LINE UP

The first wave of acts for Manchester Psych Fest 2024 is here.

Featuring:@baxterdury@horrorsofficial@TemplesOfficial@NewDad @heyjuniore @MdouMoctar
Plus others, with more to be announced.

Tickets on sale now: https://t.co/gvgJ3geAB1 pic.twitter.com/QHNEPsPMb3

— ManchesterPsychFest (@mancpsychfest) November 30, 2023

The festival is scheduled to take place on 31 August 2024 and will once again turn the city centre of Manchester into a sprawling hub of psychedelic and alternative creativity. Iconic music venues such as YES, Canvas, Albert Hall and 02 Ritz will act as temporary stages, effectively allowing the areas immediately surrounding Oxford Street to be turned into temporary festival grounds. Circle Square, if aligning with last year, will act as festival hub and will be the place to go for merch, various band meet and greets and a diverse variety of street food stalls.

Last year’s edition saw American psychedelic rock giants The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Allas-Las perform, along with Sorry, The Murlocs, Ezra Furman and Los Bitchos. There were also several film screenings, including cult psychedelic classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and band films Chunky Shrapnel and Dig!. This year’s film screenings have yet to be announced, as have many more acts and artists.

Watch the music video for “I’m Not Your Dog” by Baxter Dury below:

Baxter Dury, son of legendary The Blockheads lead singer Ian Dury, is set to headline the festival with his wholly unique take on music, consisting of unapologetic, almost spoken word delivery backgrounded by post-disco and indie electronica beats. Also headlining will be Southend based group The Horrors, with a style that consistently merges gothic and psychedelic rock with post-punk and shoegaze.

Watch the music video for “Still Life” by The Horrors below:

The full list of acts that have been confirmed is below:

Baxter Dury, Bonny Doon, Divorce, Ebbb, Fat Dog, Floral Image, Gurriers, Heartworms, Hello Mary, Hotwax, James Holden, Juniore, Man/Woman/Chainsaw, Mdou Moctar, Molly Payton, Mui Zyu, NewDad, Temples, The Horrors, Wax Head, White Flowers, Willie J Healey, Wine Lips.

Tickets are on sale now and are available to purchase here.

The band from Kettering will begin the tour in Leeds on the 7^th September, before playing in Manchester, Nottingham, London, Bristol, and Brighton. They’ll also be playing gigs in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland this autumn concluding in Nürnberg on the 6^th October.

Temples will also be playing several festivals this summer including Musilac in France and Summer Well Festival in Romania. For tickets and more information see here. Last July, Temples supported Pearl Jam for their second day headlining the BST Hyde Park festival.

The band took to social media to share their excitement writing, “EUROPE our EXOTICO tour is now LIVE! we can’t wait to see you all in September & October”.

Exotico, Temples’ fourth studio album, was released on the 14^th April via ATO. The 16-track LP was produced by Sean Ono Lennon and mixed by Dave Fridmann who has previously worked with many other psych acts including Beach House, Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, and MGMT. Full of funky, bass-heavy, synthy summery tunes, Exotico mixes “Acid House meets Arabic Dancefloor!” as bass guitarist Thomas Walmsley adequately put it to It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine.

Listen to the lead single from the album “Gamma Rays” below:

Exotico took three years to be released and was a product of the pandemic. “Writing began in 2020, around when the world stopped moving,” Walmsley said. “We’d just had a tour cut short due to the pandemic and I guess as a musician you try to alter focus and throw yourself into writing, for better or for worse, we wrapped up recording in 2022. It’s definitely longer than we’d hoped to take, but I think the process ended up making the best record.” 

Temples formed just over a decade ago as a home studio project. Lead singer James Bagshaw and Walmsley were originally in rival bands in their hometown but eventually teamed up to play in the band The Moons. The demos the duo uploaded to YouTube caught the attention of Heavenly Recordings founder Jeff Barrett who released the band’s debut single “Shelter Song” in 2012. Watch the video for “Shelter Song” below:

Their debut album, Sun Structures, reached number 7 in the UK in 2014 and their follow up three years, Volcano, later peaked at the 23rd spot.

Since then, the band has undergone a few revisions with the current lineup consisting of Bagshaw and Walmsley as well as Adam Thomas Smith on rhythm guitar and keyboards, and Rens Ottink on drums.

See below for Temples’ upcoming Europe and UK dates:

08/07/23 – Musilac – Aix-les-bains
14/07 – Festival Chauffer dans la Noirceur – Montmartin-sur-mer
11/08 – Summer Well Festival – Buftea
07/09 – Brudenell Social Club – Leeds
09/09 – Band on the Wall – Manchester
10/09 – Rescue Rooms – Nottingham
11/09 – Koko – London
13/09 – The Fleece – Bristol
14/09 – Patterns – Brighton
16/09 – Le 106 – Rouen
17/09 – Chabada – Angers
18/09 – La Cigale – Paris
19/09 – Le Botanique – Bruxelles
20/09 – Le Grand Mix – Tourcoing
24/09 – Gebäude 9 – Cologne
26/09 – THT/Paradiso Noord – Amsterdam
28/09 – SO36 – Berlin
29/09 – Ampere – Munich
01/10 – Les Docks – Lausanne
02/10 – Plaza Club and Bar – Zürich
03/10 – La Belle Electrique – Grenoble
04/10 – La Cooperative de Mai – Clermont-ferrand
05/10 – Artefact La Laiterie – Strasbourg
06/10 – Nürnberg Pop – Nürnberg

The track was produced by the band themselves at their home studio in Kettering, and indeed this roots-driven production process seems key to the band’s inspiration and  intention for the song. Bassist Tom Warmsley told Noisey, ‘We’re continually inundated with pressure in modern life to have to make something of ourselves and leave behind a legacy in this world. ‘Strange Or Be Forgotten’ is our way of questioning the necessity of having to be all so individual and unique—when really it’s our true selves that should be celebrated.’ Sonically the track is upbeat, driven and yet dreamy; you can check out the track below. Or don’t, be yourself…

The track is the second from the album to be previewed, as ‘Certainty’, a remix of a track by Scottish post-punk revivalists Franz Ferdinand has also been released as the first single from the album. Frontman James Bagshaw said of the ‘Certainty’ he wanted it to have ‘an eerie, early Disney vibe.’ It seems Bagshaw wasn’t the only one with a slightly weird vision for the track; video director Alden Volney spoke to Paste Magazine about the inspiration for the video, revealing, ‘This is based on a recurring dream I have been having since childhood about getting into a sea of plastic. So when the band approached me about doing something inspired by those JPOP videos that ooze quirkiness and eccentricity, I thought injecting the color palettes and aesthetics of Japan into this idea could be a good fit. It’s designed to feel like a fever dream you’d have after spending too much time in a Japanese dollar store.’ You can watch the video below to see the results of all this:

‘Volcano’ in all its glory will be released via Fat Possum on the 3^rd March. Bagshaw has said that the album will feel grander purely thanks to technical expertise the band didn’t have for their debut, Sun Structures, explaining to Paste Magazine, ‘If there’s a sense of scale, it was really just a result of implementing a load of things that we didn’t know about the first time around. We didn’t even have a subwoofer to listen back to things that we did on Sun Structures, so there was nothing below 50Hz on that record. We didn’t even know those frequencies were there!’

Temples have already announced tours of the US, UK and Europe as well as other festival dates, including an appearance at Austin’s famous South By South West Festival and Madrid’s Tomavistas Festival. The UK and European legs out the tour will follow the album’s release so you’ll be able to catch the new tracks in all their up-close glory. The full schedule is shown below:

22/1 – The Trades Club, Heavenly Weekend – Hebden Bridge
25/1 – Beursschouwburg – Brussels
27/1 – EKKO – Utrecht
22/2 – The Chapel – San Francisco
24/2 – Crystal Ballroom – Portland
25/2 – Neumo’s – Seattle
26/2 – Rickshaw Theatre – Vancouver
28/2 – Don Quixote’s – Felton
1/3 – Miners Foundry Cultural Center – Nevada City
2/3 – Glass House – Pomona
3/3 – Pioneertown – Pappy and Harriet’s
4/3 – The Regent – LA
5/3 – Belly Up Tavern – Solana Beach
9/3 – Black Box – Tijuana
10/3 – Neon Reverb Music Festival, Plaza Hotel & Casino – Las Vegas
11/3 – Downtown Phoenix [VIVA PHX] – Phoenix
12/3 – Meow Wolf – Santa Fe
14-16/3 – SXSW – Austin
17/3 – Trees – Dallas
18/3 – Warehouse Live – Houston
19/3 – Burger Records Hangover Fest – Paper Tiger
26/3 – Riverside – Newcastle
27/3 – Leadmill – Sheffield
28/3 – Academy 2 – Manchester
30/3 – Electric Brixton – London
31/3 – Concorde 2 – Brighton
1/4 – 2Q Festival – Derby
2/4 – Institute 2 – Birmingham
7/4 – Gebaude 9 – Cologne
8/4 – Strom – Munich
9/4 – Palac Akropolis – Prague
10/4 – Festaal Kreuzberg – Berlin
11/4 – Knust – Hamburg
12/4 – Pumpehuset – Copenhagen
18/4 – Botanique – Brussels
19/4 – Le Grand Mix – Tourcoing
20/4 – Le Docks – Lausanne
21/4 – Plaza – Zurich
22/4 – L’Epicerie Moderne – Lyon
24/4 – Elysee Montmarte – Paris
27/4 – Trinity Centre – Bristol
19-21/5 – Tomavistas Festival – Madrid