Brighton Psych Fest 2026

Friday 4 September 2026

Brighton Psych Fest returned for a third year with a strong lineup of acts across the psychedelic music spectrum and far beyond.

With around 40 acts performing across seven Brighton grassroots venues, Brighton Psych Fest defies complete observation. Everyone assembles their own version of the day, shaped by chance encounters, curiosity and difficult decisions on who to see next. What follows is not a definitive account, but one route through a kaleidoscopic programme rich in dream states, altered perceptions and sonic storytelling.

SLAG

Few bands better capture Brighton's current creative restlessness than SLAG, who opened proceedings at Komedia with a set overflowing with energy, style and collective spirit. Difficult to pin down within a single genre, the band drew together post-punk urgency, art-rock experimentation, progressive flourishes and sharp indie guitar hooks into something thrillingly unpredictable. Angular riffs regularly gave way to moments of melodic lift, while Amelie Gibson's commanding vocal presence brought a dramatic quality to even their most intricate arrangements. Songs constantly shifted shape, soft solo vocal accompanied by intricate guitar before launching into full release danceable alt-rock and vice versa. Throughout, there was a sense of chemistry onstage, from the interplay and playful exchanges between band members between songs. The result felt both spontaneous and carefully crafted, setting an early tone of possibility and creative adventure.

Automatic

Where other acts embraced kaleidoscopic colour, Los Angeles trio Automatic worked in sharper monochrome shades. Their blend of post-punk basslines, synthesiser-led grooves and motorik repetition achieved hypnosis through precision rather than excess. The interplay between bass and synth created a sound that felt simultaneously retro-futurist and contemporary, while Izzy Glaudini's detached vocal delivery heightened the sense of cool minimalism. There was a mechanical beauty to the performance, with grooves slowly tightening around the audience until repetition itself became immersive. Automatic demonstrated how tension can be built through economy, leaving the stage to loud applause while lingering synthesisers continued echoing through Concorde 2.

Mary in the Junkyard

Mary in the Junkyard opened a doorway into stranger territory altogether. Emerging from London's grassroots scene, the trio transformed experimental ideas into something vivid, fragile and emotionally immediate. Their songs often felt closer to storytelling than conventional indie rock, inhabiting spaces populated by folklore, memory and unease. The combination of guitar, viola and squeezebox created an unusual palette that drew from folk traditions and chamber-pop textures without ever sounding ornamental. A beautiful new song built around little more than guitar and viola held the room in respectful silence. Across the set the vocal harmonies between Clari Freeman-Taylor and Saya Barbaglia added warmth to music. During "Muscles", the two physically mirrored the song's tension by jokingly facing off across the stage, turning performance into theatre and reinforcing the band's gift for making dreams feel tangible.

Stereolab

By the evening, attention shifted towards the festival's gravitational centre British-French band Stereolab. If Automatic explored repetition as machine-like, at The Corn Exchange Stereolab transformed it into something warm, expansive and transportive. The influential group drew one of the largest crowds of the day, with many dancing from the first song. Technical issues briefly interrupted momentum early on, but they ultimately mattered little. Laetitia Sadier's vocals in French and English drifted through the mix with calm authority, acting less as a traditional frontperson than as a guide through the band's intricate sonic architecture. Cyclical grooves accumulated and evolved, drawing listeners into a space somewhere between concentration and reverie. Rather than demanding attention through spectacle, Stereolab encouraged immersion, demonstrating why their fusion of avant-garde experimentation and melodic accessibility continues to resonate across generations of alternative music fans. Their curtailed ending, with curfew preventing one final song, felt slightly anticlimactic, yet their influence remained unmistakable.

Whilst Stereolab provided a reminder of where many of those possibilities began, the younger acts repeatedly suggested new possibilities, as was the case at The Hope & Ruin.

Formal Sppeedwear

Stoke-on-Trent trio Formal Sppeedwear carried some of those ideas forward through a distinctly playful lens. Operating somewhere between post-punk, synth-pop and art-rock, their rhythm-driven experimentation evoked echoes of DEVO and Talking Heads while feeling entirely contemporary. Their momentum proved strangely intoxicating, demonstrating how motorik repetition and DIY creativity can still be reinvented for a new generation.

SILVERWINGKILLER

Where earlier acts explored dream states and narrative worlds, SILVERWINGKILLER delivered a more industrial vision creating one of the day's most intense experiences. The Manchester duo’s performance was built around distorted electronics, exuberant live drums and industrial ferocity. Songs seemed to surge forward, fracture and rebuild around relentless rhythms. Ni Yushang's fiercely expressive vocals oscillated between matching that intensity and surprising moments of ethereal beauty. It was an exhilarating and fitting way to conclude my day at Psych Fest.

Across my snapshot of six acts, Brighton Psych Fest revealed psychedelia not as a fixed sound but as a creative impulse. Whether expressed through community, repetition, folklore, experimentation, reinvention or confrontation, each artist offered a distinct sound.