin & co. color in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes - never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification - allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before.

Of course, there are traceable influences herein, if one felt that such comparisons were necessary to properly examine and enjoy this music (they aren’t)… Being the big dumb American from the small boring town that I am, cornfed on ‘90s alternative radio with the enchantingly exotic sounds of Maxinquaye and Mezzanine emanating from my chunky tube television, I can’t help but to make a blatantly obvious reference to a “Bristol sound”, ie the whole trip-hop trip, the pastoral crooning over the suggestive urban grime of cracked electro/piano treatments, the digitally-yet-primitively reconstructed James Bond soundtrack string-beats, etc.. But the Tara Clerkin Trio is so infinitely much more than that. There are elements of avant-pop, modern classical, kraut-folk, audio verité, dare I say indie rock (and not of the beer guzzling, masturbatory fuzz-flex variety but perhaps more like a Trish Keenan-fronted Faust, Adrian Sherwood at the mixing desk of If You’re Feeling Sinister, or – in expanding on our alternate reality – a world in which High Llamas cut a full-length for Warp Records with Andrew Weatherall on coffee duty).

The hazy, unmappable skyline-mirage of droning harmonium, upright bass, peculiarly accentuated wind instruments, acoustic guitar, hushed yet literally mighty keys combine to hypnotizing effect. The band may make underlying nods to jazz, sure, but it’s not appropriation, it’s that they have the actual chops to build it out. Beneath the janky samples and oddball percussive embellishment lies actually great drumming. Beyond the manipulated vocal witchery and woefully reflective plain-spoke moments are Tara’s subtly inspired melodies, sung with what might honestly be the glue to the whole crazy equation. A calming consistency throughout the otherwise unpredictably dynamic, boldly intuitive, uniquely British exploration of this (their own) universe in song. – Ryan Davis (Chicago, February 2026)

View Event →
Gigi Masin
Nov
16

Gigi Masin

Gigi Masin is 70 and making his most courageous move yet. A trail-blazing composer and multi-instrumentalist whose sound has evolved through landscapes of ambient, jazz and electronic dance music, Masin is confounding expectations on a new album that looks back with pride and forwards with renewed purpose. “It may seem a little strange that I have made a record called Movement, ” Masin says, “in the same year that I am celebrating 40 years of my debut, Wind. ” But change is natural and this time, Movement is for the feet and the heart. In the end milestones are just points on the same road, even if sometimes you don’t see the junctions coming.

That was certainly the case for Masin. Self-released in 1986 and given away for free, Wind was meant to be both his introduction and his farewell to music. Masin thought he’d made a jazz record, others called it ambient, but few really listened. Three years later he released Les Nouvelles Musiques De Chambre Volume 2 with This Heat’s Charles Hayward that would go on to be sampled by Björk and Nujabes, but at the time it hardly registered. No matter. Masin had moved on, working as a postal manager, living with his wife and kids and making music at the edges of the day for theatre productions and poetry readings.

Then in 2014, Masin was approached out of the blue by Amsterdam-based label Music From Memory to release a compilation of his music – selections from Wind and the handful of recordings from the intervening decades that displayed the breadth of his talents, from zither and trumpet to synthesizers and radio sampling. When Masin listened back to the tapes hewas surprised to hear how much his voice had changed. He has always been sensitive to the passing of time, aware of the gains and losses along the way.

Talk To The Sea, as the collection was called, changed Masin’s life. Widely celebrated, his music caught a wave of renewed interest in the origins of ambient music and helped push forward the form among younger producers and musicians drawn to the spectral melancholy of his compositions – the sense of space, like an expanse of water, not cold like so much environmental music, but generous, open-hearted, unafraid of its emotions.

A fresh swell of opportunities followed. Alongside Jonny Nash and Marco Sterk he formed Gaussian Curve, a trio of likeminded artists who became friends through shared musical language, bringing new shades to Masin’s inherently Mediterranean sensibility.

“When I was on the radio or in the theatre I worked alone, ” he remembers. “But I am very open, I love to work with other people, because you have something to learn from others. It's not even about music, it's about the human touch.”

Perhaps this is why Masin’s music speaks to so many people. Although often described as ambient, his influences are as wide as the ocean. In the 1980s, Masin knew Brian Eno only as the keyboard player for Roxy Music. He listened instead to John Martyn, Nick Drake and

John Coltrane, blasted Motown in the car, and developed an obsession with history that has surfaced at times in the origin myths of tracks and albums. Throughout, his sound has been grounded in this fundamental humanity, a belief that even in darkness there might be light.

By 2017, Masin had begun working with his now close confidant and manager Alessia Avallone, quitting his day job to focus on music full-time. “Sometimes in life you have to make a decision in two, three minutes, ” he says, ignoring those around him who thought he was being reckless. Masin saw it otherwise. “It was one of the best moments of my life.”

View Event →
BULL
Nov
21

BULL

BULL

plus DJ Antonio

and more tba

Saturday 21st November

18+

Bull are a 5 piece band from York, UK. Formed in 2011 as school friends, they self released their a bit poppy bit punky debut ‘She Looks Like Kim’ (redacted) in 2014. In 2018 they toured the US, selling second, scrappy long EP ‘America’ (bootleg). In 2020 the band signed with EMI in conjunction with York record label Young Thugs. In 2021 they released their debut (proper) Discover Effortless Living.

They received some airplay from Radio 1, 6 and Elton John. The band toured the album in 2021, played at Leeds and Reading festival, and supported Pavement the Rock band at the O2 academy in Leeds in 2022. They released a follow-up EP ‘Stuck Between the Virtual and Physical World’ in 2022 and sophomore album ‘Engines of Honey’ in 2024 which they toured. Bull are returning to playing live shows and have mostly completed the recording of their third album in Spain, April 2026. They plan to release new singles over the summer and later the album. 

View Event →
The Wants
Nov
22

The Wants

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

The Wants

+ Special Guests

Sunday 22nd November

The Glad Cafe

18+

The Wants is the New York City band founded in 2017 by songwriter, guitarist, and producer Madison Velding-VanDam alongside drummer Jason Gates. The group operates as an adversarial network of ideas — grounded songwriting playfully colliding with unstable rhythms, mutated electronics, and live instrumentation.

After signing with London-based Council Records, The Wants released their debut album, Container (2020), named after their shipping-container-turned-rehearsal space in a Brooklyn parking lot. The album’s anxious songwriting, hypnotic interlocking rhythms, and aggressive live show drew acclaim from outlets like NME, Brooklyn Vegan and The Line of Best Fit before its touring cycle was cut short by the global shutdown of March 2020.

That interruption opened a five-year period of experimentation. Written by Velding-VanDam, Gates and synthesist Yasmeen Night, and recorded by Peter Katis, Bastard (2025) pushes Container’s physical-electronic tension into something darker and more acerbic. Widely commended as beguiling and enigmatic, the record was followed up by remixes from Factory Floor, Broken English Club and Gorgonn.

During this time, Velding-VanDam also founded STTT, a record label committed to creative friction, experimentation and independence. STTT supports a growing international roster of artists including Content Blocks and Sin Clair.

The Wants is currently finishing their third album.

View Event →
PROBLEM PATTERNS & LANDE HEKT
Dec
5

PROBLEM PATTERNS & LANDE HEKT

Spite House and Pop Mutations present… A Gig Isn't Just For Xmas!

We are absolutely thrilled to be hosting 2 terrific touring acts plus 2 laudable locals and DJs

 

PROBLEM PATTERNS (Belfast)

LANDE HEKT (Bristol)

PINK POUND

CLEAN SLATE

18+

Mono is an accessible venue including toilet facilities. 

 

★ SPITE HOUSE ★ Inclusive queer and feminist collective. 🦄🔗💅 

Whenever possible we put on all ages and accessible events in Glasgow. Since 2014. 

Support us by becoming a member on KO-FI and receive free entry, discounted entry, merch and more! 

https://ko-fi.com/spitehouse 

View Event →
Downtown Boys
Dec
10

Downtown Boys

Pop Mutations presents:

Downtown Boys

+ Special Guests

Thursday 10th December

Stereo

18+

Downtown Boys have pushed relentlessly forward as an artistic and political project since their founding. Singer Victoria Marie and guitarist/singer Joey La Neve DeFrancesco first met at union meetings while working together at a hotel in Providence, RI, writing many of the band’s early songs about labor organizing and exploitative workplaces. The quintet is completed by Joe DeGeorge (sax/synth), Mary Jane Regalado (bass), and Joey Doubek (drums). Over years of touring and three acclaimed albums, including Full Communism in 2015 and Cost of Living, their Sub Pop debut in 2017, Downtown Boys have continued to grow as artists, musicians, and organizers.

Now, the band has arrived with Public Luxury, an enthralling album that keeps politics front and center while summoning the band’s most urgent and powerful sound to date. The definition of Public Luxury falls very much in line with that of the title of the band’s second LP, Full Communism. Straight up, Public Luxury means, “everything for everyone.” It’s the stubborn insistence that a better world is possible, while fully recognizing the horrors we witness daily, and the individual and collective responsibility to resist the nihilism and hopelessness we all feel.

Public Luxury was co-produced by DeFrancesco with recording engineer and longtime Downtown Boys supporter Seth Manchester (Lambrini Girls, Lightning Bolt, Model/Actriz) at the Pawtucket, RI studio and arts space Machines With Magnets.

View Event →

Tomorrow Syndicate (matinee)
Sept
12

Tomorrow Syndicate (matinee)

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Tomorrow Syndicate

+ Special Guests

Saturday 12th September (matinee)

The Glad Cafe

Suitable for ages 10+ (under 18s must be accompanied by an adult)

Tomorrow Syndicate blend analogue synthesisers, ambient guitars and melodic songwriting into a distinctive sci-fi inspired sound. Influenced by krautrock, classic pop and cinematic soundscapes, the band have spent the last decade building a catalogue of immersive and atmospheric music.

Returning to the stage for their first live show in six years, Tomorrow Syndicate will perform songs from Future Tense, Citizen Input, Higher Resolution and their upcoming album Full Capacity Breathing

View Event →
Drook
Sept
11

Drook

Pop Mutations presents:

Drook

+ Special Guests

Friday 11th September

The Glad Cafe

18+

Drook's debut LP, The Pure Joy of Jumping, stands as a testament to the lofty ambitions of the Richmond, Virginia-based group and their ever-spinning wheelhouse of interests and tastes. Written up and down the east coast, in studios, bedrooms and coffee shops, the contents of Jumping are as traveled as the band itself. Conceived over a period of four years, this deeply personal coming-of-age record explores identity, interpersonal relationships, and the modern malaise of American life. Underscored by an earnest sense of humor and pointed self-evaluation, Jumping plays out over 11 songs driven by frenetic rhythms, blissed-out guitars, and colorful synth arrangements. It's an aggregation of self-expression with a limitless approach to form.

View Event →
Loscil
Sept
7

Loscil

Pop Mutations & The Glad Cafe presents:

Loscil

plus Kinbrae

Monday 7th September

The Glad Cafe

18+ show

“Less than a month after one of the most violent fire events in the history of the continent, new shoots had burst through the scorched hardpan, nourished by the still-vital roots of those flayed and blackened trees.” John Vaillant, Fire Weather

Loscil (aka Scott Morgan) returns to kranky with Lake Fire, a nine-track offering of ash-laden sonics that mine the tension within the cycle of destruction and rejuvenation.

Lake Fire is the result of a disjointed creative process. Originally conceived as a suite for

electronics and ensemble, most of the original compositions were deserted, save for Ash Clouds, featuring James Meager on double bass. The remaining tracks were reshaped and remixed, built anew out of the remnants of the abandoned work. The result is a phoenix, an album burnt to the ground only to be reassembled out of its cinders. Fragments of the original lurk beneath a densely overpainted canvas of sound.

Infused into the resulting rearrangements are impressions from a road trip into the mountains marking a personal half-century milestone, surrounded by the ominous proximity of wildfires and dense smoke; celebrating life while the world burns. The album’s title comes from the striking irony that forest fires are often named after regional lakes - perhaps subconsciously referencing ancient lore. The cover photos were taken from this same trip, while sitting in a rowboat staring into the grey abyss of an opposing mountainside outside of Revelstoke, BC, obfuscated by smoke from a nearby lake fire.

View Event →
Annabelle Chairlegs
Sept
6

Annabelle Chairlegs

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Annabelle Chairlegs

+ Special Guests

Sunday 6th September

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Annabelle Chairlegs is the electrifying project of Austin-based songwriter Lindsey Mackin, known for her gritty, whimsical sound and commanding stage presence. Since emerging in 2013, the band has become a standout live act, sharing stages with The Zombies, Lucy Dacus, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and performing at major festivals including Austin City Limits, SXSW, Levitation, and Austin Psych Fest. With two self-released albums and a 2020 Austin Music Award for Best Music Video ("Outside"), the project continues to build momentum. Their upcoming Ty Segall–produced album, Waking Up (January 2026), introduces a refreshed lineup and an even sharper, explosive live energy. Mackin is joined by dummer Nick Cornetti, Simone Maresh on bass and Nolan Potter on guitar.

View Event →
Fatboi Sharif
Sept
2

Fatboi Sharif

Pop Mutations presents:

Fatboi Sharif

+ Special Guests

Wednesday 2nd September

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

The Garden State Gargoyle, Fatboi Sharif, is an American avant-garde Hip-Hop artist that is looking to take over the globe with his abstract lyricism, spine-chilling soundscapes, illuminating intensity, and his million-dollar smile. It is either the highest level or nothing for Sharif when it comes to putting out projects and performing on stage. He treats the live show as a spiritual experience where Sharif takes the crowd on a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world as if from a location outside their physical body. By the closing track he tells the crowd to involve themselves in a call & response that simply repeats “MY FAMILY!” because by the end of his set he’s grown a connection with the crowd that could only equate with that of your family.

Different channels of inspiration are always a must. Inspired by Sun Ra, Parliament Funkadelic, Alice Coltrane, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Ultramagnetic MC’s, Freestyle Fellowship, Cannibal Ox, Rob Zombie, Pig Destroyer just to name a few. Fatboi keeps constant inspiration around him to push the limit. If not, he’s better off without it. Sharif has studied all genre-pushing works of music, film, and literature. His debut “Ape Twin” from 2017 was re-released on vinyl, via Needle to the Groove, with exclusive bonus tracks only available on wax. The reason Sharif can re-release a project from 2017 in 2025 is because his sound is evergreen. Fatboi Sharif is one of the most charismatic and embracing individuals you’ll have the pleasure of meeting. The Garden State Gargoyle of Elaborate Literature Challenging the Unknown.

“Sharif is one of the most distinct artists across any scene.” – Rolling Stone

“Imagine a Cenobite raised on MF DOOM and Wu-Tang Clan, and you’ve got something approximating a rapper like Fatboi Sharif.” – FADER

“But if the sound has grown stagnant in the sun, hip-hop’s future may lie underground with bold voices like Sharif’s.” – US Weekly

“Fatboi excels at reeling off jolting couplets that seem like non sequitur observations at first but collectively compile a portrait of a fictional world of tumult. Or is it mere fiction?” - Complex

“No two songs are alike, but the fragmented verses and horror flick references from each one form a twisted mosaic of Lynchian strangeness, where nothing is too strange, sacred,

or taboo.” – SPIN

"I want to create my own genre.” - Fatboi Sharif

View Event →
More Eaze
Sept
1

More Eaze

Pop Mutations & The Glad Cafe present:

More Ease

plus special secret guest!

More Eaze is the project of Brooklyn-based sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Mari Maurice. Ranging from ambient pop to folk and musique concrete, her numerous solo and collaborative releases weave mundane, everyday sounds, acoustic orchestration and instrumentation, and electronics into adventurous textural compositions. Her music explores themes of intimacy, yearning, Americana, and the transformation of abstract feeling into intense living through compositions that move seamlessly between the banal and the ethereal. She has recently released work with Thrill Jockey, 15 Love, Longform Editions, Leaving Records, Ecstatic, and Orange Milk. Her work as a string arranger, pedal steel player, and producer has recently been featured on recordings by Martha Skye Murphy, Water Damage, Lomelda, Fashion Club, claire rousay, Space Afrika and Rainy Miller, and Nick Zanca amongst others. She regularly performs in the duos Pink Must (w/ Lynn Avery) and whait (w/ Wendy Eisenberg).

View Event →
Lily Seabird
Aug
31

Lily Seabird

Pop Mutations presents:

Lily Seabird

+ Special Guests

Monday 31st August

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Seabird has shared “Demon in Me,” her first new single of 2026. Having built a reputation for her singular voice and cutting lyricism, the new single arrives with high anticipation following her critically acclaimed 2025 album Trash Mountain, out now via Lame-O Records. “Demon in Me” is perhaps the most striking example to date of Seabird’s potent songwriting, beginning as a stark vocal & guitar before blossoming into a lush arrangement and ultimately collapsing into smoldering wreckage.

Since the release of Trash Mountain, Seabird’s life has continued in perpetual motion, touring with Mikaela Davis, Florry, Thomas Dollbaum, Dean Johnson, Robert Lester Folsom, and more. Her appearance at 2025’s End of the Road Festival led The Guardian to proclaim Seabird as “an indie star in the making… The Vermont songwriter has some of Big Thief to her brawny, easy rockers, coupled with a gorgeously open-hearted voice that recalls Lucinda Williams and Frances Quinlan of Hop Along.”

View Event →
A Place To Bury Strangers + Die Anstalt + Skloss
Aug
27

A Place To Bury Strangers + Die Anstalt + Skloss

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

A Place To Bury Strangers

+ Die Anstalt

+ SKLOSS

Thursday 27th August

Stereo

18+

The smoldering shoegaze pop and heavy post-rock project of singer/songwriter/guitarist Oliver Ackermann and company.

Punk shoegaze.

A Place To Bury Strangers is the loudest band in the world.

View Event →
ATA KAK
Aug
24

ATA KAK

Pop Mutations presents:

ATA KAK

plus Comfort + Maveen (DJ)

Live at Stereo

Monday 24th August

18+ show

--

Ata Kak, the Ghanaian artist behind the cult classic Obaa Sima, crafted a singular blend of highlife, hip-hop and funk in the early ’90s that went largely unnoticed until decades later. Born Yaw Atta-Owusu in Kumasi, he moved through Germany and Canada, developing his sound using basic home equipment and sheer determination.

Initially released as a DIY cassette, Obaa Sima fused Twi rap with lo-fi beats and Afro-futuristic flair. It vanished into obscurity until 2002, when musicologist Brian Shimkovitz found a copy in Ghana and later reissued it in 2015 via Awesome Tapes From Africa. The internet lit up.

Despite late fame, Ata Kak remains grounded. “I don’t consider myself a legend, I’m just doing what I love,” he says. His global touring debut came well into his 50s, electrifying festivals across Europe with his infectious energy and joyful sound.

Once a mystery, now a pioneer of Twi rap and Afro-futurism, Ata Kak continues to write and record at home. “Music is like water,” he says. “Once it flows out, it can go anywhere.”

View Event →
DJ Spanish Fly
Aug
19

DJ Spanish Fly

Pop Mutations & Regular Music present:

DJ Spanish Fly

+ Special Guests

Wednesday 19th August

Stereo

18+

DJ Spanish Fly is recognized as the Godfather of Memphis rap and one of the original architects of Southern hip-hop.

His fascination with DJing began in childhood, guiding his stepfather, a blind evangelical preacher, to local radio stations to deliver sermons, where he became mesmerized by the turntables, records and studio equipment surrounding him.

By the early 1980s, a fledgling teenage B-Boy in a city in which hip hop was not widely heard, Spanish Fly entered a Memphis club scene dominated by older disco DJs. His legendary sets at the vast and notorious ‘Club No Name’ became one of the only ways people across the South could experience authentic hip-hop culture firsthand. More than simply playing records, he helped transform Memphis nightlife into a home for rap, providing the soundtrack for now iconic Buckin’, Buckjump, Jookin and Gangsta-Walk dance styles that evolved on the dance floor of his club nights.

During live performances, Spanish Fly tested chants, catchphrases and early songs such as “Smoking Onion” and “Black People in Charge,” many of which later appeared on homemade mixtapes recorded in his bedroom. Using little more than a Radio Shack boombox and microphone, he developed a raw, hypnotic sound unlike anything else in the US: eerie synths, booming 808s, repetitive loops and bass-heavy production with pimped-out car stereos in mind. The dark atmosphere that later defined Memphis rap can be traced directly to these teenage experiments.

Spanish Fly’s home-manufactured mixtapes were sold at the clubs, car washes, gas stations, and anywhere he could set up shop from the trunk of his distinctive Cadillac. Meanwhile, bootleggers illegally copying his tapes inadvertently helped spread his music across the South, from New Orleans to Atlanta, Nashville and beyond.

Their greatest impact remained in Memphis itself. Future stars such as DJ Paul, Juicy J, DJ Squeeky, and other young local artists studied his tapes, inspired by production techniques nobody else in the city had understood yet.

Spanish Fly’s influence shaped generations of artists but his greatest achievement was creating the conditions that allowed Southern rap to exist at all. Long before Memphis rap became a global influence, he was the young DJ fighting to make sure the city would even hear rap music in the first place.

Today, Spanish Fly remains an active cultural force. He is a resident DJ on NTS Radio, appeared in the Netflix series Hip-Hop Evolution, and continues to perform worldwide, from underground rap events and Memphis clubs to major art institutions including MoMA PS1 and Bourse de Commerce in Paris. A new collection of unreleased material from his archive is scheduled for worldwide release this Summer through Untitled Recordings.

View Event →
Cosey Mueller
Aug
16

Cosey Mueller

Pop Mutations presents:

Cosey Mueller

+ Special Guests

Sunday 16th August

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Emerging from the depths of Berlin’s underground scene, Cosey Mueller is a self made musician who explores electronic sounds in the most intuitive way, never forgetting her love for rock n roll. After releasing her debut album ,Interior Escapes, in 2021 she is back with a new release ‚Irrational Habits‘ in 2023. Her music is characterised by repetitive synth melodies, explosive beats, expressive vocals and a playful use of language. It makes you travel to another time, not making sure if that time ever existed. A pulsating, shimmering and danceable live experience is guaranteed.

View Event →
Nighttime
Aug
14

Nighttime

Nighttime rolls the cosmic dice and lands on her most expansive album to date.

Time is malleable in the hands of cosmic American folk band Nighttime. Early recordings could be mistaken for choral hymns from the Lomax archives, while 2023’s Keeper is the Heart—lauded by Bandcamp as Best New Music—feels like a lost psychedelic gem of the 1960s, invoking the spirits of Vashti Bunyan and Norma Tenega.

On Nighttime’s forthcoming record, Looking Glass, the band that began as a solo recording project has evolved to feature contributions by over twenty musicians, including Sam Evian, Roy Montgomery, and collaborators of Pearl and the Oysters, Marina Allen, Florist, Weyes Blood, and Aldous Harding—their work woven into a single silken web coalesced around shimmering harp, beatific trumpets, rolling guitar, and the guiding thread of Eva Louise Goodman’s rich, singular voice.

“The energy of the process becomes a part of the result.” Goodman says. “My first records were a lot about being alone and experimenting with sound. More and more, I find inspiration comes from bringing other people into the project… I want it to be fun.”

Living in Los Angeles, Nighttime is in good company with a long tradition of musicians seeking creative camaraderie. The album’s genesis, however, began while Goodman was still living in the woods of upstate New York, where her life underwent what she describes as an “alchemical transformation.” The relationship that had defined her twenties ended, and in its wake she moved into a big farmhouse with two other artists.

“I spent a lot of time walking outside in the woods and swimming in the river behind the house. In the winter, we would sit in front of the fire, host creative gatherings, and have weekly band practices.” But when the snow thawed, she began dreaming of a change: A move to the West Coast.

Making a vow to let a new path reveal itself, Goodman was lured by California’s spirit sooner than she’d intended with an invitation to play a show in Los Angeles. With only three weeks notice, she made the move. A new band coalesced, more shows began to materialize, and soon she was touring and recording the songs that would end up on Looking Glass.

“From something comes nothing / But from nothing can come something.” The album’s opening lines set the tone as Goodman journeys across continents, painting landscapes of rivers, wheels, wings, and the open road of time. Initiation Rites, Wounded Healer, The Powers—more than song titles, these are invocations, calling in transformation and the wild unknown that comes with it.

If Nighttime’s 2023 release hinted at a newfound openness, Looking Glass proclaims a complete surrender: “I paid the price of rolling the cosmic dice,” Goodman sings, “And I scored snake eyes—they’re staring into mine.” Looking Glass is an album about thresholds. It’s about opening your heart, taking a leap, and coming out on the other side.

When the album reaches its last song, the title track, time unspools and language folds in on itself. “Changeable is time / Let loose, it flies across the sky.” Flute spirals through a warm vintage Rhodes piano, while harmonies lift and signal a way through the liminal space between the words.

“Looking Glass was written leading up to and following a period when everything in my life changed…” said Goodman. “I think I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Somewhere between the snowy forest and the hidden frequencies of Los Angeles, Nighttime has found a new voice by opening a door. And then stepping through.

View Event →
Meatbodies + media puzzle
Aug
4

Meatbodies + media puzzle

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Meatbodies

+ media puzzle

Tuesday 4th August

The Glad Cafe

18+

By 2017, Meatbodies frontman Chad Ubovich had reached a crossroads. After years of increasingly insane shows playing to heaving crowds with an ever-evolving and rotating door of personnel, fatigue had taken its toll and Ubovich realized another change was on the horizon. “It was like the car had run out of gas in the middle of the road, and I knew I had a long walk ahead of me.” Retreating to the seedy Los Angeles underbelly– in search of meaning and a reset. Ubovich escaped into that world, ignoring his own well being, trying to forget his successes. “I was living like a 90’s vampire out of a comic book. Stumbling around LA with the socialites, partying away my sorrows, trying to forget.”

It was at this point that Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom began to take shape—a project built by a man searching for new beginnings and his own sense of self. After sobering up, writing sessions began at Ubovich’s home and various studios with longtime collaborator Dylan Fujioka. Eventually, the official production for Flora began in 2019, but it was a story left on

the editing table. Due to discrepancies with the studio, tensions were high and the plug was pulled. Left with an album only half baked, it seemed like Flora had been put to rest. After the fires cooled and many discussions about the future of the album. Ubovich finally got the green light to finish production for Flora in 2020 when he hit another snag– the pandemic.

And as the world took a back seat, so did the idea of Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom.

Not wanting to sit still at home, Ubovich began to comb through his previous demos with Fujioka while writing for Flora. And with that, 333 was born, the now de facto third Meatbodies LP. Yet Flora was never far from Ubovich’s mind and once again he revisited the idea of completing the now fabled album. As restrictions started to lift, Ubovich headed to Gold Diggers Sound, backed by engineer Ed McEntee and a team of colleagues and friends, Ubovich completed the final act to the album, but he still wasn’t quite out of the woods just yet. He now faced a new crisis, one that proved to be more terrifying than any before: his home that he had spent the last 8 years in had been deemed uninhabitable and he wound up in a hospital bed where he spent the next month of his life.

Having to not only learn to walk again but also learn to play again, Ubovich used an upcoming tour with his band FUZZ as a motivating factor and hit the road for a year trying to regain a sense of normalcy. By the time Ubovich returned from tour he was centered and energized, ready to conquer his white whale– the borderline lost album. The mission was finally a success. Armed with a new home and a new studio - The Secret Garden, Ubovich

mixed the album himself, looped in Brian Lucey at Magic Garden to handle mastering, and Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom was completed, five years after those fateful demos with Fujioka.

“A lot happened with this record- It took me five years, I was out of a band, I had a drug problem, the album almost didn’t happen, the pandemic made it almost not happen again, and then in the end I almost died in the hospital, lost my house, and had to learn to walk again. It’s been quite a road, but I could not be more thrilled with the final output. I guess the juice was worth the squeeze?” laughs the Meatbodies frontman.

And so here we are, with Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom, an album completed by an ironclad will and steely determination. It’s also Meatbodies’ most ambitious, varied, and realized record to date—and possibly their finest hour. A massive step forward, both by conventional standards and considering its tumultuous path toward completion, the album is finally set for release on March 8, 2024 via In the Red Records. The LP recalls the searing Blue Cheer-meets-Iggy Pop-with-psychedelia that permeated previous releases, but adds new elements of shoegaze, classic alternative, Britpop, drone, and hints of country—blazing trails without ever sounding forced or alien. Simultaneously an ode to ’80s Los Angeles punk and the rise of indie/alternative music in the U.K., Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom plays like a

radio station broadcasting from the void, with a cosmic playlist of early Pink Floyd, Ramones, Roky Erickson, Kinks, and Spacemen 3. And while those names may seem outwardly disparate, Ubovich crafts a distinctively Meatbodies arc among the songs, creating an eclectic and unmistakably cohesive piece of work in total. It all adds up to an effort that shows strength in its diversity, which is only secondary to its impeccable

songwriting.

Besides the obvious themes of redemption, reinvention and resurrection that not only accompany the record, but its production as well, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom examines themes surrounding love and loss, escapism, defeatism, hedonism, psychedelics and much

more. “The last record was more of a cartoon version of who we were– simple and fun without delving into heavy concepts,” recalls Ubovich. "The whole thing before with Meatbodies was never sit down, next part, next part, but I wanted to make something with more depth. After everything that had happened, and my personal life, I was left with this feeling of emptiness and loss. So I wanted to make music that was absent from things– songs that were more about conveying feeling.”

View Event →
GEE TEE
Jul
24

GEE TEE

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

GEE TEE

+ Fruit Tones

+ Masonic Youth

Friday 24th July

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Based in Sydney, Australia and lead by Kel Mason, Gee Tee was born in 2016. The project started in Kels garage on the Gold Coast where he would write and record. Kel relocated to Sydney in 2019 and put together a band which included Michael Barker, Ishka Edmeades, Ryan Ellem and Campbell Payne. Since 2021, Gee Tee have been selling out records and selling out shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Gee Tee have earnt headlining spots at Gonerfest in Memphis and Anti Fade's Jerkfest in Geelong. After covid 19 ended, Gee Tee embarked on their first international tour in the USA for 8 shows in 2022. This then lead to a Europe tour with 23 shows in 2023. In 2024, Gee Tee return to the USA with another headline spot at Gonerfest and a 21 show run across the country. This most recent tour was met with warmth and admiration as 9 of the 21 shows were sold out. Gee Tee have also received praise from Pitchfork for the latest album 'Goodnight Neanderthal' which received a rating of 7.7 by Evan Minsker.

View Event →
Soledad Brothers
Jul
21

Soledad Brothers

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Soledad Brothers

+ Special Guests

Tuesday 21st July

Stereo

18+

Toledo Ohio's Soledad Brothers are back from the near dead to spread their one-of-a-kind Rust Belt R&B Revolutionary Gospel.

These will be their first time setting footprints on European soil together as a band in 20 years.

Soledad have been long associated with the early 2000's Detroit garage rock revival along with cohorts The White Stripes, The Detroit Cobras, and The Dirtbombs.

Cut from the same fiery roots, time and local as those groups but very much hewing their own path, the Soledads were louder and looser.

They were influenced by John Lee Hooker, The Gun Club, Hound Dog Taylor, Sister Rosetta Thorpe as well as frequencies more distant such The Fall and free jazz pioneers such as Albert Ayler.

Sonically this all came together in a sound all their own with political insight and edges not explored by contemporaries.

Their much-heralded firebrand live shows have diminished not one iota in the intervening years, in fact the anger burns brighter and the stage slop more noisy.

View Event →
Faraquet
Jul
17

Faraquet

Pop Mutations presents:
Faraquet
+ Special Guests
Friday 17th July
Stereo
18+

Formed in the late ’90s in Washington, DC, Faraquet began as a low-key side project but quickly gained momentum, becoming an incubator for a group of three friends eager to create something unique.
Over the next few years, they crafted a sound that fused diverse influences, marked by dynamic shifts, intricate melodies, and a dedication to pushing the boundaries of traditional rock structures. Though their time together was brief, Faraquet left a lasting impact on the indie and progressive rock scenes.
In 2025, the band celebrates the 25th anniversary of their lone LP, The View From This Tower, released by Dischord Records. While initially somewhat overlooked, the album has since become a touchstone of ’90s experimental rock. To mark the occasion, Devin Ocampo, Jeff Boswell, and Chad Molter will reunite for their first live performances since 2008.

View Event →
Cuckoo Spit
Jul
16

Cuckoo Spit

Pop Mutations & The Glad Cafe presents:

Cuckoo Spit

plus Sevy Verna

and Swextshops

Thursday 16th July

Cuckoo Spit blends dreamy pop, experimental rock and ambient textures into immersive, emotionally charged soundscapes. Combining spectral vocals, distorted guitar, drones and field recordings, the project moves between intimacy and disorientation, creating a hypnotising set of songs which drifts between lullaby intimacy and immersive noise.

Following the release of the debut band EP Flea's Feast in November and a recently rereleased & remastered edition of the project's original 2021 demo tape, Cuckoo Spit plays their debut performance at The Glad Cafe. FFO: Grouper, Cranes, Broadcast, Low, Mazzy Star.

View Event →
The Sleeves (Tara Cunningham & Jack Cooper)
Jul
15

The Sleeves (Tara Cunningham & Jack Cooper)

The Sleeves are the duo of Jack Cooper and Tara Cunningham, both likely known to you as one half of Modern Nature. Following an all-instrumental Mossy Tapes release last November, Cooper and Cunningham have recorded 10 new songs showcasing their vocal and guitar interplay with only the faintest echoes of prior efforts (individually or collectively), representing a fully realized leap forward from their largely improvised debut.

'The Sleeves' is a somewhat counter intuitive take on the guitar/vocal duo formula (provided you think there is such a thing) though it's not nearly as simplistic as "the space between the notes" -- it would be the height of exaggeration to say an album this simultaneously expansive and incandescent is unprecedented. But it doesn't happen nearly often enough, either.

The Sleeves have London and NYC dates planned for this July and September respectively, with further touring to be announced in the coming weeks.

“What I initially found so familiar and exciting about playing guitar with Jack - and continually do - is that our approach to music is pretty much exactly the same. And that is - to celebrate the space that frames ideas, embraces silence, to play simply, simultaneously championing our respective unembellished guitar sounds, whilst looking for sounds that aren’t like a guitar at all - bells, birds, switching between radio stations etc. It’s rare to find someone who - whatever this means to you - ‘gets it’ - and I think when we started playing guitar together, we both knew the other had something of whatever our ‘it’ was.”

“‘The Sleeves’ is the sum of our shared musical journey thus far, an exciting mix of familiarity and uncharted territory in its approach to structure and how we use our guitars and voices. It feels to me like we are both citing shared references and traditions, whilst floating in our own, single-cell world that is completely genre-less. That grey area is where we seem to thrive. As Jack says, it feels like music that really couldn’t be made by anyone else.” - Tara Cunningham

“Tara and I started playing guitar together at the start of 2024. It was an improvised music night in a railway arch in South London. The set was great but there was a couple of minutes in particular where Tara and I really sort of locked in. We made a record a few weeks later. There was something in the way we played together that felt very intuitive from the start. We recognised a shared approach right away and an affinity to the way each other played.”

“During the summer we got stuck in a traffic jam coming home from a show in Glasgow. We spent a few hours singing along to the Mamas & The Papas and Simon & Garfunkel and over the course of the day, like magic we became The Sleeves."

“We're excited about it because it feels like music that really couldn’t be made by anyone else. We don’t bring different elements to it. We both bring exactly the same things. It’s the result of our similarities.” - Jack Cooper

View Event →
Marlon Dubois
Jul
8

Marlon Dubois

Pop Mutations presents:

Marlon DuBois

+ elcammgguod

Wednesday 8th July

The Glad Cafe

14+ (under 18s must be accompanied by an adult)

Marlon DuBois is an avant garde polymath rapper, producer, director and performance artist, from two hours north of NYC. He is known in the global underground for being the founding member of Shed Theory, a 10-membered east coast rap crew, incubated and emerged from a literal shed, in the woods of Woodstock, NY. While ST started to take shape in 2021, Marlon (né 2001) had been constructing digital media since kindergarten.

Marlon’s work leans far more experimental and genre-oblivious than most of his predecessors. His vocal effects, rather than sounding overly alien or robotic, inspire a feeling of human connectivity. This much needed relatable humanness shines through at Marlon’s shows and becomes tangible community.

Thus far Marlon has been remarkably self-produced and self-taught – recording, mixing and mastering most of his own, and much of ST’s members’ output – from the shed. He is a sought after collaborator and featured vocalist, having worked w/ Surf Gang, Smokedope2016, Bby Goyard, Bloodz Boi, Daine, and extensively with Joeyy. Marlon is also an accomplished video director, collab’ing on nearly 100% of his and Shed members’ MV output, and working on video productions with Haunted Mound, xaviersobased, DJ Lucas, and phreshboyswag. Marlon is uncannily prolific and prodigious - Shed iconography is recognized worldwide and their merch recently made it into the renowned chain skate shop Zumiez. His most recent EP, Bogworld dropped June 26, 2026.

View Event →
Norman Blake + Adam Ross
Jul
4

Norman Blake + Adam Ross

Pop Mutations presents:

Norman Blake

and support from Adam Ross

Saturday 4th July

The Old Hairdresser's

18+ show

Norman Blake is a Scottish songwriter and founding member of Teenage Fanclub. The band rose to prominence in the 1990s with hit albums such as Bandwagonesque and Grand Prix and quickly became known for their guitar-heavy melodic sound and sun-soaked harmonies. They have continued to develop into one of Scotland’s best loved bands and are currently working on a new album. Norman has also collaborated with a range of artists including Joe Pernice, Jad Fair, The Tenniscoats, Euros Childs, Bernard Butler and James Grant. This will be a rare opportunity to hear Norman sing songs from his extensive back-catalogue in a stripped-back setting.

Support comes from Adam Ross. Adam is a songwriter described as “one of Scotland’s most talented singers and songwriters” (Klof). His new album, Bring On The Apathy, is his third solo record, following on from 2024’s Littoral Zone produced by Andrew Wasylyk. He is known for his unique blend of indie-folk characterised by intricate lyrics which blend storytelling, humour and moments of poignancy. He is also the creative force behind indie-pop band Randolph’s Leap.

View Event →
Levitation Room
Jun
24

Levitation Room

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Levitation Room

+ Special Guests

Wednesday 24th June

Stereo

18+

Levitation Room emerges from the heart of Los Angeles, a city where the weight of fast-paced culture can make your legs feel like pillars, yet this cosmic quartet defies gravity, lifting listeners into a dreamlike state with swirling, mind-expanding soundscapes and thought-provoking lyricism. Their hallucinogenic melodies hum with echoes of the Summer of Love, conjuring sun-drenched visions of carefree afternoons spent in euphoric haze. Infused with meditations on life, love, society, and self- awareness, Levitation Room crafts a sonic journey that feels both timeless and transportive—an invitation to drift beyond the ordinary and into the unknown.

View Event →
Peter Holsapple
Jun
11

Peter Holsapple

Pop Mutations presents:

Peter Holsapple

+ U.S. Highball

Thursday 11th June

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Peter Holsapple has recorded an extraordinary new solo album he’s calling The Face of 68. It reflects on age, humor and hurt, with his usual high-quality wordplay and legendary gifts for melody and harmony. For longtime fans and newcomers alike, Peter’s record is an enduring testament to his striking abilities as musician and songwriter. Don Dixon (R.E.M., Smithereens) produced it in Peter’s hometown of Durham NC, and the rhythm section was Rob Ladd (Connells, Don Henley) on drums and Robert Sledge (Ben Folds

Five) on electric bass. Grammy®-nominated engineer Jason Richmond was at the console for the four-day session, with Dixon mixing at his home studio in Canton, Ohio.

There are guest turns from Marti Jones, who was the first artist to cover Peter’s songs on her debut album (Unsophisticated Time on A&M) and from Mark Simonsen, who co-produced Peter’s single “Don’t Mention the War” in 2017.

But mostly it’s about Peter Holsapple: his stunning songs, his strong vocals and his newly- rediscovered love of lead guitar that came about when he was drafted by crafty pop intellectuals The Paranoid Style to play on their most recent album, The Interrogator (Bar/None), in 2023. “I’ve been at this for a long time,” Peter admits. “I picked up my mom’s guitar after seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, just like hundreds at that time. It stuck, and I began singing and playing in bands right after that. My first recording session was in 1972, with Chris Stamey and Mitch Easter (Let’s Active, R.E.M. producer) in the band. I moved to New York six years later and joined forces with Chris’ band, The dB’s. We cut several albums and toured the US and England. Then I moved to Los Angeles and joined Continental Drifters. That band also cut some records, toured Germany and the US and moved to New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, I found my way back to North Carolina and my roots there. My home studio, The Hit Shed, has offered me the workspace to create endlessly, and The Face of 68 is the proof in the pudding, as it were.”

“Larger Than Life,” which was written after the death of Continental Drifters’ founder Carlo Nuccio, allowed Peter to grieve in his most comfortable manner. “Carlo was an inspiration who made me work harder and stay at the top of my game,” Peter reflects. “I miss him so much every day, his presence and ineffable energy. I have so many questions for him on the other side that I may never get answers for.”

“And from time to time Please send us a sign:

Is it all by design, or just

Larger than life?”

Then there’s the observational “That Kind of Guy” which takes on the record collector whom we all know. “I met a guy once who bragged that he’d never open his copy of the I Fought the Law album by the Bobby Fuller Four. All I could think was ‘you’re sure gonna miss some great songs, then.’”

“I got ‘In the Street,’

I got ‘Down on the Street,

I got the complete ‘Down on the Street’ reliquary...”

And the album features one of Peter’s sweetest love songs, “She and Me,” which was written for

his wife, “my hero.”

“And she,

She probably thinks I’m pretty great

Even though I’m punching well above my weight,

So we’re just gonna wait and see.

“We,

We keep it interesting, I must admit:

Never dreamed we’d find the perfect fit

That we found in she and me.”

Overall, it’s a fine way to see his way to a future of rock and roll, love and the inevitable loss

over time.

The Face of 68 is Peter Holsapple, facing forward with electric guitar in hand, and looking

enthusiastically at what’s to come.

View Event →
Laura Krieg
Jun
10

Laura Krieg

Pop Mutations & Sentinel present:

Laura Krieg

+ Special Guests

Wednesday 10th June

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

With “Crépuscule” I wanted to make people dance, even if they’re sad. I worked on a more ethereal and warm sound, on songs to listen to with an open heart.

I wanted to explore the imaginary of the end; build a series of images captured at the moment when everything is about to disappear.

A red sky in the desert, a diffuse character taking form but refusing to become real.

I approached the writing of the album as multiple attempts to grasp this entity, resulting in a collection of fragments.

I was inspired by classic Greek tragedy: Medea, the outsider, standing by the abysm, in the middle of the emptiness. And by postdramatic theater: Hamlet-machine, the impossibility to have a voice in the shadow of the Ghost. The omnipresence of death where we expect life.

Another idea that drove the making of the album was the “in-between”: make encounter a feeling that drives me towards the deepness and another that pulls me up, searching for transcendence. In this liminal state, explore the space between melancholy and desire.

Dancing to the end of everything. I placed the body in the center of the process, as a form of resistance:“Au milieu de la nuit, les corps sont brillants”.

View Event →
Radhika 'Cine-Pop' album launch
Jun
5

Radhika 'Cine-Pop' album launch

Pop Mutations & monorail present:

Radhika 'Cine-Pop' album launch

+ The Cords (acoustic set)

+ Stone Anthem

+ DJ Gerard Love + Stephen Pastel

Mono

Friday 5th June

Radhika Meera Dade: “Ever since I entered this realm, music has surrounded me in every way possible. The sounds of magic have been nourishing my soul since birth, the first memories I have as a young child are listening to my dad’s eclectic vinyl collection. I feel so lucky to have been exposed to such a range of music at a really young age: artists from Alice Coltrane to The Go-Betweens, all of these musicians have subconsciously and consciously inspired me musically in many different ways”.

Glass Modern is very proud to present the debut album by Radhika Meera Dade. Cine-Pop is a collection of songs that flow gently and easily in and out of each other – a suite, a short film, everything an album should be. Coming in at 33.3 minutes, it’s the perfect length for an album, it doesn’t short change you, it doesn’t stay too long – it’s designed to be played in one sitting. It’s like being in a friend’s house and noticing the things that are most important in their life – objects, family portraits, records, musical equipment, their curated accumulation. It reflects so many things – culture, community, fandom and the incredible bond between Radhika and her father, Sushil, the Future Pilot AKA.

The record spans generations and continents but its home is always Radhika and the family jams she made with Sushil in various garages, bedrooms and garden dens – her soaring voice and love of all kinds of music from Bollywood to Goth Pop to The Glasgow School. The songs are collected from memory and the immediacy of time – one goes all the way back to her 10 year old self penning Future Me, an eco anthem. In different moments other musicians appear – most notably key collaborator, Eric MacDonald, on hazy synth and keys, and Radhika’s mother Vinita, who has a gorgeous voice too. The Glasgow School is very present – Mitch Mitchell (The Pastels) , Gerard Love (Lightships/ ex-Teenage Fanclub) and Tracyanne Campbell (Camera Obscura) all bring their casual magic to the table.

Cine-Pop, mostly made in Glasgow at La Chunky Studio with the excellent Colin McGeogh (who also contributes flute, keys and electronics) is a one-off. It’s unrepeatable – there, gone. It’s the world through the eyes of a dazzling young Indo-Scottish woman. Everything she is has gone into it, is part of it and is there for a reason. Following on from the first single, Starry Eyes, which was played multiple times on BBC 6Music and other stations, other singles to be released from the album include Feline Bandits plus a version of the Strawberry Switchblade classic Since Yesterday.

Radhika will also be collaborating with Glasgow-based film maker, Laura Meek, on promos and the plan is to play live throughout the year.

View Event →
Car Culture (aka physical therapy)
May
27

Car Culture (aka physical therapy)

Pop Mutations presents:

Car Culture

+ Loris S. Sarid

+ Loradeniz

Wednesday 27th May

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

New Jersey born, Queens based artist Car Culture, the alias of Daniel Fisher (best known as Physical Therapy), releases his new album Rest Here via NAFF Recordings today. Exemplifying Fisher’s wide ranging approach to production, Rest Here plays like a well-worn mixtape: ranging from fuzzy dream pop to hypnotic downtempo. Rest Here includes the single “Doesn’t Really Matter,” a hazy power ballad duet with vocals from Fisher and Chicago-based indie star Squirrel Flower. To celebrate the release of Rest Here, Car Culture will perform live in New York City at Nowadays on October 16th with Ian Kim Judd, J. Albert, livwutang, and Purelink. Purchase tickets HERE.

Rest Here, which was highlighted in New York Magazine’s 17 Albums We Can’t Wait To Hear This Fall and aptly described as “a trippy, blissful album by his [Daniel Fisher’s] impressionistically psychedelic alter ego,” represents an evolution for Fisher, known for his long and winding discography of dance music releases. While earlier works often touched on the emotive and melodic, Rest Here moves firmly into songwriting territory, with the addition of live instrumentation and a focus on vocals. Fisher has always approached his projects with a talent for world-building and on Rest Here, he creates something tender and captivating.

Constructed over the course of 3 years between New York and Montreal alongside a cast of collaborators – mainly long-time friend Patrick Holland – layers of guitars, drums and samples come together to build a heartsick wall of sound. These emotionally and sonically dense songs inhabit a familiar place for Fisher, somewhere between brain-rotted cognitive dissonance and tear jerking sentimentality. Warm psychedelic shoe-wave primed for emotional projection. Rest Here features Fisher’s own vocals as well as London’s Ms Ray and aforementioned Squirrel Flower. The project also includes contributions from NAFF label co-founder Priori, and New York’s J. Albert. The album was mixed by Patrick Holland and mastered by Matt Colton. Cover Photo by Ganem Haiek with artwork and design by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier. The new album also includes the previously shared singles “Rest Here” and “Is Love Knowing,” along with the tracks “Coping Mechanism” and “Nothingburger” from the Nothingburger EP released this summer, which also includes two reimaginings from Purelink and Hotline TNT respectively. Fisher recently spoke with Larry Fitzmaurice for his Substack Last Donut of The Night to discuss creating the album further. Check out the piece HERE.

This fall, Fisher will embark on his first ever live tour, kicking off with a release party thrown by NAFF Recordings on October 12th in Montreal at Parquette Montreal with additional live dates in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, London, Berlin and Milan to follow. See full list of upcoming shows below.

Over the course of the last 15 years, Fisher has had a prolific, zig-zagging career, releasing genre-agnostic music under a number of aliases, often on his own Allergy Season label. From his first EP on the ground breaking label Hippos In Tanks, Fisher has continually created surprising, playful electronic music. Through his DJ sets around the globe and his long running NTS Radio show, Fisher manages to weave these many threads together.

As Car Culture, Fisher brings focus to his sentimental side. In the fan-favorite Remissions mix series, he collages fuzzy folktronica, found sounds and unexpected edits into foot-gazing narratives. His productions as Car Culture are sometimes serene, sometimes heart wrenching. Zoom out and you hear tranquilizing electronica, zoom in and you find soulful songwriting. Fisher released his first LP as Car Culture, Dead Rock, in 2021, referred to by Resident Advisor as “[one of] the great ambient records to emerge from the Brooklyn-Queens techno scene.”

Listen to Rest Here above, see full album details and upcoming live dates below, and stay tuned for more from Car Culture coming soon.

View Event →
Blind yeo
May
26

Blind yeo

Pop Mutations & The Glad Cafe presents:
Blind Yeo

plus supports tba

Tuesday 26th May

The Glad Cafe

‘Anam cara’ means ‘soul friend’ in Gaelic,” says Blind Yeo singer, songwriter and guitarist Will Greenham. “The human face is the window to the soul. Your soul friend can know more about you than you know about yourself. These connections can last seconds or a lifetime. Sometimes you have to say goodbye to that moment that will never happen again. We captured the song live in a turbulent and emotive time and in true Blind Yeo spirit you will never hear the song this way again.

The project began in the quiet and solitude of lockdown, before coming alive in a creatively explosive residency at the newly opened Cornish Bank in 2022 – a vibrant not-for-profit community arts space in the centre of Falmouth which has become the heart of a thriving underground Cornish scene of which Blind Yeo are very much a part. The band has since grown into a psychedelic carnival of sound best experienced live'

View Event →
screensaver
May
25

screensaver

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

screensaver

+ Special Guests

Monday 25th May

The Old Hairdresser's

18+

Throwing off the shackles of existential dread with hypnotic beats, punk energy and swirling synths, screensaver take weighty themes about power, lies, corporate coercion and systemic failure and deliver them via their blend of maximalist post punk. With a dance heartbeat, a kraut-rock back bone and new wave glimmer, there’s a catharsis in their anxiety induced compositions that is both dark but danceable.

Beginning as a trans Pacific collaboration between Christopher Stephenson (Spray Paint/Exek) and Krystal Maynard (Bad Vision/Polo/Swim Team) back in 2016, the project spent three years in an incubatory state. By 2019 Christopher had long since relocated to Melbourne and the current line up now consists of James Beck (Personal Touch/ex Rat Columns) on drums, Dorian Vary (Soundtrackmusic) on bass and Jonnine Nokes (Horse Pills/Activities of Daily Living) on synth. 


In 2021 the band delivered their 10-track debut album Expressions of Interest on Upset the Rhythm (UK) and Heavy Machinery (AU) to positive international response. Establishing a sound on the album that ranged from electronic driven krautrock, to post-punk full of tribal toms and dirge-y synths to death-disco style tracks with touches of EDM. See praise for the record on Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, KEXP, Post Trash, Blunt Magazine, Clash (UK). The album was also a regular feature on Henry Rollin’s KCRW Santa Monica radio show.

In 2023 screensaver released their sophomore album Decent Shapes which came out as a split release on Poison City Records (AUS) and Upset the Rhythm (UK) and extended on the bands brand of maximalist synth driven post-punk established on their debut. The first single The Guilt found itself in the AMRAP Independent Music Charts top 10 during its first few weeks of release and received praise on Rolling Stone Australia , Post Trash , Raven Sings the Blues and PBS FM. The album has received excellent reviews on NME, KEXP, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll and Brooklyn Vegan to name a few.

“You can hear the rocking yearning of peak Sleater-Kinney, the blunt thunk of early ’80s disco punk, coldwave’s synth-licked gloom (or the modern update of BELGRADO), and high-rolling Banshees goth rock. Often some of all of those are happening at once, which is in itself a niche of sorts, but a bigger factor in all this is that screensaverr are really adept songwriters” - Noel Gardner, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Being somewhat prolific in nature screensaver released their third album Three Lens Approach on Poison City in Nov 2025 with praise from Rolling Australia, Raven Sings the Blues, Post Punk.com, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, RRR Radio and was the feature record on Melbourne’s PBS Radio the week after release and has also been on heavy rotation on Henry Rollin’s radio show on KCRW.

“Three Lens Approach moves like a warning flare shot across a collapsing horizon. No sermons, no tidy moral. Just five musicians channeling the world’s pressure cooker into something that kicks, sweats, trembles, and insists on being felt. screensaver aren’t documenting the chaos…they’re swallowed up in it, transmitting whatever they can before the signal cuts. If you want anything expanded, louder, meaner, or more chaotic, just say the word.” – Alice Teeple, Post Punk.com

The band has toured Australia multiple times, embarked on two international tours, the USA in September 2022, playing Gonerfest 19 in Memphis, Tennessee and the UK and Europe in August 2024 including Get Lost Fest X in Hamburg, Germany. They’ve also shared bills with Tropical Fuck Storm, Party Dozen, Snooper, Coffin, Power Plant and more.

The band is set to return to Europe and the UK thanks to Annibale Tours in May 2026.

View Event →
The Ex
May
22

The Ex

Pop Mutations presents:
The Ex
+ Special Guests
Friday 22nd May
The Flying Duck
18+

Few bands are as focused on potential challenges, on what is yet to come, as The Ex. Which is pretty remarkable for a band that celebrated 45 years of existence last year, a turbulent journey filled with an impressive series of highlights. However, nostalgia has never been this band's forte, as they like no other succeed in reinventing themselves, finding new alliances and fascinating challenges along the way. Stay out of that comfort zone for long enough and it just might disappear.

Take a look at the band's story - an unpredictably winding road you can partly keep track of with the chronological series of reissues that they have been making available - and you'll conclude that there never was any stagnation. What started with raucous punk, rooted in the squatting and punk movements of the late 70s, turned into an impossible-to-label range that made its mark nationally as well as internationally.

The Ex played more than 2000 concerts in 45 countries, often as a pioneer. In the 80s, they were one of the very first Western bands to explore Central and Eastern- Europe, from Hungary to the former Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia. Only after that, Canada and the United States followed. A crucial link turned up at the start of the new millennium, when the band traveled to Ethiopia for the first time, backed by a VPRO TV crew. It was the start of a unique chapter in the band's history: several tours (on several continents), an intense collaboration with Ethiopian artists (from Getatchew Mekuria, with whom they played more than 100 concerts, to dancer and cultural ambassador Melaku Belay, and many others) and lots of releases ensured The Ex also became a pioneer in the 'crossover' world, where music from different regions collides.

The pandemic was a standstill for many, including The Ex. Or perhaps it was more a kind of recharging, as the band is back on national and international stages with new music, ready to return to the studio. Once again, their versatility is evident. Whether you're talking about a legendary rock venue in Amsterdam (The Ex played more than three dozen concerts at Paradiso, with a.o. an Ex Festival during its 50th birthday celebrations) or a festival in Austria where the best of the international free music scene gathers (in november the band plays the legendary Wels Unlimited): the band is so unique that it's all possible.

Just like in the previous decades, new opportunities keep turning up. Only recently, Andy Moor and Terrie Ex contributed to a contemporary live soundtrack to Limite (a classic of Brazilian cinema), during the Holland Festival. Once again an illustration of the fact that the band is so much more than four musicians in a straitjacket. The Ex is still an eager sponge for diverse inspirations, as well as a generator for ideas, a way of life, an ode to vitality and an extended hand.

And they celebrated this with a festival for their 45th birthday. Not a predictable rearview mirror event, no tribute to what once was, but an opportunity to show what living, organic interaction can lead to in the moment. And right now, early 2025, there's a full new album called If Your Mirror Breaks, and a big tour all around Europe, yes, indeed again: "Forward In All Directions".

— Text by Guy Peters.

View Event →
MAQUINA.
May
18

MAQUINA.

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

MAQUINA.

+ Special Guests

Monday 18th May

The Flying Duck

18+

The fierce Lisbon trio MAQUINA. pushes the edges of body music with hypnotic krautrock rhythms, driving industrial beats, and raw punk power. Their live-centered sound thrives on relentless drums, gritty bass, and sharp guitar noise, delivering primal intensity that breaks genre boundaries. Their 2024 album ‘PRATA’ channels organic dance energy perfect for both underground clubs and dance floors alike. MAQUINA.’s live performances are second to none where the repetition leads to steaming mosh pits every single time.

View Event →
Dylan Henner
May
17

Dylan Henner

Little is known about Dylan Henner, who landed on the ambient scene in 2020 with cassette releases for Phantom Limb, Belgian label Dauw, and cult tastemakers AD93. He barely promotes himself publicly, instead choosing to communicate through disarmingly poetic song titles. His debut album “The Invention of the Human” (AD93, 2020 - a recipient of BBC 6Music’s Album of the Year honours) responds to a set of philosophical questions - what exactly makes us human? What good is civilisation when there’s so much misery attached to it? How will technology affect humanity in the long run? In 2022, he released follow-up You Always Will Be on AD93, which traced the course of a single life from birth, to childhood, to adolescence, adulthood, parenthood, middle-age, old-age, and demise. He has also covered Raymond Scott, Terry Riley, Aphex Twin, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Su Tissue among numerous further projects.

Henner is not to keen on promoting himself on socials, instead choosing to communicate mostly through wondrously imaginative soundscapes and disarmingly poetic song titles (’The Sun Made the Sea Look Gold’, ’Children Were Climbing The Old Tree in the Park’, ’A Spring With The Remains Of A Fire’) and ditto visual artwork.

The Invention of the Human attempts to tackle a set of basic philosophical questions - what exactly makes us human? What good is civilisation when there’s so much misery attached to it? How will technology affect humanity in the long run? - through the mind and soundcard of a computer.

The result is a collection of superbly constructed human-not-human soundscapes built from synthesized vocals that are morphed into two pocket symphonies, with moods ranging from serene and cerebral to alienated and desolate, referencing ambient and experimental music, sound design and field recordings. The invention of the Human is a bleak vision of a future in which humans are only a small part of the equation. A new world that’s neither utopic or dystopic, with nature and technology in a strange yet perfect balance.

2022 saw the release of a brand new full length on AD93 You Always Will Be. The album, a single 40-minute piece, tells the story of a single life from birth to death. Dylan writes “I've been thinking about the passage of life a lot recently as I lost all four of my grandparents but celebrated the birth of my daughter all within a short period of time. The brevity and preciousness of being really hit me."

The record enjoyed critical acclaim on release, including being named as Album of the Week by The Quietus, by leading music writer Shawn Reynaldo and by 6Music’s Tom Ravenscroft.

Dylan Henner has also covered Terry Riley and Su Tissue and released a loveletter to a train journey through rural Pennsylvania in late 2021 EP Amtracks. He has released cassette and digital records for Brighton-based Phantom Limb, Belgian label Dauw and AD93’s tape-only imprint Syon.

View Event →