More about: Left of the Dial Festival

Saturday morning in Rotterdam looks very much like any other typical weekend morning in any other typical European city. Cafés are serving up freshly brewed coffee and bagels, electric trams are carving out routes through modernist skyscrapers, newspapers lie crumpled on balconies or park benches and locals are taking slow jogs along the waterfront. 

But, this Saturday, something a lot more offbeat is going down amongst the city’s bustle. It’s the final day of Left of the Dial festival—a three day multi-venue showcase of Europe’s best emerging alternative talent—and a small boat filled with artists and music fans is floating atop the city’s river. Slacker pop quartet Bull open the proceedings as the vessel lulls with the tide, bouncing their way through one of the sunnier sets of the weekend. With buoyant ‘90s-infused guitar licks, dozy vocals and punctual harmonies that are reminiscent of a very in-tune lads’ karaoke, there couldn’t really be a more apt choice of band for a mid-morning sail.

As we pass under the fabled Erasmus Bridge—the boat ride is a fleeting tour of the city’s sights just as much as it is a exhibition of new musical talent—Legss take the trip on a slightly darker turn with their intriguing and semi-scathing take on pastiche-laden art-rock. Chewing their way through a twenty-minute slot of crunchy guitars, prolific lyricism and simmering drum beats, Legss’ set operates as an outright antithesis to the jovial slot that preceded it.

Bull

This paradox is testament to Left of the Dial's multifarious line-up more generally: spanning over nine venues and three days, this festival is a whistle-stop tour of genre and style. Italia 90’s Fred Perry-cloaked politico-punk plays in one venue, whilst Rainn Byrns dishes up a healthy dose of lo-fi rhythms and suburban bedroom pop in another; The Netherlands’ own no wave-inspired group Baby’s Beserk have sweat dripping down the walls to their '90s rave rhythms before West England newcomers Saloon Dion clean up with their clanging playful post-punk minutes later; and twangy pink velvet-clad cowboys Tiña float through a set of intimate psychedelic pop next door to exasperated and snarling Manchester outfit Document.

As the weekend progresses the aptitude of the festival organisers for hand-picking the ripest of the continent’s emerging talent becomes apparent, as though they’ve surveyed Europe’s burgeoning alternative music scene, plucked the best crop of new bands, wrapped them neatly and shipped them off in containers to Rotterdam. 

Despite the logistical issues posed by both Covid and Brexit—a handful of bands like Keg and Home Counties were unable to make the journey—the newfangled wave of UK talent was well-represented across the weekend. Thursday openers Malady filled Arminius, an ornate 1890s Romanesque-style church, with pulsating guitar licks and fluctuating synths spliced by club-ready beats, before fellow Nice Swan Records signees English Teacher offered up an impassioned percussive performance to the sizeable crowd that had gathered under the candlelight of staple venue Rotown. With ominous opening riffs not dissimilar to that of their post-punk peers, lead singer Lily Fontaine’s dead-pan monologues allowed the band’s performance to descend into something much more magnetising.

English Teacher

Keeping up with the theatrics, North London 10-piece disco-punk collective Fake Turins delivered a weekend highlight in the form of their sprawling, highly danceable set. Underpinned by penetrating saxophone blasts and foreboding clarinet trills, frontman Dominic Rose rallied his band—all dressed in matching cream pinstripe suits, like a warped version of Butlins Redcoats—through the methodical chaos of tracks like ‘Down!’ and ‘Talking Prophets’ as a slightly deflated beach ball was bandied around the audience.

Likewise Opus Kink, another band whose wind section proved a stand-out, blasted their way through a riotous Saturday evening set that felt a lot like an opportunity for one final blowout before traipsing back on the overnight ferry to the UK. With an audience armed with foam hands and small paper flags, the calamitous Brighton-based six-piece caused forty minutes of carnage as they hurled themselves around the stage, smashing each other over the head with tambourines and flailing their arms around to their own imitable, multi-instrumental beats. 

Mandrake Handshake was another name that cropped up a lot over the course of the weekend: circled haphazardly on printed schedules and overheard at the back of late night trams and in bathroom stalls as festival-goers compared their packed-out itineraries. And the psychedelic jangle-pop collective’s two live installments lived up to the hype: their Friday evening set amongst the pews and stained glass windows of Arminius cascaded into a full-blown party of maraca shakes and mistimed crowd-surfs.

It wasn’t just the UK that boasted its latest wave of outlandish talent though, and part of the festival’s charm came in its ability to rope in bands from across the continent to play their first few shows outside the bounds of their home countries. Despite emerging on stage looking like the ensemble of a questionable ‘80s musical—complete with glittery lapels, drainpipe jeans, over-ear headphones and a white shirt, leather jacket and school tie combination—Irish fivesome The Zen Arcade stomped through two sets of nostalgic garage rock before Berlin-based Discovery Zone dragged the night in a wholly different direction with her ethereal audiovisual offering. Playing against a backdrop of cartoon animals, contorted CGI faces and snippets of stock video footage interwoven with PowerPoint presentation slides, the multimedia artist meandered between gauzy, chiffon sounds and dancier, PC music-inspired beats. 

Joe & The Shitboys

Faroe Island-natives Joe & The Shitboys rounded things off on Saturday evening with another weekend highlight as a snaking queue formed outside Rotterdam’s alternative cultural centre Worm. Blasting their way through a catalogue of very quick songs reeled off in rapid succession, the self-proclaimed bisexual vegan shitpunks reeled in perhaps the moist boisterous crowd of the weekend. Demanding complete silence for two second track ‘FuCk,’ before disparaging the entire audience with societal commentary on ‘Save the Planet, You Dumb Shit’ and ‘Macho Man Randy Savage,’ the shitpunk four-piece were a satirical force to be reckoned with. 

Once the festivities were over—as artists and fans dragged themselves onto night coaches and long-haul ferries, the wacky waving inflatable men that guarded each venue’s entrance were deflated and Rotterdam’s commuters were able to walk home from work without having to listen to an obscure band clanging on a drum-kit in the middle of the afternoon—it became clear that Left of the Dial’s legacy was going to live on for some time yet.

Not only are the awful sailor hats handed out on the festival’s boat trips continuing to litter Instagram feeds (it’s been two days and apparently Feet’s Oli Shasha is still refusing to take his off until the band sell out Scala) but the sense of community and new music discovery fostered by the festival’s equal and eclectic approach means we’re all heading home with new friends in our contact lists and new bands on our Spotify playlists. After a turbulent few years for touring and live music—with lesser-known artists hit the hardest—it seems that this jovial jaunt across the channel for some continental revelry was just the post-festival season boost we all needed. 

More about: Left of the Dial Festival