Hundreds of festival bookers descended on a sleepy, sodden Dutch town last week hoping to spot the bands with the potential to do great things in 2015.
Everyone’s looking for something different of course. The French techno bookers probably only pass the Hungarian metal-fest bosses in the queues at the hash coffeehouses, but if anyone was even vaguely interested in punk with something to say then they’ll have gone home raving about Bad Breeding. The Stevenage four-piece tore through a late-night set at De Spieghel on Friday sounding a little like The Stooges would if they’d grown up in suburban England and had met Damon Albarn instead of Iggy Pop. Frontman Christopher Dodd ends up off the stage and down in the mosh pit, yet even when the sweat is dripping off him his lyrics remain raw but eloquent – “living in a town where nothing really happens, except nothingness itself,” he yells in ‘Age Of Nothing’ – as if someone kidnapped Art Brut and made them listen to hardcore records and read Chomsky.
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 