West Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap will headline next year's Wide Awake festival.

The Irish language-speaking rap group's bill-topping turn at the South London-based independent music festival will be their largest UK headline show to date. Next year's event will be held at Brockwell Park on May 23.

Artists on the supporting cast include Mercury Prize winners English Teacher, Dublin garage-punks Sprints, Australian sonic adventurers Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Irish singer-songwriter CMAT, Philadelphia punks Mannequin Pussy, former Suicide man Martin Rev, indie rock trio Hello Mary and more.

Tickets for the single-day event are on-sale now.

Kneecap are enjoying a hugely successful 2024. Having just played five sold-out shows at Dublin's 1,050-capacity Vicar Street venue, the trio from the North of Ireland will kick off their sell-out UK headline tour at the Kentish Town Forum on November 8. The tour will wrap on December 21, with the trio returning to Belfast to headline the 11,000 capacity SSE Arena.

The group have received endorsements from celebrity fans Elton John and Noel Gallagher, narrowly missed out on scoring Ireland's first ever chart-topping Irish-language album with their debut Fine Art, and have seen their 'heightened reality' biopic Kneecap shortlisted for an Oscars nomination, representing Ireland in the International Feature Film category at the upcoming 97th annual Academy Awards. By the end of September, the film had taken over £2 million at the box office in the UK and Ireland.

Kneecap will be available to stream on Prime Video in the UK and Ireland from November 15.

Festival season is back! And on the same weekend that Slam Dunk and Bearded Theory brought rock fans of different stripes out into the sunshine elsewhere in the UK, Wide Awake festival returned to south London's Brockwell Park on May 25, with a UK exclusive headline set from Melbourne psych-rock heroes King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and stellar support from the likes of Young Fathers, Dry Cleaning, Slowdive, Bodega, David Holmes and more.

Mixing hip-hop, post-punk, electronica, indie-rock and sporadic bursts of thrash metal (thanks for that King Gizz!), Wide Awake 2024 was a huge success yet again. Here are our top picks of the day.

C.O.F.F.I.N

Sydney’s C.O.F.F.I.N filled the Shacklewell Arms x So Young tent with eager fans, some of them possibly still drunk following the quartet's sold-out show at Moth Club the night before. For those less familiar with Children Of Finland Fighting In Norway, think Animal from The Muppets, covered in tattoos, barking down a microphone in a husky Australian accent whilst thrashing drums so hard that they are in danger of falling to pieces, flanked by three skate-punks who look like they would beat you in a game of beer pong. Speeding through their set with riffs that Motörhead would be proud of, the band have crowd surfers flying through the air from the off, and their audience literally barking along with them as they tear through prime cuts from last year's Australia Stops album, topped off by a harmonica cameo from King Gizzard's Ambrose Kenny-Smith. Truly, a band unleashed.

Fat Dog

Frenzied, ferocious and out-right random, Fat Dog are a South London-based band fast making a name for themselves as the soundtrack to wild nights outs. With a drummer sporting a dog's head mask, and a keys player in short shorts running around pretending to be a lobster, they lived up to this reputation at Wide Awake, blending elements of dance, punk and Klezmer while getting everyone moving. Bringing screeching sax, sunshine and an open space for weirdness, the dramatics of their show match the joyous energy of the crowd, providing an excellent late afternoon pick-me-up.

Upchuck

With the cover artwork of Upchuck's 2022 debut album Sense Yourself album showing singer KT’s face smeared with blood following a mid-gig collision with a crowd surfing shopping cart, we went to see the Atlanta quintet's 5pm set on the Shacklewell Arms x So Young stage with high expectations of riots, rage and rampage. We were not disappointed. Combining hardcore punk with doom tendencies, their shows aren’t for the faint hearted, and as they race through a set heavy on songs from their Ty Segall-produced second album Bite The Hand That Feeds at one million miles per hour, there's no room for respite. All fuzz and fury, they're not a band to be listened to with a hangover.

Lambrini Girls

Despite an early 2:20pm stage time, Iggy Pop-approved Brighton punks Lambrini Girls drew a huge crowd to the Disco Pogo stage, and confirmed their reputation for causing chaos. Regularly throwing their guitars to the floor, and their bodies into the crowd with a disregard for their own personal safety or spatial awareness, the trio use their set to talk about the importance of supporting Palestine as well as trans rights, while serving up fan favourites such as Boys in the Band and Help Me I’m Gay. “Look, at the 6Music dad in the pit there,” vocalist/guitarist Phoebe Lunny shous at one point, gesturing towards a man having the time of his life while he grins back at her.nCelebrating freedom of sexuality and empowering everyone in sight, Lambrini Girls are a band you should be playing to your kids. 

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Someone once said that when you play King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, it “clears the room of people you wouldn’t have wanted in there anyway”. But as we await tonight's highly-anticipated headline act, it’s obvious that the Aussie six-piece have brought together a community of diverse, die-hard fans. With an astonishing 25 studio albums to their name since their formation in 2010, you can never be quite sure what direction the group will be taking with their setlist, but they open up fast and heavy, with Planet B and Organ Father from their thrash metal-influenced Infest the Rats' Nest album from 2019, before lead guitarist Joey Walker takes centre stage for the more mannered This Thing, from Fishing For Fishes.

With typical disregard for convention, the Melbourne sextet largely disregard their most recent album, last year's synth-heavy The Silver Cord, though a snippet of the title track pops up during Evil Death Roll from 2016's Nonagon Infinity, but a deliver demonic montage of tracks, blending their extensive back catalogue flawlessly and effortlessly in a mirage of guitar solos and harmonica spots. We are even treated to a new tune, Sad Pilot, which sees Joey and Ambrose taking lead on the country-tinged track. If that’s a hint of a new album coming in 2024, great, but knowing King Gizz, we could be treated to more than one, which would be even better.

True originals, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are hurtling towards cult legend status, and their headline performance here is another giant leap in that direction.

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard have been confirmed as headliners for next year's Wide Awake festival, which will take place at Brockwell Park, London on May 25.

The Melbourne-based psych-rock sextet are the first, and so far only, artists announced for the leftfield indie, post-punk, electronica and techno one-dayer, which this year was headlined by Caroline Polachek and Osees. 

The festival promoters say of the booking: "Our most requested headliner EVER, we've been trying to bring these guys over for the last 4 years and here we finally are!"

King Gizzard recently announced the follow-up to June's PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation album. The Silver Cord, their 25th studio album, will be released on October 27. Whereas PetroDragonic Apocalypse was billed as the band's second thrash metal album, following 2019’s Infest The Rats’ Nest, on The Silver Cord, King Gizzard are trying out electronic music.

“We come at electronic music from an amateur angle,” says frontman Stu Mackenzie. “I play the Juno synthesizer like a guitar, I don’t really know how to play it. But I wanted to be at peace with being the rock band pretending to know how to use modular synthesizers. We’re in uncharted waters, we’re further out to sea, but leaning into it, and we got to a spot where we were really happy with what came out.”

“It’s liberating to terrify yourself,” Mackenzie says. “I really believe in that as a philosophy. It’s always been part of our DNA. It’s something we’ve always done, putting ourselves in a position where the cortisol kicks in, pushing ourselves off the bridge and forcing ourselves to swim. Maybe we’ve got the thrill-seeker gene in us or something. It’s definitely my idea of fun.”

The band have released three songs from the record - Theia, The Silver Chord and Set - as one music video.

Tickets for Wide Awake 2024 are now on sale. 

"Fucking hell man, what a crowd. I didn't know there were this many freaks in London. I've never seen so many mullets in my life!"

It's 6:25pm, and on Wide Awake's main stage, Viagra Boys' topless, tattooed frontman Sebastian Murphy is in a mischievous mood, encouraging a sun-kissed and sweaty crowd to be on their "worst fucking behaviour." The Swedish sextet, who self-identify on their Spotify profile as 'a bellowing, unstoppable force majeure of latter-day punk, PTSD disco and synthetically enhanced kraut', which frankly, we can't better, are a perfect festival act, loud, loose and lairy, and their 50 minutes onstage kicks London's finest alternative music festival up another gear.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here, for Wide Awake 2023 starts for many not at its traditional home in Brockwell Park, south London on May 27, but at Earth Hall & Earth Theatre in East London on May 26, with a 'pre-party' featuring Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Slift and more on the eve of the main event.

Slift, who played Wide Awake in 2021, are simply incredible. The Toulouse prog rock trio, led by brothers Jean and Rémi Fossat, have visited London a number of times since the release of 2020's Ummon album, but from some of the wide-eyed/jaw-on-the-floor reactions they inspire in Hackney it's clear that not everyone is prepared for the sheer volume and intensity of their synth-bolstered, riff-heavy, spacey sonic onslaught. "Fuck me, my ears!" is one ticket-holder's cry as he stumbles into the gents' toilets afterwards, receiving sympathetic nods of agreement from understanding, similarly dazed strangers. 

Upstairs in the Theatre, there's a suspiciously quiet and empty stage where BEAK>, the excellent experimental electronic rock side-project of Portishead's Geoff Barrows, should be at 9pm. And when two female vocalists identically dressed in blue mini-dresses and white Barbarella boots walk onstage 30 minutes after the Bristol trio's allotted stage time and announce "We're not BEAK>", patrons begin scrolling through social media to try to figure out what the almighty fuck is going on. It turns out that singing drummer Barrows has lost his voice, and that despite their best efforts, and despite having already soundchecked, the trio sadly won't be gracing us with their presence. In a wonderfully generous gesture, which speaks volumes about the integrity and ethics of the promoters, the Wide Awake team will later announce that anyone who's bought a ticket for tonight's gig will now be gifted free admission to the festival proper to make up for this disappointment. But as it turns out, BEAK>'s 11th hour replacements, Brisbane quintet Nice Biscuit, are a quirky delight, with twin vocalists Billie Star and Grace Cuell pulling off synchronised stage moves and sweet '60s melodies over punchy, grooving psych-garage blasts.

Back downstairs in the venue's larger room, fellow Aussies Psychedelic Porn Crumpets offer up a more complex, though no less enchanting, sound. Having served up five albums in six years, most recently 2022's Night Gnomes, the Perth band have a work ethic comparable to scene elders King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and the wildly enthusiastic response which Jack McEwan's band receive suggests that they too are about to transcend their 'cult underground heroes' status. From the relatively concise, upbeat Acid Dent ("Be positive, life is good, be more like Robin Hood") to fuzzy, finger-knotting new single Nootmare (K-I-L-L-I-n-G) Meow! and on to the more expansive, patiently unfurling nine-minute Found God In A Tomato, PPC are a feel-good, immersive joy. Main stage, main event, early evening next year?

In its original, admittedly Covid-impacted, incarnation in 2021 the Wide Awake line-up was essentially The Windmill, Brixton x Speedy Wunderground extrapolated onto a larger canvas, with Dry Cleaning, Shame, black midi, PVA and Goat Girl all key players in South London's fecund turn-of-the-decade post-punk community. This, incidentally, is not a criticism; it was a brilliant, inspiring day out. But if you want an inkling into just how eclectic and diverse its 2023 bill is, consider that, pre-Viagra Boys, the afternoon line-up takes in neo-Sufi jazz-fusion from Pakistan (Arooj Aftab), Polish industrial-techno (VTSS), Belarusian new wave (Molchat Doma), New York noise rock (A Place To Bury Strangers), futuristic French electronica (Coucou Chloe)  and - obviously - more hypnotic Australian psychedelia (the masked Glass Beams) and much besides on a 50:50 gender split bill. It's surely no coincidence that the day has a welcomingly inclusive, positive, female-friendly, drama-free vibe throughout.

Viagra Boys' Sebastian Murphy, as mentioned already, is in a puckish mood when the Swedish sextet take the stage. Referencing the band's appearance at the Bearded Theory festival 24 hours earlier, the San Francisco-born singer claims that the event smelled of "dreads, fucking hemp and hippy bullshit", suggests that the median age of the audience there was "50 - 60" and says that he's glad to be amongst his peers, "the young and the beautiful". Punk Rock Loser and the caustic, internet troll-crushing Troglodyte are immense, and the Stooges-indebted, sax-enhanced Sports gets one of the biggest cheers of the day, with Murphy - by now down to his sweat-stained pants - doing press-ups centre-stage. Five stars, 10/10, fanfuckintastic.

In an email announcing the festival's stage times earlier in the week, the Wide Awake team apologised in advance for the clash between Viagra Boys and Gilla Band on the Moth Club stage, but the Dublin band hold their own in terms of pulling a crowd, and the minimalist clatter of Bin Liner Fashion and a ferocious Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage are greeted like they're global party anthems. There's just a small window of opportunity to catch Lebanon Hanover's inappropriately gloomy but impressively glacial 'cold wave' in the Windmill / So Young tent, before returning to the Moth Club stage for Warmduscher, playing their only hometown show of the summer, their marriage of post-punk aggression and death disco beats hitting a peak with a grinding, grooving Midnight Dipper.

Over on the main stage, Shygirl is a revelation, although, to be fair, the groups of young women literally sprinting towards across the site to see her suggest that plenty are already in the know. The South London rapper (Blane Muise) has featured on a remix of Lady Gaga/Blackpink collab Sour Candy, and previously worked with Slowthai, FKA Twigs and Tinashe, and backed here by just her DJ, she absolutely owns the stage. Her sound is sweet, seductive and sultry, and if you weren't paying attention, you might miss just how full-on horny the likes of Coochie (A Bedtime Story) and Shlut are. Nigerian rapper Deto Black joins the party for Nike, which means that the nice sign-language interpreter lady at the side of the stage gets to enthusiastically enact lyrics such as "Hands on my breast and my batty like he knew it / I tell him 'Lay the pipe' and he blew it" - and a confetti canon causes industrial-scale squeals of delight when Shygirl signs off with Crush. A star is born.

Caroline Polachek is already a star, but, perhaps surprisingly, this is her first ever headline slot at a festival. With the likes of Welcome To My Island, Bunny Is A Rider and Sunset - neatly timed - served up within her first 20 minutes onstage, this was never going to be anything other than an absolute triumph for the New York-born singer. With classy production, an adoring fan-base, a mesmerising stage presence and a voice that could tempt angels from the heavens, Polachek holds Brockwell Park in the palm of her hand from minute one, and as such it's something of a wrench to head across the site to watch Osees close out the Bad Vibrations / Desert Daze stage. Until you actually reach the stage, that is, and witness John Dwyer's incredible band knock Wide Awake 2023 into another dimension. 

The San Franciscan band's penchant for constantly changing both their name and their sound could be seen as a form of punk rock self-sabotage, but onstage, somehow everything gels, everything seems natural and instinctive and right. In theory, there shouldn't be much connection between the synth-garage stabs of Intercepted Message, the title track of the band's forthcoming 27th album, due in August, and songs such as Scum Show and Funeral Solution from last year's A Foul Form, Dwyer’s gnarly love letter to the punk and hardcore bands who soundtracked his Bay Area adolescence, but it all slots together like Tetris blocks. And watching dual drummers Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone batter their kits in perfect synchronicity on Facestabber's The Daily Heavy is one of life's great pleasures. There aren't many live bands more thrilling than Osees in 2023, and there aren't many festivals anywhere on this planet as electric, vital and life-affirming as Wide Awake. 

Saturday, May 25, for Wide Awake 2024. Set an alert now: we'll see you there.

Viagra Boys, Black Country, New Road, CIVIC and Warmduscher are among the latest additions to this year's Wide Awake festival line-up.

They will join the previously-announced Caroline Polachek, Osees, Ty Segall, A Place To Bury Strangers , The Underground Youth and Gilla Band on the bill for the one day festival, which is set to take place in Brockwell Park in south London on May 27.

Other newly-announced acts for Wide Awake 2023 include Los Bitchos, CLAMM, Nuha Ruby Ra, Two Shell, Nice Biscuit and JJUUJJUU.

This will be the third staging of the 10,000 capacity leftfield indie / post-punk / Electronica / alt. festival. Year one saw performances by IDLES, Black Midi, Shame, Dry Cleaning, Self Esteem and more, while last summer's event was headlined by Primal Scream and dance duo Bicep.

In a statement, Wide Awake booker/co-founder Keith Miller says, “There’s a feeling amongst us all at Wide Awake that the 2023 lineup is the most varied and interesting so far."

The organisers add: "We're still not quite done! Keep your eyes peeled for our DJ announcement coming early Spring."

Tickets for Wide Awake 2023 are on sale now.

In additional news, Viagra Boys scheduled January 25 headline show at London's O2 Academy Brixton has been moved to The Troxy.

The announcement follows the news last week that Lambeth council has suspended the venue's license for three months, at the request of the Metropolitan police.

The request was made in the wake of two deaths at the venue in December, following a crowd crush at a December 15 gig by Afrobeats singer Asake. Gig-goer Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, and security guard Gaby Hutchinson, 23, lost their lives as a result of the incident.

Other gigs which will be affected include bookings made by PVRIS, Palaye Royale, Hundred Reasons, Pendulum, Lamb Of God, Beartooth, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Suede.