Lancaster Music Festival // Saturday

Djs, street food, cocktails & 20 craft beers outside

Bands inside

Afterparty Upstairs

All free of charge

Mirror Revelations

Mirror Revelations are a Mexican psychedelic and krautrock group from Toluca whose music is built around repetition, hypnotic rhythm and a powerful motorik pulse. Formed in 2021, the project explores the meeting point between psychedelic rock, analogue electronics, distorted bass and the relentless forward motion associated with bands such as Neu! and Can. Their debut album AURA appeared in 2023, followed by further recordings and an expanding international profile. The band’s music often develops gradually rather than following conventional verse-and-chorus structures, creating immersive, trance-like performances. Their 2026 album Ígnea coincided with extensive European and UK touring, bringing their industrial-psych sound to new audiences.

The Thingumajigs // Family gig

Salford’s The Thingumajigs deliver family friendly performances that are as popular with the kids as they are their parents. They are a colourful, brass-heavy good-time band whose entire philosophy revolves around getting an audience involved. Their wonderfully eccentric mixture of vaudeville, cabaret, ska, pop and party music features bass, ukulele, saxophones, trombone, drums, percussion and plenty of group vocals. Humour is central to everything they do, but behind the silliness is a seriously accomplished live band built for singing, dancing and audience participation.

James Lyons

James Lyons is a wonderfully unconventional multi-instrumental performer whose shows combine flute playing, freestyle rap and beatboxing into something that sits somewhere between musicianship, improvisation and spontaneous comedy. A regular festival performer, Lyons uses his voice and instruments rhythmically as well as melodically, building performances around interaction with the audience and the energy of the moment rather than a rigid set list. His unusual combination of beatbox techniques and flute makes him immediately distinctive, while his freestyle skills mean performances can change dramatically from one appearance to the next. He has also worked in community and participatory music, bringing his highly accessible approach to audiences of all ages.

Blanty

Lancashire-born singer, guitarist and travelling musician Blanty has spent much of his musical life taking songs from place to place. Originally from Rossendale, he set off travelling with his guitar around two decades ago, developing a free-ranging approach shaped by the people, cultures and venues encountered along the way. His recorded work includes tracks such as “Zoomalango”, “Ootsba” and “Musica Sin Fronteras” – a title that translates appropriately as “music without borders”. Equally comfortable at festivals, pubs, parties and informal gatherings, Blanty embodies the tradition of the wandering musician: acoustic, adaptable and interested in using music as a means of connecting with an audience.

Soul of the North

Soul of the North bring the sound and excitement of a classic Northern Soul dancefloor to the stage with a fully live nine-piece band. Featuring male and female lead vocals alongside a dedicated horn section, the group recreate the records that became staples of all-nighters across the North of England. Their repertoire includes classics associated with Frank Wilson, Dobie Gray, Gloria Jones, Al Wilson, R. Dean Taylor, Judy Street and Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. Rather than simply reproducing the records, Soul of the North aim to capture the communal energy surrounding Northern Soul itself: driving rhythms, soaring vocals and songs built to keep dancers moving.

Stompin’ Thompson

Stompin’ Thompson is the performing alter ego of Keith Thompson, a North-West musician specialising in energetic rhythm and blues. Described as a solo R&B powerhouse, his sets draw on decades of blues, rock ’n’ roll and roots music, using strong rhythms and a direct performance style to create considerably more noise than might be expected from a solo act. Thompson is a familiar performer around Lancashire and Cumbria, appearing at pubs, festivals and live-music events where his repertoire is geared towards getting an audience moving. The “Stompin’” name is well earned: this is earthy, accessible live music with its feet firmly planted in blues and rock ’n’ roll tradition.

DJ Andy Stodden / Andy Stoddon

Lancaster DJ and producer Andy Stoddon has been involved with electronic music since the formative days of the UK rave and house explosion. As part of Analysis DJs he was making music in Lancaster during the early 1990s, working with drum machines and synthesisers while absorbing the sounds coming through the region’s clubs. His subsequent musical life has encompassed house, Balearic sounds and more exploratory electronic selections, alongside production and engineering work connected to the North-West breakbeat scene. Still an enthusiastic DJ and dedicated gig-goer, Stoddon remains active around Lancaster, appearing at events including Balearic Burger, Chugg and Lancaster Music Festival and continuing to dig beyond obvious dancefloor choices.

Maz and the Phantasms

Glasgow’s Maz and the Phantasms are a gloriously unruly psychedelic surf-punk band formed around Catalan-Egyptian artist Maz. Their music throws surf guitar, funky bass, psychedelic rock, synthesizers, spaghetti-western drama and punk attitude into the same overflowing pot. Emerging from Glasgow’s dive bars, DIY parties and queer underground scene, the group developed its reputation through sweaty, theatrical performances and extensive independent touring. Their self-titled 2025 release captured that mixture of beach-goth atmosphere, danceable grooves and controlled chaos. Equal parts rock band and travelling party, Maz and the Phantasms approach live music with colour, humour and absolutely no interest in minimalism.

The Manfredis

The Manfredis are long-standing favourites of Lancaster’s live-music scene and the house band associated with The Melodrome. Their speciality is an unusual and highly danceable mixture of rocksteady alongside imaginatively chosen rock and pop covers. Rather than approaching familiar songs as straightforward reproductions, the band filter material through their own loose, celebratory live style. Over the years The Manfredis have become fixtures at local festivals, community celebrations, Melodrome events and Lancaster’s major outdoor gatherings. Above all, The Manfredis are a party band: warm, eccentric and built for dancing.

Acme Bass

Lancaster’s Acme Bass Company are DJs, promoters and enthusiastic instigators of parties who have played an important role in the city’s electronic-music culture. Their events range freely across drum & bass, breaks, house, funk and other corners of dance music, with Acme Bass regularly combining established headline artists with local selectors. Their rotating crew of DJs keeps the emphasis firmly on the dancefloor. As one local promoter puts it, there is barely “a nook or a cranny” in the area where they haven’t thrown a party.

Harpmonix

Harpmonix is a live-looping solo project that places the Celtic harp somewhere it is rarely heard: at the centre of contemporary electronic dance music. Started in 2024, the project combines Celtic harp, electric guitar, finger drumming, samples and looping technology to bridge traditional Irish music with drum & bass, dub, house and a developing style its creator calls “harp-tek”. Rather than placing electronic beats underneath conventional folk tunes, Harpmonix uses live instrumentation to explore genuinely new rhythmic and sonic possibilities for the harp. The project has rapidly begun appearing on adventurous festival line-ups, offering an inventive meeting point between traditional musicianship, improvisation and modern soundsystem culture.

Dobbeltgjenger

Bergen-based Dobbeltgjenger make colourful, groove-heavy alternative rock that moves freely between indie, funk, psychedelic pop and danceable art-rock. The Norwegian group have built a reputation for refusing to stay comfortably inside one genre. Their music combines angular guitar riffs, muscular basslines, energetic drums, falsetto vocals and an almost disco-like sense of movement. Albums including The Twins, Master of Failure and Smooth Failing demonstrate a band equally interested in catchy hooks and strange sonic detours. Live, that combination becomes a colourful, high-energy rock ’n’ roll party.

Flat Moon

Flat Moon are a six-piece UK collective crashing together funk, punk and psychedelic weirdness into what they describe as high-energy, groove-centred music. Formed in 2019, the band move between tightly locked funk and explosive riffs. Their songs explore escapism and identity through a neurodivergent perspective while deliberately prioritising fun, community and unpredictability. The result is music that can be complex without becoming po-faced. Flat Moon have built their reputation through exhilarating live shows where genre boundaries rapidly disappear and audiences are invited into the band’s strange, welcoming and extremely danceable world.

She Drew The Gun - DJ SET

She Drew The Gun is the psych-pop project led by Wirral-born songwriter Louisa Roach. Beginning as a solo vehicle before developing into a full band, the project combines dreamy psychedelia and alternative rock with unusually direct, socially conscious lyric writing. Roach attracted the attention of The Coral’s James Skelly, who produced the early albums, and the band went on to win Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition in 2016. Releases including Memories of Another Future, Revolution of Mind, Behave Myself and Howl have established She Drew The Gun as one of the North-West’s most distinctive alternative acts, balancing hypnotic melodies with punk spirit, political commentary and outsider solidarity.

Grimesy

Lancaster producer and DJ Grimesy is a familiar figure in the city’s drum n bass-music community, he combines DJing with production and has become a regular presence at Kanteena and other local events. His sets are rooted in breakbeats, sub-bass and the energetic lineage of UK jungle, while appearances alongside artists such as Conrad Subs demonstrate his connection to the wider contemporary D&B scene. Grimesy has also hosted his own “Grimesy & Friends” events, bringing together DJs and collaborators from around the region. Whether playing solo or back-to-back, his focus is straightforward: rapid breaks, heavyweight bass and dancefloor momentum.