Crack Magazine’s Festival Guide 2024

Celebrating 30 years of cutting-edge experiments in sound, moving image and contemporary theory, Sonic Acts makes a grand return. This year’s Biennial is organised under the title The Spell of the Sensuous, taking inspiration from philosopher and ecologist David Abram’s 1996 book, and will focus on “multi-sensory cultural practices responding to the climate emergency and global geopolitics”.

Revitalised after 5 years off, this multi-venue music marathon is going hard. Motivating you to clock up the miles around central Bristol is a lengthy bucket list of must-sees, including the return of sweaty US art-rock heroes Les Savy Fav, fast-rising grime oddball Casisdead, Dublin noise-rockers Gilla Band, deployer of heavy riddims Flowdan, plus Gazelle Twin, Evian Christ, L’Rain and Wu Lu. Picking up the baton later on are the likes of DJ Python, Nick León and Saoirse, plus a host of today’s most exploratory selectors. What’s more, Fever Ray brings the curtain down at Bristol Beacon the following Thursday. See you under the lights. 

Returning for a second year is this three-day symposium exploring the intersection between electronic music, technology and digital arts – and its impact on society. Highlight keynote speakers telling us what it all means for the future are Brian Eno, Yellow Squares grime motivator Elijah, and Crack Magazine cover stars TraTraTrax. And after the talks? The parties, with future-trance exponents DJ Boring and Marlon Hoffstadt (a.k.a. DJ Daddy Trance), Or:la b2b Spray, and Swiss techno operator DJ AYA.

Following a four-year hiatus, Somerset House’s Assembly event series returns to platform some of the most forward-thinking sound artists operating today. Alongside Aymaran multidisciplinary artist Chuquimamani-Condori (formerly known as Elysia Crampton), you can also expand your mind with experimental Celtic bagpipe player Brìghde Chaimbeul, spiritual selector Nkisi and industrial provocateur Dis Fig.

Sónar is bringing its typically ambitious and on-point programming to the Portuguese capital for another tour of the contemporary electronic music landscape that takes in everywhere from the main room to the experimental hinterlands. Stop-offs include Daniel Lopatin stepping into his Oneohtrix Point Never guise, Tiga and HudMo bringing L’Ecstasy to life, Shygirl tearing through her own club-focused pop bangers, and a whole load of electronic practitioners claiming their own place in the continuum. All that, plus an “anti-disciplinary” Sónar+D programme of talks, films and art. Brain food overload.

Launched in 2016 with modest ambitions to support Belgium’s local electronic scene, this annual event has evolved into a six-day electronic expo featuring killer DJs and live acts going about their business in cutting-edge venues across the Belgian capital. With a loose definition of electronic music, this year’s line-up runs the stylistic gamut from Catalan experimental pianist Marina Herlop, club music magpie Bolis Pupul and off-centre electro Canadian Marie Davidson to club-focussed operators HiTech, Blawan and Bitter Babe. And how about a full-tilt rave in a tunnel to finish? Yes please.

Showcase the staggering breadth of programming at this reliably adventurous Dutch gathering in 90 words or less? That’s a big ask. Among the sonic innovators and multidisciplinary artists showing up are Neon Dance, who’ll perform to a score by the much missed Jóhann Jóhannsson; post-rap futurist Slauson Malone 1; Australia’s mesmerising improv trio, The Necks; experimental soundscaper Annea Lockwood. All that and we haven’t even touched on the big names: Autechre, Oneohtrix Point Never and Sunn O))). Serious business, this.

Before The Ramones’ performance there set the wheels in motion for UK punk, or Macca composed his trippy score for its hippy Million Volt Light and Sound Rave, the Roundhouse was a steam engine repair shed built with a train turntable at its heart. In the Round taps into this past by installing a circular stage for a series of special one-off shows. This year’s performers include cult folk singer Vashti Bunyan, queen of south London’s genre-dissolving alt-pop scene Tirzah, footwork disruptor Jlin, and a co-headlining pairing of outsider bluesman Lonnie Holley with saxophonist and sound artist Matana Roberts.

Bristol New Music honours its 10th anniversary by championing local and internationally renowned artists within the realms of contemporary art and sound design. Bristol-based multidisciplinary, Sarahhson, opens the weekend in a Grade II* listed church, merging surround sound and contemporary dance with her interpretation of the building’s rich history. Experimental artist and composer Klein returns with a rare performance set to captivate The Lantern. The Bug graces Strange Brew with a specially-installed rig for his heavy, industrial dub to close Saturday, whilst Jlin and Ryoji Ikeda headline with a mesmerising audiovisual show to challenge all of your senses. 

Tick a visit to U.K. grassroots gig institution Joiners off your bucket list as you hotfoot it around this spirited indie rock and pop crawl. Shame’s kitchen-sink punk-pop catharsis and Dream Wife’s jagged, Cure-sized riffs tops things off, but there’s a whole fizzy grab-bag of emerging talent to keep you moving. Namely purveyor of lo-fi funk Willie J. Healey, indie janglers-turned-disco darlings The Orielles and sugar coated shoegazers Our Girl. Pack your comfiest kicks for this inner-city adventure.

Now in its 21st edition, Nuits Sonores’ flagship Lyon event brings together a stacked programme of local and international electronic acts for a week of festivities. This year, we’ve teamed up with the cherished festival to offer our Supporters the Crack Magazine Pass, highlighting and guaranteeing you entry to our must-see performances, which include Catalan avant-garde composter Marina Herlop, Belgian pop vocalist Martha Da’Ro, and a rooftop rave soundtracked by Paquita Gordon b2b Marco Shuttle to take you into the early hours.

Bringing in the summer in true French fashion, Festival le Bon Air returns for its 9th edition as an ode to the changing of seasons; with a line-up boasting some of the brightest acts in techno and UK bass. Two powerhouses of their respective scenes, Helena Hauff and SHERELLE, have been granted residencies to showcase their talents alone and with friends throughout the weekend. The sweet Marseille soleil will also bring DJs such as Ben UFO, Peach, Floating Points and DJ Boring across the channel for the newly-upgraded 3-day programme of festivities. 

Dutch tastemakers Dekmantel have brought back the intimate Lente Kabinet Festival for its 11th Edition. Located within the lush sylvan grounds of Het Twiske, the two-day interdisciplinary festival boasts a phenomenal lineup of international DJs and live acts, including astrological industrialist Manuka Honey, splice ‘n’ dice maestro Simo Cell, and Dutch cultural mainstays such as Palmbomen II. The Dekmantel crew have fashioned Lente Kabinet under the concepts of creative exploration, community and collaboration, inviting festivalgoers to reunite and reconnect: with music, with the arts, with nature and—through all of the above—with each other. Want to start your 2024 summer festival season right? Take a pilgrimage to Lente Kabinet.

Edition number ten of this flagship blowout from the bleeding-edge outdoor rave specialists. A few things are guaranteed at this one-dayer stretching across five stages in a stunning green haven in the heart of Dortmund: a skin-prickling sound system, eye-melting visuals and a doozy of a lineup peddling dance music’s most propulsive sounds. Creating a techno-heavy disturbance this year are Denmark’s Mama Snake, Amsterdam operator KI/KI, curveball-selecting free spirit Young Marco and acid techno don Gerd Janson, who goes b2b with Narciss.

The globe-trotting philosophy and music weekender lands in Hay to cook up another five-star feast of brain food. With festival-unfriendly discussions on the future of conflict, anti-reality and quantum theory, featuring speakers including Slavoj Žižek, Paterson Joseph and Myriam François (among hundreds of others), this is a utopia of existential crises. We’ll also discover what the future sounds like for dub-folk-into-wyrd-jazz meanderers Tara Clerkin Trio, gnawa-powered synth explorer James Holden, Richard Dawson, Sea Power and The Orb. Bring an open mind.

GALA has been centring the dancefloor since 2016 with this congenial summer tear up designed to celebrate club camaraderie. The big names bringing dance music communities together this year are garage pioneer DJ EZ, trance explorer Jobs Jobse, Shy One, Palms Trax, and the inseparable K-Lone and Facta. Bringing GALA’s ethos of unity to the decks are b2bs including Sherelle and Kode9, Eris Drew with Octo Octa, DJ Paulette in the mix with Prosumer and an electric pairing of Hannah Holland and Josh Caffé. Leave your hangups at the gate.

The two biggest draws at this chock-a-block all-dayer set the freewheeling tone for the rest of proceedings. Even within their distinct sound worlds, motorik-powered psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Mercury Prize-winning hip-hop explorers Young Fathers regularly run amok around genres and styles – just like the rest of this wide-ranging lineup. With a bill careering from Bristolian post-punks Squid and Eartheater’s digi-pop melodrama to DJs Ben UFO, Helena Hauff and Optimo (Espacio), you’ll find no genre silos here.

No longer just a seaside party in the Adriatic idyll of Puglia, Italy’s Polifonic crew have also been bringing their summer festival to their home city of Milan for the past few years. They can’t replace the salty sea air, but they are making the trip to Italy’s industrial north as appealing as possible with a lineup committed to gender balance, exploration and experimentation. Which in practice means house, disco and cosmic techno spanning the time-stretching talents of Roi Perez, DJ Gigola, Shanti Celeste and Disclosure.

Sónar’s annual spin-off series once again hands the reins over to cutting-edge club crews and dance music labels for a week of parties that reflect their guest curators’ particular USPs. Among those attempting to outdo each other in Barcelona’s open-air museum, Poble Espanyol, are Berlin’s tech-house crew Keinemusik, Zurich’s globetrotting Adriatique with their feted ‘X’ event, beloved daytime merchants Brunch! Electronik and the mighty Elrow with the dancefloor escapism of their Dance with the Serpent concept. Pick one, or collect them all.

For one week every year, Bristol’s harbourside amphitheatre swaps the sound of skateboard decks popping on concrete for a week of live music courtesy of Bristol Sounds. Pop and rock nostalgists will roll in this year for performances by Busted, James Arthur, Skindred and Placebo, while Gentleman’s Dub Club and The Skints lead a day of skanking. The closing weekend is where it’s at, though, with Annie Mac bringing her Before Midnight experience to a party-minded all-dayer, and indie-rock deities The Breeders topping a bill featuring Squid and Ty Segall.

This garden party in the grounds of Ribaucourt Castle, just outside Brussels, ticks all boxes for the modern festival-goer. With a shelf creaking under the weight of sustainability awards and a programme of activities for body and mind, this is a festival with a conscience. And just as much care has gone into a lineup featuring live sets by returning Brit-funk gems Cymande, Crack cover star Vegyn, Sofia Kourtesis and Kiasmos, plus a contemporary dance production from Lefto Early Bird. DJ Gigola, Ron Trent and Suze Ijó are among those on the decks.

Outbreak is back for another three-day binge of underground punk spanning art, zines, talks and sonic fury. Setting the theme on day one is a punk AF rap triumvirate of Action Bronson, Danny Brown collaborator JPEGMAFIA and Flatbush Zombies, who then pass the amp-wrecking baton to the great and good of hardcore past, present and future. American Football, Thursday, Nothing and Poison the Well unleash the hits, while Show Me the Body, Ceremony, hardcore supergroup Fiddlehead and the SST-worshipping Angel Du$t incite moshpit mayhem.

An ambitious, site-specific contemporary music project, in which a triad of annual events culminates every three years in The Festival. This year, it’s part two of the cycle – The Prequel – with 16 artists gathering to workshop the solo and collaborative performances they will bring to next year’s festival proper. Among the musicians invited are locked-groove magician Oren Ambarchi, beguiling smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul, feted spiritual jazz and ambient artist Ganavya, Palestinian sound collagist and rapper Muqata’a, and Terre Thaemlitz (a.k.a. DJ Sprinkles).

Kappa Futur was first held in 2009 to mark a century since the Italian poet Filippo Marinetti unleashed his Futurist Manifesto on the world and its festival lineups continue to tap into that cultural movement’s zeal for forward momentum. Joining the OG architects of dance music Jeff Mills, Carl Craig and Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City at this post-industrial art park in Turin is a massed crew of modern-day dancefloor disruptors with their own agenda, including KI/KI, Anz, DJ Nobu, and Blawan in a mind-melting b2b with Skrillex.

This Madrid blockbuster found its feet last year after relocating to a purpose-built festival space powered by renewable energy. So this year it expands to four days with a stacked programme of rock, pop and everything in between. Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Sum 41, Garbage, Dua Lipa and Janelle Monáe sling scruffy anthems and pop pizazz, while pretenders to the crown like Tyla, Soccer Mommy, Nia Archives, Kneecap and Rema bring their own youthful rizz to the show. Our tip? Do not miss The Breeders.

The activism may be less in-your-face than it once was at this Serbian summer institution born out of youth rebellion, but EXIT keeps flying the flag for social change whenever it returns to its fortress home on the Danube. This year, the festival celebrates world-changing figures throughout history with a lineup swinging from Bonobo, Sama’ Abdulhadi and Helena Hauff to big guns Kenya Grace, Gucci Mane and Black Eyed Peas. There’s also room for Rage Against the Machine riff-conjurer Tom Morello, Anatolian psych wonders Altın Gün and a stage of politico-punk veterans.

Another city adventure to weave into your holiday plans. NOS Alive will set up shop by the riverside in Algés, just west of Lisbon, with seriously grammable views of the city’s iconic suspension bridge in the distance. Providing a fittingly epic soundtrack at sundown and beyond are Hi-NRG pop queen Dua Lipa, Grammy-nabbing R&B star Tyla, and sultry lo-fi pop stylists Khruangbin and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. A dedicated club stage, featuring Genesis Owusu and Tourist, offers a counterpoint to the anthemic chugging of Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam.

We’re not sure which is most impressive – the lineup featuring Gallic pop royalty Air, UK rave behemoths The Prodigy and Underworld, and a middle order packed with such gripping talents as Mulatu Astatke, Nomame, Cymande and JPEGMAFIA, or the festival’s idyllic location on Mount Cobetas within easy reach of one of Europe’s most cultured cities. Either way, Bilbao BBK Live is winning on most fronts, and comes with the added bonuses of a forested clubbing stage and the hula-hooping antics of pop’s most flamboyant septuagenarian Grace Jones.

Belgium’s summer party fixture is levelling up this year with a lineup that goes harder, faster and stronger than most. There’s the usual bewildering array of electronic music’s finest, including a Bicep A/V DJ set. Away from the dance, though, we’ll be steered through an audacious live programme featuring Venezuelan avant-pop experimentalist Arca, Taylor Swift’s bestie Ice Spice, cloud rapper Aminé, Turkish psych charmers Altın Gün, and U.K. representatives Skepta, Ezra Collective and Nia Archives. Dour never looked so vibrant.

After their excursion inland to Milan earlier in the summer, it’s all back to the stunning Itria Valley on the Puglia coast for the Polifonic crew’s flagship soirée in the sun. Diversity and rave positivity are the name of the game as a who’s who of dance music’s most cosmic and exploratory figures, including Bambounou, Saoirse, DJ Koze, Palms Trax, Dixon, Egyptian Lover, and Arabic funk and soul treasure hunters Habibi Funk, inject contemporary rhythms into a very Med pace of life. Only good vibes guaranteed.

Feel the sand between your toes at this Belgian seaside rave. With the help of spatial designers Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck, WeCanDance will transform Zeebrugge’s beach into a synapse-frying world that reflects this year’s theme, ‘Drop in the Light, Rise in the Dark’, over back-to-back August weekends. Looming large on the lineup is Soulja Boy, whose rowdy hip-hop swag will break up the continuum-exploring sounds of VTSS, Mama Snake, Sedef Adasi and Gabber Eleganza, a.k.a. hardcore DJ and gabber scene historian Alberto Guerrini.

Sziget can wield many impressive stats to wow you into submission but the headline figure is six – the number of days this festival on the Danube stretches out across. It’s a number that explains why there’s enough entertainment on offer (art, sport, a Budapest city pass, a full-tilt rave arena) to put any five-star holiday camp to shame. There’s also the small matter of a lineup featuring Fred again.., Skrillex, RAYE, Big Thief, Blondshell, Stormzy, Teezo Touchdown, Fontaines D.C., Kiasmos… We’re tired just writing it all down.

Incongruous as it may seem, for three days and nights every August the sleepy port city of Viana do Castelo, in Portugal’s far north, is transformed into the capital of techno thanks to Neopop. It’s no different at this 17th edition, with another busload of cutting-edge rave operators scheduled to arrive at the city’s waterfront fortress. Bringing the energy are Palestinian techno activist Sama’ Abdulhadi, avant trance and acid specialist Amelie Lens, Josh Wink, and Detroit techno visionaries Jeff Mills and Octave One. Portugal’s DubLab will deploy mind-melting visuals for additional oof.

MEO Kalorama brings Portugal’s busy festival season to a close in some style. After impressing in 2022 and 2023, this Lisbon knees-up proves three is the magic number with a real zinger of a lineup. Following in the footsteps of megastar artists who’ve performed at Bela Vista down the years are Afrobeats don Burna Boy, trip-hop heroes Massive Attack and NY disco-punks LCD Soundsystem. There are standout names everywhere you look, though, including The Smile, Fever Ray, Gossip, Ana Moura and Ezra Collective. One final blowout in the sun? Oh go on, then.