Reviews / Reviews
Review: Outer Town – ‘A friendly firebrand of DIY festival spirit’
The year is 25AC. Old Market has been cursed by a malevolent marsh giant, turning the area into a sprawling wetland that she’ll soon incorporate into her boggy domain.
The residents of Outer Town, abandoned by their monarch who has retreated to live in the safe confines of castle Trinity, must come together to reverse the curse and return their home to the lush wooded haven of its recent past.
But today’s their day off or maybe it’s an otherworldly Saint’s day or holiday or any other excuse for a barnstormer of a party. And we, weary travellers, are invited to abandon ourselves to the mayhem and merriment, to kick shoes off and dance like feral spirits, wild and joyful with the ecstasy of life and its heavenly music.
is needed now More than ever
For today, dear travellers, is the Outer Town festival.
King Marvyn was spotted on a rare stroll along Old Market taking in the festival before retreating back to castle Trinity
And it’s an urban festival like no other: its unsettling lore depicted in volume one of an event-accompanying illustrated zine with fantastical backstory, characters and the creepy poem of the Old Bog Wight; ‘thee mappe’ of venues (Trinity, Wiper & True, To the Moon, Ill Repute, Old Market Assembly, Elmer’s Arms, East Bristol Bookshop, Exchange and Stag & Hounds) reminiscent of Lord of the Rings worldmap; and King Marvyn, the egg-headed monarch that lost his mind to the “madculine” ideal taken to its logical conclusion – if I’m understanding my lore correctly – of cannibalism, seen shambling up and down Old Market in all his sickly green and blue resplendence.
There’s good music too.
Outer Town has been beautifully crafted and masterfully curated. It embodies a unique creative, DIY spirit most other multi-venue events can only aspire to. It’s tapped into a resurgence of interest in DnD, fantasy world building and nerdcraft that goes hand in hand with joyful jangly indie, thoughtful guitar noodling, moody soundscapery and upliftingly rebellious punk-rave.
Robot masks are donned, bare feet hit pedalboards, someone thumps a rainstick and the magic of Outer Town is underway.
Yep, that really happened…
With 65 bands taking over nine venues all within 10-minutes of each other, it’s hard to know where to start. .
There’s just so much here: it’s a humdinger of a lineup with a strong local contingent, topped by big name underground acts Pip Blom, Feet, Enola Gay and Man/Woman/Chainsaw.
The venues are at bursting point, performers and punters sprawling out onto the street, clutches of happy revellers taking over Old Market. There’s a sizzling pan of hot dogs outside the Ill Repute, sending a deliciously smoky aroma into the road, and Gigi’s has never seen so much trade. As a celebration of the area and its fierce independence, the festival lives up to its promise.
Bath’s Paper Crowns are part of a killer programme presented by Cellar Door at Stag & Hounds. They explode with a skronk, filling the tiny windowside stage with discordant guitars, jazzy vocals, cowbell and saxophone.
They came as punters last year, they say, and are now fulfilling their wish to appear onstage in 2025. Bed Frame is an ode to the misfit that could be the anthem for today’s proceedings.
Paper Crowns came to Outer Town – the musician’s festival – as part of the crowd last year and in 2025 fulfilled their wish to be on the lineup
Next door at the Exchange, local post-industrialists haal request minimal lighting – “Just enough so we can see the synth” – and the room is plunged into a darkness that defies the mid-afternoon sunshine outside.
Maybe it causes other senses to heighten, because the floor seems extra sticky (“If I stand still for long enough will my feet fuse to the floor?” asks a voice from the depths). It’s the perfect setting for their moody sonic landscape building, the heavy, sludgy, bass-driven sound augmented by evocative flickering flamelike visuals. It’s immersive and pleasingly ambitious.
Bristol’s haal know how to create a mood
Ill Repute’s retro-kitsch living room aesthetic, complete with flock walls, Elvis figurines and wall-mounted moped, is the perfect backdrop for Lawi Anywar’s post-funk shoegaze psych-out, the floor a sea of pedals, drummer extraordinaire Oli Cocup out his seat with excitement at the eye-watering guitar solo climax.
“Amazing, man,” one happy punter tells Lawi, floating out the door on a cloud of post-gig delight.
Lawi Anywar (r) – also a Bristol artist – is gearing up to release his latest album into the world
Trans-Siberian Express cause the first roadblock of the day, packing out Ill Repute and then some. The sextet, famed locally for their guerilla gigs in lifts and on the street, present upbeat jangly indie with a hint of Tom Waits and a chaotic Beefheart energy, complete with wailing harmonica – they call it ‘schwank’ or ‘splurge-pop’ – and it’s facilitated by homemade foil-covered robot heads that they don after the first number and don’t take off except to occasionally come up for air which one guitarist accompanies with a sweaty, wild-eyed “fuck!”
They start and end the set with robot heads off, but most of it they play sweatily masked, which one guitarist makes up for by kicking off his shoes and socks to play barefoot
They dedicate one song to Art Attack’s Neil Buchanan, who’d surely be thrilled to see the boisterous musical bells-and-whistles fun he’s inspired. This gang make the whole room smile and bounce.
TSE have just released their debut album, Splurge Pop
Back at Stag & Hounds, genre-straddling Hypothetics are just as much of a revelation, albeit of a completely different kind. Where TSE, while proficient musos with well-crafted songs and arrangements, are a riot of musical high-jinx, Hypothetics are deep visionaries of sounds old and new, familiar and progressive, a blend of folk, punk, tech and trance that is almost spiritual.
Hypothetics augment old folk and 70s inspired sounds with tons of synth and tech to create something timeless
They have so much gear the band – comprising a couple of wild woolly mountain men, a fierce drummer also handling a Perkons synth (“tears down the borders between drum machine, synth and drone instrument”, tech fans), a rogue violinist and a synth/percussion player who appears to have time travelled from the actual 70s – has spilled down onto the floor, with photographers and excited crowd members stepping under guitar necks and over pedals to get a better view as they play on.
Along with the fiddle, guitars, bass, drums and various synths there’s also banjo, melodica, much shaky percussion and an emphatically played rainstick. They sing, chant and intone in unison, bringing a ritualistic air to the post-folk proceedings. 10/10, ones to watch, for sure.
Bristol-based, look out for Hypothetics playing locally – they are true originals
Welsh psych purveyors Dactyl Terra turn Elmer’s into one big sweaty dance fest while Shelf Lives get off to a rocky start at Exchange – their brash Canadian exterior jarring with the friendly handknitted feel of the day so far – but they turn it around when vocalist Sabrina Di Giulio jumps into the crowd for bratty boredom banger I Don’t Think I’ll Go Out Today (“All the girls want to be pretty / All the kids want to be shitty / Everyone’s driving me crazy / Everyone’s making me lazy…”) prompting mass screaming and wild moshing which doesn’t abate for the rest of the set.
Quality electro-punk: Shelf Lives make the room scream, then dance
This is loud, punchy music with a wry smile and a message. It’s hyper-real electro-punk delivered with an unashamed swagger and it never fails to make you dance. By the time they finish the room is feral.
The London-based duo from Toronto and Northampton blow minds wherever they play
Despite a rich, vibrant day of music I realise I must have been at the wrong gigs because it’s only late evening at Ill Repute for Skydaddy that Big Jeff appears, a prominent figure in the lively crowd bouncing along as Rachid Fakhre – formerly, with a couple of members of KEG, of Spang Sisters – cheerily proclaims: “Here’s a song – we got songs for days!”
They whoop heartily as he asks “is everyone nice and drunk?” and are still chatty as he introduces Lebanon Rising, a song dedicated to his home, ancestors and all the people that have perished there in the last few years – requesting “I’m going to need you to listen for this one”, there’s a ‘sshhhh’ in the crowd and they dutifully hush as the band plays a heartfelt instrumental lament.
It’s the first mention of politics all day, and a stark reminder of the real world that exists outside this fantasy realm of heady jubilance.
Skydaddy is the latest project of prolific songwriter Rachid Fakhre
It’s a festival for musicians too: they’re everywhere you look, drinking, chatting, digging each other’s bands; the Hypothetics violinist is spotted jamming out with indie quartet Bible Club at the end of the night.
It all serves to make this feel not only like an expression of DIY spirit, of East Bristol’s creativity, of music that breaks the mould; but also a gathering of a community – one that is building year on year as Outer Town continues to grow.
It seems certain that, per the lore of Outer Town, the community is bound to defeat the evil Fen Mother, break her curse and return their home to its former glory. And they’ll put on an outstanding party along the way.
Tuning into the story’s next chapter in 2026 to find out what the future holds for Outer Town is an absolute must.
All photos: Ursula Billington
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