StrangeForms Festival at Brudenell Social Club
Johnny James, Managing Editor
StrangeForms Festival returns for its 10th edition, bringing two weird and wonderful days of math-rock, post-rock and post-metal to Brudenell Social Club.
DIY promoters Bad Owl have been putting on diverse, progressive and heavy gigs in Leeds for years, with StrangeForms being their flagship festival. The 2025 instalment sees 18 acts, from all corners of the country, descend on one of the North’s most beloved small venues.
The Saturday’s headlined by Nordic Giants. Described by The Guardian as “Sigur Ros’s more epic, cinematic and majestic siblings”, they’re a duo for whom the performance is the thing. Each show involves a selection of hand-picked short films, which are soundtracked live with bowed guitar, haunting piano and trumpet, and thunderous drums.
Topping the Sunday bill are And So I Watch You from Afar, an instrumental post-rock powerhouse from Belfast, who’ve built a cult following around the world. Their swaggering new record Megafauna exemplifies the musicianship, intuition and spirit of exploration that the four members have developed across the course of nearly 20 years as a band.
Just below on the bill are Big Lad, a two-headed synth/drums noise machine who draw on both punk and electronic subcultures, and Svalbard, a biting and brutal post-hardcore band from Bristol.
Elsewhere, every post-something genre is well represented. For post-rock, try Bicurious, who juxtapose spacey and rhythmic with heavy and delirious, or the more ambient VLMV, who’ve also hoovered up comparisons to fellow sonic explorers Sigur Ros.
For math-rock, see Halifax’s Wot Garilla?, Socks and Ballerinas and A-Tota-So. And for post-punk, check out Bureau De Change, whose new EP Are You Flirting With Me brings an unapologetic onslaught against sexism – including the very pleasing lyric “James Bond is a fucking prick!”.
Check out the full line-up via the button below.
