Outer Waves Festival 2026
Schedule
Sat, 23 May, 2026 at 11:00 am to Mon, 25 May, 2026 at 01:00 am
UTC+00:00Location
Invisible Wind Factory | Liverpool, EN
Outer Waves 2026: Liverpool’s Underground & Alternative Music Festival — May 23–24, 2026Outer Waves is a weekend of boundary-pushing sound, performance, and art — a gathering for the curious and the sonically adventurous. This year’s programme brings together an international roster of artists exploring ritual, rhythm, and raw emotion in all their forms.
The 2026 lineup features OXN (featuring Radie Peat of Lankum), weaving Irish folk mysticism through droning electronics; Dame Area, the Catalan duo known for their percussive industrial minimalism; Jarboe & Thor Harris (ex-Swans), two legendary figures of transcendent experimental rock; Waq Waq Kingdom from Japan, fusing psychedelic dance and tribal bass; Syrian musician Mohammad Syfkhan, whose euphoric reinterpretations of Dabke music ignite dance floors; Liverpool art collective a.P.A.t.T., masters of genre-defying chaos; the ever-anarchic Unstoppable Sweeties Show; and Domestic Partners, bringing surreal, queer performance pop.
Beyond the performances, Outer Waves 2026 will host workshops, panel discussions, and art installations, with further details to be announced. As the sun sets, the celebration continues with after-parties at Quarry, featuring guest DJs, live collaborations, and immersive late-night experiences.
LINE UP 2026 --->
OXN
ØXN exist at the cosmic intersection of its constituent parts, melding Lankum’s experimental doom folk (Radie Peat), the motorik euphoria of Percolator (John ‘Spud’ Murphy’ & Eleanor Myler) & Katie Kim’s glorious Lynchian meta-verse, to create a sound which exists somewhere between the traditional, the future and the eternal. What began as a side project duo between Radie Peat & Katie Kim in 2018, blossomed into a full-on sonic tapestry with the addition of Myler & Murphy during lockdown, resulting in one of the musical streaming highlights of the Covid era with an unforgettable live performance from the Martello Tower in conjunction with visual artist & Lankum collaborator, Vicky Langan.
In October 2023, ØXN released their debut album 'CYRM' on the relaunched Claddagh Records to global critical acclaim, including a five star review as The Guardian Folk Album Of The Month, #4 in The Guardian's Folk Albums Of 2023 & a five star review in The Irish Times. This is a rare chance to catch ØXN in any form.
https://oxnmusic.com/#
DAME AREA
Barcelona’s Dame Area are one of Europe’s most electrifying live acts, having played over 300 shows across major festivals like CTM, Atonal and Nuits Sonores, and iconic venues from Berghain to KEXP. Their latest LP Toda la verdad sobre Dame Area (Mannequin Records) captures the raw energy of their performances—earning Pitchfork’s #2 Rock Album of 2024, The Quietus’ “Record of the Week” and BBC6 rotation. Blending industrial percussion, flamenco polyrhythms, and post-punk edge, Dame Area forge a sound that’s primal, experimental, and unmistakably their own.
https://damearea.bandcamp.com
KEELY FORSYTH - “Hand To Mouth To”
HAND TO MOUTH TO is a newly expanded live work by Keeley Forsyth, commissioned by Outlands Network and Full of Noises, reimagining her 2025 EP HAND TO MOUTH (FatCat Records/130701). Originally created with Matthew Bourne as a stark voice-and-piano meditation on restraint and space, the piece now evolves into a hybrid performance interweaving songs with a specially commissioned short story, The No-End House, by acclaimed French author Jean-Baptiste Del Amo. With new arrangements from cellist Resina and immersive drones and field recordings by producer Ross Downes, the result blurs the line between concert and theatre — a tense, atmospheric exploration of memory, fragility and emotional intensity.
Forsyth has released three critically acclaimed albums — Debris (2020), Limbs (2022) and The Hollow (2024) — and is renowned for her commanding live presence and striking physicality on stage. She has performed at major international festivals including Unsound, Dark Mofo, Le Guess Who?, CTM, Rewire and Donau, and has collaborated with artists such as Ben Frost, Colin Stetson, Gazelle Twin, Evelyn Glennie and Yann Tiersen.
https://www.keeleyforsyth.com
LORD SPIKEHEART
Kenyan vocalist, songwriter and producer Lord Spikeheart has become a driving force in African extreme music, fusing death-metal growls, razor-edged screams and gritty rap vocals with industrial chaos, grindcore intensity and African rhythmic roots. His debut album The Adept drew global acclaim — including a top-10 placement in The Guardian’s Best Global Albums of 2024 — and positioned him at the vanguard of a new sonic frontier. Follow-up EP REIGN pushes even harder, with collaborations from Iggor Cavalera, Brodinski and Arka’n Asrafakor. Onstage, Lord Spikeheart delivers nothing short of a full-body experience: ferocious, high-energy and unrelentingly immersive.
https://lordspikeheart.bandcamp.com
JARBOE Featuring THOR HARRIS & JOY VON SPAIN
A rare and powerful collaboration sees avant-garde icon Jarboe joined by Thor Harris (Swans, Shearwater) and Joy von Spain (Eye of Nix) for an unforgettable live performance. Drawing from decades of fearless experimentation, Jarboe’s voice and vision have shaped underground music across continents—from Swans and Neurosis collaborations to festival stages like Roskilde and Roadburn. Together, this trio conjures an immersive world of ritual, rhythm, and raw emotion—bridging art, sound, and spirit in true transformative form.
https://thelivingjarboe.com
a.P.A.t.T.
Liverpool’s genre-defying ensemble a.P.A.t.T. have spent over two decades gleefully dismantling musical boundaries with their chaotic live shows, experimental recordings and multimedia art. With seven albums, countless films and collaborations behind them, the collective continue to blur the lines between the sublime and the ridiculous. Their latest album We (2023) earned Album of the Month and Album of the Year nods from The Quietus, who praised their “attention-intensive music which rewards time spent with it.” Equal parts avant-garde, absurd and exhilarating, a.P.A.t.T. remain one of the UK’s most unpredictable and essential sonic experiences.
https://apatt.com
CARMEL SMICKERSGILL
Manchester-based composer and performer Carmel Smickersgill (Ivor Novello–nominated, Rushworth Composition Award winner) creates vibrant, witty music that blends classical harmony, DIY production and club-leaning rhythms. Signed to PRAH Recordings and championed by artists like Anna Meredith and Elizabeth Alker, she’s just as at home in concert halls as she is on theatre stages and radio sessions. Smickersgill’s sound is playful, cathartic and unmistakably her own.
https://www.carmelsmickersgill.co.uk
DALI DE SAINT PAUL
Dali de Saint Paul is a Bristol-based experimental vocalist, composer, producer and cultural catalyst whose FX-driven voice blurs sonic, gendered, spatial and linguistic boundaries, fusing poetics and politics with visceral intensity. A prolific collaborator, she has worked with artists including Moor Mother, Valentina Magaletti, Ossia and Maxwell Sterling, and operates as a producer under the alias Content Provider while releasing through Avon Terror Corps. Her landmark long-form project EP/64 (2016–22), involving over 40 artists, reimagined improvisation through a radical focus on community, alongside projects such as Viridian, dark idl, Ondata Rossa, Harrga and the film–sound performance Penumbra, commissioned by Outlands Network and featured in the New Music Biennial. A key figure in Bristol’s experimental scene, she curated The Sound Cupboard (2015–20) and co-founded the co-op platform Music to Come in 2023. Her work has been championed by The Wire, The Quietus and BBC Radio 3, toured major international festivals including Atonal and WOS, earned an Oram Award in 2024, and continues with high-profile performances from Café Oto and the New Music Biennial to Sonics Acts Biennial in 2026.
Dali will be hosting an experimental vocal workshop at Outer Waves and performing as a duo with Mariam Rezaei.
https://linktr.ee/dalidesaintpaul
DOMESTIC PARTNERS
Liverpool trio Domestic Partners forge an electrifying collision of post-punk, avant-jazz and noise rock — blending abrasive synths, sweeping piano lines and propulsive drums into an overwhelming, hypnotic rush. Emerging from the Windmill scene, their performances balance chaos and precision, fury and finesse, creating an energy that’s as confrontational as it is transcendent. Fierce, fearless and impossible to categorise, Domestic Partners are a vital new force in experimental music.
https://www.domesticpartners.u...
E THE ARTIST
Daranijoh Sanni, better known as E The Artist is an experimental rapper, producer and art director from Ayrfield in North Dublin. Guided by Afropunkism, E The Artist’s body of work recontextualizes contemporary black club genres in its loudest, brashest and most intense iterations. Dance and rap styles, from jungle to grime, fuse with the heavier strains of power electronics and extreme metal tropes. In his celebrated work as an artist, E places a lens on the constantly blossoming neo-cultures happening across the diaspora from his home base of Ireland. You can be sure to get blown away by E The Artist’s high energy show!
https://soundcloud.com/etheartistisonline
GERMANAGER
Germanager is the creative alias of Liverpool-based composer, producer and performer Alex Germains, whose eclectic industrial and experimental work spans original music, sound design and audiovisual projects. Open to exploring how sound and vision intersect, he crafts and manipulates audio across formats — from live performance and studio production to soundtracks for theatre, dance, film and installation. As a session player and collaborator, he’s been credited with work alongside Echo and the Bunnymen, Stealing Sheep and Mountaineers, and also remixes and DJs within diverse musical contexts. Alongside his artistic practice, he is active in music production and composition across genres.
https://germanager.bandcamp.com/music
GY!PA
Salford’s GY!PA (Godspeed You! Peter Andre) are a gothic-industrial duo forging a relentless blend of dark energy, ritualistic vocals and grinding electronic noise. Formed by Kaskie (The Death of Money) and Emer (Fat Out), they channel influences from This Mortal Coil to Nine Inch Nails into a fierce, hypnotic live experience.
Their shows unfold like a descent into the subconscious: ominous drones, distorted voices and pulsing rhythms drawing the room into a trance before erupting into hammering, industrial dancefloor chaos. Haunting yet exhilarating, GY!PA blur the line between organic and mechanical, control and surrender — a visceral soundworld that lingers long after the final beat.
https://godspeedyoupeterandre.bandcamp.com/music
HAAL
Bristol outfit HAAL fuse experimental rock, metal and industrial noise into a dark, immersive sonic world. Their psychotropic mix of sampling, DIY pedals, towering riffs and live visuals has made them a cult presence on the UK circuit, sharing stages with Deliluh, Butch Kassidy, Famous, DITZ, Treeboy & Arc and Water From Your Eyes, and appearing at festivals including ArcTanGent, Dot To Dot and Wanderlust.
Their debut EP Back To Shilmarine captures the band’s shape-shifting intensity — a storm of mathy guitars, propulsive drums, guttural vocals and eerie synths — earning praise from Total Guitar, CVLT Nation and Alternative Press, plus radio support from BBC 6 Music’s Jamz Supernova, Nabihah Iqbal and even Thurston Moore.
https://haalband.bandcamp.com
HARESS
Haress conjure dark, traditional and magically cosmic sounds rooted deep in rural Britain, drawing on drone, folk and psychedelia to evoke earth, ritual and forgotten labour. Based in the Shropshire Hills, they surface selectively for live performances, sharing stages with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Shovel Dance Collective, Big Brave and Steve Von Till, and appearing at festivals including Supersonic, Krankenhaus and Acid Horse. Their critically acclaimed albums Ghosts (2022) and Skylarks (2025), released on Wrong Speed Records, have been praised for their euphoric, elemental weight and spellbinding blend of ancient resonance and modern dissonance—music that feels both timeless and fiercely alive.
https://haress.bandcamp.com
HEDGLING
Hedgling is a new duo of Natalia Beylis and Willie Stewart. Previously, they have played together in numerous bands including Woven Skull, Boneyard Witch and Divil A’ Bit. With Hedgling, they build on these collaborations to create a new musical sphere in which to explore the far reaches of their real and imagined surroundings. Their sound sways in the space between the familiar and the unknown parallel worlds that co-exist around, above and beneath us. Percussive constellations created from found objects, dissolving tape loops of creaking pump organ drones and recordings made in the bogs and woods around their home blend together to convey an intimate portrait of the world they co-inhabit.
https://nyahhrecords.bandcamp.com/music
HHY & The Kampala Unit (UG/PT)
HHY & The Kampala Unit explore the mutations of rhythmic intensity and sonic depth, where funk, techno, dub, martial horns, and ecstatic percussion are all set against a backdrop of haunting cinematic sequences. Founded by Jonathan Uliel Saldanha (from HHY & The Macumbas) and fierce trumpet player Florence Nandawula, this shapeshifting group includes an extended family of collaborators like percussionist Sekelembele (Fulu Muziki) and dancer/performer Exoce, emerging from the Nyege Nyege melting pot. Mesmerizing, infectious, and raw.
https://nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com/album/lithium-blast
KARL D’SILVA
A nebulous presence on the UK underground, Karl D’Silva is a self-producing singer and songwriter whose alt-pop blends emotional intimacy with experimental edge, shaped by collaborations with artists including Rian Treanor, Coby Sey, Helm, GNOD, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen Mallinder and Thurston Moore. A former Islington Mill resident, his songs explore love, hope and fear in the modern world, reaching back to a mystical past while staring into a dystopian future. His debut album Love Is A Flame In The Dark, released by Night School Records in 2024, received widespread critical acclaim and was named Album of the Year by both The Wire and The Guardian. In 2025 he appeared at key festivals including Supersonic, No Bounds and Sounds From The Other City, played Acid Horse, supported Molly Nilsson in London and Berlin, and toured as part of VANISHING opening for Cabaret Voltaire’s 50th anniversary UK shows.
https://krldslv.bandcamp.com/album/love-is-a-flame-in-the-dark
LUCE MAWDSLEY
Liverpool-based composer and guitarist Luce Mawdsley crafts expansively cinematic instrumentals that evoke queer–cowboy vistas shaped by Northern coastlines. Rooted in progressive experimentation, their work draws on poetry, personal experience and neurodivergence to explore gender, place and identity with subversive clarity. Mawdsley’s soundworld is atmospheric, probing and uniquely their own.
https://www.lucemawdsleymusic.com
MARIAM REZAEI
Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award-winning Anglo-Iranian composer, turntablist and performer whose work spans experimental new music, free improvisation, mutant club music and hip-hop. Widely regarded as one of the most technically adept and creatively daring turntable artists working today, she uses a digital vinyl system to manipulate vast sample worlds in real time, pioneering techniques such as free juggling, turntable sines, needle dripping and needle weaving. Her work has been hailed as “genuinely ground-breaking” and “high-velocity sonic surrealism” by The Guardian, The Wire and London Jazz News, with her solo release FRACTURED named among The Quietus’ standout releases of 2024. A prolific collaborator and composer, Rezaei works across orchestral, ensemble and improvised contexts, is a member of The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters and Turntable Trio, and has collaborated with figures including Jennifer Walshe, Anthony Braxton, Fire! Orchestra, Valentina Magaletti and Dali de Saint Paul. Recent and forthcoming highlights include commissions for Donaueschinger Musiktage and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, international touring, and an ongoing role at the forefront of contemporary experimental music from her base in Newcastle, UK.
Mariam will be hosting “An Introduction to turntablism” workshop at Outer Waves & performing as a duo with Dali de Saint Paul.
https://mariamrezaei.co.uk
MINCEMEAT
Liverpool’s MINCEMEAT channel their love of ’70s guitar abrasion into a snarling hybrid of post-modern pub rock and feral power pop. Imagine The Sweet and The Dictators colliding with Black Flag and The Wipers: a mud-thick buzz from a beat-up ’60s Kay guitar, cutting synth washes, and a rock-solid rhythm section driving it all forward. Raw, loud and irresistibly hook-scarred, MINCEMEAT bring chaos with a grin.
https://mincemeatmusic.bandcamp.com
MOHAMMAD SYFKHAN
Kurdish-Syrian singer and bouzouki player Mohammad Syfkhan channels a lifetime of experience into ecstatic, joy-filled music that blends Middle Eastern and North African traditions. Now based in Ireland, Mohammad’s performances radiate love, resilience and connection — a testament to music’s power to heal and unite. Having shared stages with artists like Martin Hayes, Cormac Begley and Lankum, and collaborated with Cathal Roche and Eimear Reidy, Syfkhan continues to build bridges between cultures with his uplifting sound and unshakable spirit.
https://nyahhrecords.bandcamp....
MUGSTAR
MUGSTAR are Liverpool-based pioneers of 21st-century psychedelic rock, releasing relentlessly adventurous music since 2003 and returning to the road across the UK in 2026. Celebrated collaborators with Damo Suzuki and praised by krautrock authority Julian Cope, the band deliver a refined space-rock assault that fuses technical precision with progressive composition, live improvisation and carefully sculpted emotional dynamics. Touring extensively across Europe and the USA, MUGSTAR are widely recognised as modern masters of the form—commanding motorik momentum, bludgeoning riffs and expansive psychedelia that place them in the lineage of Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hawkwind and CAN, while sounding unmistakably their own.
https://www.mugstar.com
SEX SWING
Sex Swing are a British experimental rock/noise-psych supergroup formed in London in 2015, featuring members from Part Chimp, Mugstar, Dethscalator, Dead Neanderthals and Earth. Their sound blends heavy, distorted riffs, propulsive rhythms and dissonant sax with intense vocals to create uncompromising, psychedelic noise that defies easy genre labels. With a self-titled debut on The Quietus Phonographic Corporation and follow-ups like Type II and Grade A Peanut Sauce, they’ve built a reputation for explosive live shows and boundary-pushing music, sharing stages with the likes of Swans, Thurston Moore and Lightning Bolt and cementing their place on the UK’s avant-rock underground.
https://sexswing.bandcamp.com
ULTAN O’BRIEN
Ultan O’Brien is a fiddle player and composer from County Clare whose work is rooted in the rich traditions of Irish music while reaching boldly into sound art and experimental practice. Equally at home tearing through jigs and reels in sessions across Ireland or exploring the possibilities of improvisation and contemporary sound, he moves effortlessly between pubs, concert spaces and more unexpected settings. Drawing on a deep inherited tradition and an inquisitive, forward-looking sensibility, O’Brien brings a fresh, vital voice to Irish music—honouring its history while subtly reshaping it for the present.
https://www.ultanobrien.com
UNSTOPPABLE SWEETIES SHOW
Liverpool’s Unstoppable Sweeties Show are an avant-garde punk collective blending chaos, humour and virtuosity in equal measure. Their explosive live sets veer between punk, prog, jazz, noise and absurdist theatre, creating a sound that’s as unpredictable as it is compelling. With albums Tuck: A Town with a Cat Mayor and Bring Kath Her Breamcatcher [the musical] on POSTMUSIC, the Sweeties are gleefully tearing up the rulebook — one bewildering banger at a time.
https://unstoppablesweetiessho...
WAQWAQ KINGDOM
Tokyo-meets-Berlin duo WaqWaq Kingdom fuse Japanese folk, dancehall, and hyperactive electronics into a dazzling technicolour world all their own. Their latest release Dokkoisho celebrates perseverance and self-belief through explosive rhythms, euphoric hooks, and boundary-melting sound design. Featuring collaborators like Andrea Belfi and Seefeel’s Iida Kazuhisa, the record channels both carnival energy and meditative calm. With Kiki Hitomi’s hypnotic vocals and DJ Scotch Egg’s genre-defying production, WaqWaq Kingdom radiate joy, chaos and freedom in equal measure.
https://waqwaqkingdom.com
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Where is it happening?
Invisible Wind Factory, Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool, EN, United Kingdom
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