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The HoH team on their personal top tips for this year’s edition of the Rotterdam festival. |
| Words: Elvis Thirlwell, Lloyd Bolton, Lucy Harbron | Photo: Guus van der Aa |
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Left of the Dial is at last upon us. The Rotterdam festival has grown in reputation every year and admirably remains as committed as ever to bringing together the curators’ favourite new bands, whether or not everyone else has realised how great they are yet. This year’s lineup is packed with some of the most talked-about acts of the moment, including Bathing Suits, Wing!, lttl Mort and Wyatt, alongside a number of other current HoH obsessions like Goodbye, The New Eves’ Nina Winder-Lind and Holly Head. We are also playing our own part in proceedings as we team up with Outer Town Festival for an Official Unofficial stage at Club Uniek on Friday afternoon, which features Alice Costelloe, Mleko, Attic-O-Matic and Smudged. If you’ve managed to get a ticket to the now sold out festival, you’ve probably got a decent sense of who you are planning to catch amid its idiosyncratic multi-venue madness. While there are far more great acts than we can begin to unpack in detail here, these are some of our team’s personal top tips for the weekend’s festival to round out your plans. |
You know the feeling of being shot out of a cannon and swooping at an intensely fast speed over a molten-scape of fire-breathing lava monsters, and volcanoes belching up big boulders right next to your ear so you’re at near-death every two flaming seconds? No, me neither. But Normal Village’s live shows really are almost as thrilling. Their set at Outer Town earlier this year was a highlight of the festival, a brain-ballasting masterclass of cathartic-rage and balls-to-the-wall joy-maxxing. Mixing the emo yearns of Pushbike with the relentless manias of 100mph merchants UNIVERSITY, Leeds’ Normal Village sets are epic indeed, making you want to pump your fist in the air in triumph, and helping you remember what on earth all of this living is for. (Friday, V11, 19.40 / Saturday, Sahara, 16.10) [Elvis Thirlwell] |
Indefatigably provocative, Omertá’s growing reputation owes as much to the abandon of their riotous live set as their penchant for clickbait song subjects (see ‘Gay Hitler’, ‘Autofellatio’) or that clip everyone’s seen of the drummer jumping on a table at Dingwalls. These outward signs befit a band who truly embrace the chaos they create, appropriate to their emergence from squat gigs and long nights down the Old Dispensary. The band make a virtue of seeming to some like “the worst band ever” while most of their mock-outraged onlookers osmose to Omertà’s side of history. (Thursday, Sahara, 21.20 / Saturday, Uniek, 16.50 / Saturday, Salsability, 23.30) [Lloyd Bolton] |
Alice Costelloe put out one of our favourite albums of 2026 back in February. ‘Move On With The Year’ combines dreamy synth and flute tones with wistful melodies in a way reminiscent somewhat of a mixture of Julia Holter and Cate le Bon. Remember when Spotify told everyone their favourite genre was ‘Chamber Psych’? Well perhaps this is what Daniel Ek had in mind. At the same time, the candid emotionality of the lyrics gives these songs a punch that refuses to let this melodic ease be simply comfortable. The live show brings out the subtle driving energy of these songs, heightening every climactic revelation hidden between overlapping refrains. Alongside her duties as part of the main programming, Alice Costelloe opens our Official Unofficial stage at Club Uniek at midday on Friday. (Thursday, De Doelen WBH, 23.30 / Friday, Club Uniek, 12.00 / Friday, Paradijskerk, 16.50) [Lloyd Bolton] |
What do we know about Bristol’s foot foot? They take their name from a track on The Shaggs’ notorious so-bad-its-classic ‘Philosophy of The World’. Green Flag. Describing themselves as ‘snail freak prog’. Green Flag. They are signed to the finger-on-the-pulse-coded underground champions Memorials of Distinction, whose hit rate in recent years includes Truthpaste, wing! and Glasshouse Red Spider Mite. Green Flag. They have shared a brace of singles in 2026 – ‘the garden’ and ‘callous wall’ – that wend and wander from anxious post-punk dungeon-crawling to the beauteous, orchestral heights of high romanticism, reminding us of Pozi, Minor Conflict. Green green green flag. (Thursday, Salsability, 20.00 / Friday, Barrio, 18.00) [Elvis Thirlwell] |
To say that August are kind of like Geese would work in terms of drawing in intrigue, but it would also be boring, reductive and not even really scratch the surface of what this international collective is busy doing. Featuring members drawn from Bermuda to Devon and Essex to New York by way of Sheffield, that mish-mash lineup naturally breeds a whole host of musical influences. Currently, they don’t have any recorded music out, but behind a password on their website, their live record arguably captures them better than any studio time could. With flavours that defy any easy genre package, from gentle americana folk to art punk carnage, theirs is a show that does a lot but is also just really, really good fun. (Thursday, Uniek, 20:50 / Friday, Rotown, 16:00 / Friday TR Up, 21:00) [Lucy Harbron] |
casual smart are guaranteed to bring a shot of infectious joy to your weekend and are a must-see for the inspiring uplift they bring to the stage. The heart-on-sleeve immediacy of their recorded output translates seamlessly to storming live shows which feign effortlessness but never fail to make their impact. Sax and keys melodies abound over joyously yelled lyrics, the band evidently having the time of their lives. With only a few singles to their name, casual smart have already shown off so much range to their intimate brand of bedroom indie. This is a group who love their craft and are constantly working to refine it, as recognised last month with their receipt of the Welsh Music Prize’s Triskel Award. (Thursday, Arminius Down, 20.30 / Friday, V2_, 16.40) [Lloyd Bolton] |
One of the most talked-about bands spearheading the seeming jangle renaissance taking hold right now, Cardiff-via-Exeter quartet Bramwell make perfectly constructed guitar indie, shaped by a natural instinct for classic melodies and catchy hooks. At the same time, the harder edges, as heard on debut single ‘Problems’, transpose particularly well to the live setting. Building from the blueprint left by the likes of The Clean, Teenage Fanclub and all of my favourite Australian bands, Bramwell already feel so fully realised and more and more new fans are cottoning on. (Friday, Reijngoud, 22.00 / Saturady, Barrio, 19.20) [Lloyd Bolton] |
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