MONO, Maybeshewill and A.A. Williams announced for Portals Festival

Japanese post rockers MONO have been announced as main stage headliners for this year's Portals Festival.

At the same time Leicester post-rock quartet Maybeshewill, singer songwriter A.A. Williams, Japanese noise rockers Bo Ningen and and Atlanta Georgia 2 piece '68 have all been added to a bill that also includes mysterious post-rock duo Nordic Giants, who will headline the Theatre Stage on the Saturday night, Northern Ireland post-rock quartet And So I Watch You From Afar, Korean experimental/post-rock innovators Jambinai (playing their first UK show since 2019), London-based ambient post-rock outfit VLMV, USA math rockers Shy, Low and Lakes.

“When we booked the first ever Portals all dayer at the New Cross Inn (South East London) in 2015, never in a million years did I think we would ever book a band with the stature of MONO," enthuses Festival organisers Sam and Asher. "They are true pioneers, defining what we now know as post-rock. Their live show mesmerises and tranfixes you, transporting you to new worlds. The band formed in the late 90s, when we weren’t even in our teens, before we even knew what post-rock was.

"Around that time, grunge, punk and alt-rock were the weird, experimental, counter-culture music that we and our peers fell into. Who knew that the sonic landscape would be changed so dramatically by stripping away the aggression to the bare bones, and rebuilding music through extreme dynamic range and carefully crafted instrumentation. MONO were one of those bands, and it’s an honour to be able to bring them to such a dedicated, enthusiastic and reverent audience, such as our Portals Festival family.”

This year's event takes place at the multi-stage venue EartH in Hackney for the very first time and will run from May 27 and 28.

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Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.