George Dean
George Dean (he/they) is a freelance journalist focused on music and arts writing.
You can find them by using The Lanes in Brighton for a place to curl up with a book, or at a gig keeping a keen eye out for up-and-coming bands.
Sets from Kneecap, UGLY and Adult DVD stood out this year at Brighton’s multi-venue Mutations Festival
The artist roster of Mutations Festival in recent years has set a precedent for the festival as one showcasing some of the most innovative artists in contemporary music. Last year saw Mutations welcome Public Service Broadcasting and Fat White Familywhilst 2022 saw an astounding lineup composed of Squid, Animal Collective and Black Country, New Road.
Mutations provided a fantastic tour of Brighton’s grassroots venues and nightlife, with Friday spanning five locations while Saturday was spread across nine. It was a mostly middle-aged cohort with keen youth often lining the front rows, a testament to the multi-generational spread of creatives and alternative music fans in the city.
Clashes between acts were a regularity during the evening, although this was part of an attempt to reduce issues of overcrowding which frequently face multi-venue festivals.
Floodlights – Patterns
My next stop was at Patterns to watch Melbourne-hailing rock band Floodlights. The five-piece offer relatively angular, uncomplicated instrumentals with touches of dad-rock which showcase the vocal range of frontman Louis Parson.
Parson’s voice tends towards a deep pitch and mellow tone, but he also refracts flashes of bravado on occasions. He swayed around the mic nervously in more tender moments, and tended to move around his radius on the stage in jagged motions.
With a set beginning at 4:25pm on a week day, the band’s modesty was endearing as they told us: “thanks for coming down, we thought no one would come.” Floodlights also hold a harmonica and trumpet in their arsenal, the latter of which was a valued addition over recent single release ‘Can You Feel It’.
Horse Jumper of Love – Patterns
Slowcore titans Horse Jumper of Lovea trio from over the pond in Boston, delivered a plunging, forlorn set. Lead singer Dimitri Giannopoulos’ awkward shyness was sweet and endearing, as he plugged their merch by stating: “we’ve got a couple of shirts for sale, but no stress.” Fan favorites from the self-titled debut album ‘Horse Jumper of Love‘ (2017) such as ‘Ugly Brunette’, ‘Bagel Breath’ and’DIRT‘ showcased the excellence of the band’s signature gloomy sonic capabilities.
However, I couldn’t help but sense that the band were tired of playing the favored tracks from their acclaimed debut album. It is however somewhat difficult to confirm this judgment considering that the very essence of slowcore as a genre may make their behavior befitting.
Wishy – The Hope and Ruin
Wishy’s fusion of power-pop, grunge and shoegaze was not a combination I found compelling at first.
However, the Indianopolis five-piece came into their own through the set and saved their best until last with ‘Persuasion‘and ‘Love On The Outside’. The latter track was a catchy earworm, and could almost have been plucked from a noughties-era chick flick/rom com, as it tastefully scratched the pop-punk itch in my psyche.
UGLY – Dust
London inhabitants who were founded in Cambridge, UGLY were truly a gift at Mutations this year, with tracks awash with chanting mantras and complex vocal harmonisations. Melding post-rock and choral sensibilities, the collective are packed with absurdly talented and versatile members who unashamedly relish playing together. This was reflected as vocalist-keyboardist Jasmine Miller-Sauchella said they felt “very privileged to be playing for the second time” at Mutations.
The operation was crisp, neoteric and subtly playful as they treated the crowd to a string of unreleased singles including ‘In Something’, ‘Head and Shoulders’, and ‘Carried Away’, all of which the audience appeared wholeheartedly on board with. At the same time, UGLY’s setlist was polished neatly through beginning with ‘Shepherd’s Carol’, a highlight from latest EP release ‘Twice Around the Sun‘ (2024) and closing with the eccentricity of ‘The Wheel’where by four of the six band members performed an eerie acapella section to introduce the track.
Adult DVD – Dust
imagine if LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Dance Yrself Clean‘dropped the 3-minute monologue and cut straight to the climax. Now picture a group of arcade machines having a rave together once the lights go out. This is how I would describe Adult DVDwho took Dust by storm in a post-midnight outing which kept everyone’s energy up during the early hours of the morning.
The Leeds-based sextet’s brand of dance-rock teems with rambunctious synths and beats, inducing bedlam in the crowd. They are, quite simply, a lot of fun.
deary – Alphabet
Brighton was bustling in the early afternoon, decked out with football fans ahead of the Albion’s clash against Manchester City. Alphabet was packed out to the end of the room for dream pop / shoegaze duo Dearypints in hand across the board at 2pm.
Deary takes cues from the likes of Cocteau Twins and Slowdive; their performance radically juxtaposed the aforementioned background to the day. The crowd were intoxicated by the sweet nectar of Deary’s ethereal, angelic soundscape.
Lead vocalist Dottie was heard to whimsically remark on the purple-walled, dimly lit room they were performing in: “it’s what the inside of my mind looks like.”
Chanel Beads – The Prince Albert
The music of Chanel Beads is nocturnal and transcendental, mashing up the bounds of consciousness over an experimental electronic landscape which has originating touchpoints in the left-field pop of Animal Collective and The Radio Dept.’s ‘Pet Grief‘ (2006). There was a quiet, nonchalant chemistry between the duo of vocalist Shane Levers and guitarist Colle, the latter of whom also has a solo project in his own right.
The performance was engaged in a nervous intensity. Levers’ stage presence jarred as he communicated only in whispers between playing, yet released disturbed screams during his tracks, which was a surprise considering the blissfulness of his voice over recordings. This was pertinently exhibited during ‘Police Scanner’, the highlight of the set.
Cardinals – Green Door
Dressed all in black, Cork’s Cardinals delivered 25 minutes of youthful romantic angst informed by the brooding yet gentle vocal delivery of Euan Manning. Instrumentally, a light layer of noisy rock was spread onto a base of warmer pop sentiments.
This was encapsulated particularly in the wistful, Pogues-y ballad ‘Roseland’.
Our Girl – Patterns
Brighton-formed Our Girl had released their second album ‘The Good Kind‘ one day prior to bringing their laidback, sensual brand of shoegaze to Mutations. TO Marika Hackman cap atop her head, singer-guitarist Soph Nathan (also of The Big Moon) told the crowd that the outfit is “obsessed with” Brighton.
The direction of Our Girl tracks are hardly unpredictable, but they are soothing and at times emotive. The poignant lyricism of ‘‘Something About Me Being A Woman’‘and the hooks in ‘What You Told Me’ stood out.
There was also a winning moment of crowd interaction as Our Girl introduced the song ‘Level’, which Nathan said is “about Brighton, sort of”. They were not originally planned to play ‘Level’ but the track was requested before the show by a fan via DM, who proceeded to identify themselves in the audience.
Van Zon – Green Door
Considering their fashion sense and sonic melding of post-rock, minimalist classical and folk, it is no wonder that Brighton locals Van Zon were set to play Brixton’s The Windmill two days following their stop at Mutations. At the same time, they have frequented Green Door on numerous occasions for gigs since forming in June 2023, and I am glad they did so again on Saturday.
Understandably, Van Zon It seemed like a band still in the process of finding their way, but I think they’ve got a wealth of potential.
There was a mild-mannered moment of confusion with the sound manager in the back of the room when Van Zon were nearing the 25-minute mark that Green Door sets were capped at, and one of the band members humorously reflected, “but all of “our songs are long.” Fortunately, they were still able to close their performance with the patient epic ‘Cannon Fodder’.
Kneecap – Chalk
Kneecap took a cyclone to Chalk as they closed Mutations. Since the time of initially being booked for Mutations, the Belfast-hailing political rap trio have blown up and become one of the most discussed, contentious names in the music industry.
They have evidently become too big to play a festival of this size, not least in a crammed, low-ceilinged, sweaty venue which their music is so well-suited for. It was a memorable gift to be able to see them in this setting, and an impeccable point in their career to see them wherein their revolutionary and hedonistic essence appears unaltered by fame.
The queue outside Chalk trailed far back, even containing Glaswegian punks soap box who had been playing Dust a couple of hours before. It quickly became clear that people had bought tickets just to see Kneecap as they freshly emerged out from the corner of Chalk having only just picked up their wristbands.
I got speaking to two Irish people in the queue who had done such a thing, who spoke excitedly of Kneecap as a “movement”. Having stamped their presence on Mutations with ‘IT’S BEEN AGES’, the punky ‘Better Way To Live’ featuring Fontaines DC. frontman Grian Chatten It was a particularly strong chapter of their set. After jesting that they had been “up all night drinking coffee”, they lurched into ‘Sick In The Head’, at which point I could feel the ground literally start to shake.
Since the growth in their commercial success, Kneecap have a lot of ears before them receptive to their anti-establishment rhetoric. They took the opportunity to slag off the Tories and the royal family respectively, as well as leading “Free Palestine” chants and informing the audience about historical measures to repress the “indigenous” Irish language. They riled up the crowd further by lamenting that the IRA’s 1984 bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel had failed to assassinate Maragaret Thatcher.
On their film released earlier this year, the band told the crowd to stream it illegally as opposed to on Amazon Prime due to the company’s perceived ties with the Israeli “apartheid” state.
The scatty beat of ‘I bhFiacha Linne’ provided another highlight to the set, before an endearing moment took place as they introduced ‘CEARTA’ (which translates to “rights”). As is recorded in the biopic, they recorded their first single on a “shitty software” in a garage, off their mind on drugs. They admitted at this moment that they never thought people would be interested in rapping vocals in the Irish language. ‘CEARTA’ went down a riot as they had members of the crowd belting out the chorus.
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