ArcTanGent Festival 2025: The Review – Wednesday
A day of spindling art rock, authentic nordic folk, thumping electronica and desolate post metal? It can only be the first day of ArcTanGent 2025. Here's what happened on the Wednesday of the UK's most uncompromising music festival. Words by Dan Hillier, Tom Bruce and Adam Vallely.
In our ones to watch preview, we stated that Sans Froid are more than up to the task of opening this festival. Now we can confidentially say we were absolutely correct. Opening ArcTanGent 2025 in spectacular fashion with their irrefutably arresting piano-led art-rock, the local Bristolians essentially come to encapsulate the nature of this festival as a whole. As the band fly through material from their debut LP Hello, Boil Brain with spindly finesse, Sans Froid are a band that radiate creativity and genuine human emotion at the expense of genre norms and standard musical convention. It’s a wonderful set, one that manifests as a shifting web of artful proggy noise and one yet kickstarts the weekend of musical madness that is ArcTanGent in the best way possible. – DH
By the time Healthyliving take the Yohkai the crowd have already been baffled by the piano-led art rock of the aforementioned and pummelled by Hundred Year Old Man and are ready to be immersed in the multinational trio’s mix of brutal and ethereal sounds. Led by bassist and vocalist Amaya Lopez-Carromero, in her first appearance at this year’s festival before performing on Thursday as Maud The Moth, Healthyliving’s sound takes pointers from all across the Arctangent spectrum, from Brutus to A.A. Williams and Melvins to Alcest. Although they draw from plenty of niche genes, Healthyliving manage to bring them all together into a memorable performance full of bone shaking riffs and ghostly, wailed vocals. – TB
With the sun now breaching the overcast, the timing couldn’t be more ironic. Still, some lovely sunshine doesn’t stop Year Of No Light offering some of the most bleak music possible. Returning to ArcTanGent following their main stage set last year, the French post metal sextet sound morose, gloomy and all too doomy as they move through soundscapes that are either desolated or devastating. Quite frankly, this is a glacial set of musical desolation, but to call it horrible would be a fallacy. With their dual percussionists switching between an array of drums and synthesisers scattered around the stage, the band are fantastic in their approach in creating musical scenes of utmost ruin. A thunderous rendition of ‘Alètheia’ pretty much sounds akin to the end of the world. They aren’t exact stereotypical summer festival listening, but there’s no denying that Year Of No Light are absolutely brilliant when it comes to presenting sonic ruination. – DH
Photo Credit: Derek Bremner (@del_photos)
Bringing the tempo up at 5:30, the one-man machine that is Adam Betts’ Colossal Squid (formerly of ATG favourites Three Trapped Tigers) is showing the side of Fernhill Farm that needs to be seen more, the electronic, ‘dancier’ elements of the wider scene. His insane ability to create a whole band environment behind one kit with four limbs and one brain solidifies why he is so well regarded amongst this crowd. Minor technical difficulties unfortunately halt his usual continuous flow, but after a reboot he kicks right back in and receiving rapturous applause. Shuffling from slower beats to up the more up-tempo grooves he keeps the crowd on their toes throughout. – AV
There aren’t many acts who can provide a perfect warm up for the Viking theatrics of Wednesday night headliners Wardruna but Scandinavian quartet Kalandra effortlessly prove themselves up to the challenge. Combining eerie Nordic folk with the deep, rich atmospheres of post-rock, the Oslo based four-piece, led by frontwoman Katrine Stenbekk’s haunting vocals, manage to modernise their traditional influences with a slick, guitar-led edge. While their setlist, which places emphasis on their 2024 breakout album A Frame Of Mind, gives Stenbekk plenty to work with, her floating movements grip the audience while dual guitarists Florian Döderlein Winter and Jogeir Daae Mæland drift between subtle clean plucks and ferocious distorted riffing. Embracing Arctangent’s thirst for unbridled creativity, Kalandra deliver a captivating live set. – TB
Serving as an antithesis to to their immediate predecessor, Teeth Of The Sea contrast Kalandra’s accessible approach to Nordic folk with a kind of electronica that’s meditative yet thumping and immediate. An offering to the demographic demanding more electronic artists at this festival and returning after their acclaimed set last year, the London collective seem like the optimal electronic artist for ArcTanGent, their pulsating approach to their genre of choice carrying the patient focus of post rock whilst still being more suitable for the strobe lit filled dance floors Bristol’s city centre just 15 miles north. Just like last year, it’s a brilliant set, one that sees the ATG populace, one typically a bit older than the stereotypical festival demographic, dancing along entranced. More of this please, Mr Scarlett – even the war paint covered and rune marked Wardruna fans seem to love this. – DH
Photo Credit: Joe Singh (@snaprockandpop)
Closing the Yohkai for the night and the standing de facto sub-headliners of the evening, it’s easy to see why Slift have been invited back. Blasting through a fuzzed out and craggy variant of space rock that’s less a tender cruise through gentle heavens and more of a ricocheting, pinball-like jaunt through the tumbling asteroid belt, Slift are absolutely thrilling to watch, their doom, post rock and acid rock influences all crashing together with a gravitational pull.
Flanked by a mapped projected backdrop that’s kaleidoscopic and damn-near prismatic as their sound, this very much feels like the first so-called ‘big’ moment of the festival, the first major event that will come to characterise ArcTanGent 2025 in the years to come. ‘Ilion’ and ‘Nimh’ make such a sentiment inarguable, with their sidewinding riffs, shifting rhythms and celestial ambience either whipping the audience into a frenzy down-front or leaving them ensnared and starry eyed. Future headliners? Well, judging from the reaction this set receives, and sheer amount of people spilling from the tent and into the open air, it wouldn’t be too hyperbolic to say they could be in the running in the years to come. – DH
Now, for tonight’s headliners. While some bands are best experienced in a sweaty basement with cheap beer and sticky floors, Wardruna are made to be seen on the biggest stage available with the crowd transfixed on the layered performance rather than frantically moshing. Breaking with ArcTanGent Wednesday tradition, Wardruna make their debut on the main stage, surrounded by torches and bathed in an eerie orange glow, the seven-piece band enter clad in authentic viking tunics.
Without a guitar or traditional drum kit to be seen the seven-piece band deliver a performance which would feel more at home in an Avant-Garde theatre than the clubs and bars which much of the rest of this year’s lineup perform. With dual vocalists Einar Selvik and Lindy-Fay Hella backed by jaw harps, bone flutes, double percussionists playing animal skin drums and plucked or bowed lutes, Wardruna bring a unique and refreshingly immersive experience to a festival ultimately dominated by dudes with guitars. – TB
Photo Credit: Jez Pennington (@JezPennington)