After two sell-out years, Visions Festival is bigger than ever in 2015. The one-day festival takes over a whole range of venues around Hackney (including the new Moth Club) with a full day and night of rising bands and cult musical heroes, plus markets selling zines, records, art, food and fashion. Here are our must-see bands at Visions 2015.
Make a beeline to Oval Space at 5.15pm for a blast of musical sunshine from Hinds. Formerly known as Deers, these four madrileñas specialise in sweet, scratchy, jangly garage-punk that’s rough-round-the-edges in all the right ways. Fingers crossed the bar will be serving sangria.
Elizabeth Bernholz has done for the blue hoodie what ‘Don’t Look Now’ did for the red raincoat, creating a terrifying persona inspired by horror movies, body dysmorphia and her own traumatic schooldays. Pulsing strobes and choreography bring her buzzy synths and mangled vocals to life. It’s weird but compelling, and there’s really no one else doing anything like it right now. See her at Moth Club at 7pm.
Get the party going at Oval Space at 8.15pm with Shamir Bailey, a Vegas boy who’s only 20 years old but already making ultra-catchy disco-house tracks that most songwriters would gnaw their arms off for. Head straight down to the front and throw yourself around to his big songs ‘Call It Off’ and ‘On the Regular’ to experience fun and funk levels approaching ‘dangerous’.
Read our Shamir interview.
Benjamin Power’s day job as half of Fuck Buttons has given him all the resources to make brilliantly twisted beats with his solo project too. His new material as Blanck splices disco, Depeche Mode, John Carpenter’s horror soundtracks and massive ambient soundscaping. Until the Buttons return to active service, his set at Moth Club at 8.30pm will thoroughly scratch your itch for raw synthetic chaos.
Fans of romantic, literate indie-pop don’t need to wait until Belle And Sebastian’s big shows next year for their fix. Head down to see Glaswegian heroes Camera Obscura at 9.45pm in the grandeur of St John-at-Hackney Church, and you’ll hear selections from their lovely ‘Desire Lines’ album, cult favourites like ‘French Navy’ and maybe even some new entries to their catalogue of sublime, misty tunes.
After dropping out of last year’s Visions line-up at the last minute, London’s punk weirdos are (hopefully) coming back for another crack at Hackney. On stage (fingers crossed) at 10.15pm at The Laundry, they’re famous for chaos, violence, nudity and parading a banner saying ‘The bitch is dead’ around Brixton after the death of Margaret Thatcher. Maybe don’t bring your gran along to this one.
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