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Aug 07, 2025 By Lewis Oxley Photography by Lewis Oxley Web Exclusive

A festival with 36 acts over 4 stages within a few metres of each other sounds like an offer anyone would be a fool to pass on. A music festival in one of Nottingham’s most peculiar pubs - The Canalhouse - with a barge sat right in the middle of it where only a narrow wooden bridge joins up both sides provided character and charm to an intriguing line-up that spreads across many genres This was a day with so much going on, that it would be a difficult task to break it down to a review of 1500 words or so.

Nottingham Waterfront Festival is only possible - in part - to those at I’m Not From London, the Nottingham-based promoters who have dedicated their time to expand the popularity of Nottingham as a small music hub for a number of years. Whilst it wouldn’t seem fair to single out individuals,especially as things like this are a huge team effort, praise has to go to Will Robinson as well as those around I’m Not From London for their efforts in putting together something that is both family-orientated and vibrant as well as something edgy when the summer evening draws in and we’re past the watershed (no pun intended).

Upon traipsing through the new city gardens on what used to be the Broad Marsh shopping centre towards the Canalhouse, were a reminder of just how much things have changed in the city over the past year. The gardens, whilst unfinished, appear a lot more lively, and the construction work around the area seems to actually be getting done as less and less scaffolding appears less on the buildings leading up to the venue. I thought to myself: this couldn’t possibly be right, nothing ever gets done here. I appeared mistaken. The courtyard at the entry of the Canalhouse is a hive of activity, not a free table in sight and there’s a pint in every hand, with the odd waft to swat away an unwelcome wasp. Deciding to put an overshirt on thinking it wouldn’t be warm was a decision I regretted almost immediately.

Passing through to get to the first stage proved to be difficult with it being beside the main bar where everyone congregates and you cannot tell if they’re here for the music or are going to barge past without warning. As all of this unfolds, Possum Kid takes the stage with many guitars and, and the appearance of a violin amongst them acting as a tonal contrast to the brash riffs being cranked up to 11. This slick mash-up of dreamy folk and a wall of pulsating guitars makes quite an unusual combination, but it shows the elements of surprise when polar opposites come together and make something sound appealing to new onlookers and dedicated fans. As opening acts go, it’s a good start and one that predicts the festival’s vast plethora of genres from the extremes of metal and prog to the subtle tones of folk and soul. It’s the shape of things to come.

I must confess that I had no idea that the Canalhouse had a stage area upstairs, it can be easily missed when you head to the men’s toilet. Heading up the stairs, we open the door to the otherworldly tones of Zopp, the collective headed by Nottingham-based multi-instrumentalist Ryan Stevenson. The stage set up was everything you would expect from a prog act, a vast array of electronic keyboards, quite a rare guitar model, no, I repeat NO! vocals, and a song 17 minutes long to finish the set (we were warned). The chemistry between each music is kinetic, something where the whole is even better than the impressive sum of its parts. Stevenson is such a talented musician and his authority as a bandleader is total. Even his charisma for a bandleader is charming considering most prog-influenced musicians seem to only care about their instruments and nothing else. Prog has always been a divisive genre, and putting it in a festival amongst other arguably more popular genres could easily have backfired. However, they were able to draw a crowd that brought together neutrals as well as prog fans and shows how the more experimental artists always attract a more diverse crowd than those whose style is easier to define.

It is quite pleasant to move freely and get exposed to something entirely different. This couldn’t be more true than having a band dressed as flies, aptly named Rights for Flies, with the stage swarmed with people dressed like them and a gothic choir where everyone is dressed as angels (Midsommar). It was all too surreal, but showed the lengths the festival went to in order to give people a slice of something different, something for people not truly satisfied with guitar bands and soloists. There was also a more sobering reason for the festival with the outhouse stage named after Darren Blair, a 31-year-old man who died whilst bagpacking out in Vietnam in 2023. Blair had a background in performing, and so the stage named in his honour was a very nice touch in addition to the causes the festival was raising money for: Emanuel House, a local homeless charity and the gender equality charity Mermaids.

We headed up to the Darren Blair stage where the power of music was about to be reaffirmed from a duo whose drummer has a dismantled kit and whose front man, yowls and prowls in Lucy&Yak overalls like Tarzan. However, The Earth is Doomed, as they are named, and are intent on owning this space. The ferocious riffs and roaring vocals are matched by drums that feel like the face of thunder. Their sound, at face value, is the one you’d expect from duos, raw, primitive, cutting-edge, influenced by popular duos like Suicide or White Stripes, but their aura lies within their experimental tastes. If Swans and Captain Beefheart had a kid and gave it a trombone as a birthday gift, but then got annoyed that the playing was too loud and told it to turn it down, this would be the result. A trombone is pulled out and, like a charging elephant, the frontman goes off on a rampage. It could have been nasty if he ran into someone in the crowd, but everyone is entertained by this absurd performance. It’s as if Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi had an unfinished second act which was as entertaining but unruly as the first one. One packed with more surreal words and acting that seems unfathomable to most people.

The Gigantic stage played host to acts further afield than the majority of those on other stages. Barnsley’s was proof that you didn’t need to rely solely on Midlands talent, but that northern talent had a right to be there also. Stained Glass drew influence from early emo and hardcore punk, a nod to fellow South Yorkshirans Bring Me The Horizon as well as shoegaze and early grunge. They create a modern wall of sound and their musicianship breaks barriers on stage, especially with the heaviness of their riffs and a hammering vocal performance from vocalists Joshua and Mollie that rips up sound barriers, chews them up, and spits them out. They are pioneers of the Third Wave - a space for hardcore, grunge and shoegaze to thrive and regain its influence on a new generation of new bands.

South London glam rockers Black Bordello followed on with a set that was attractive, erroctic, but also embracing of the dark spiritualism that only comes to the fore when the dark skies arrive. The band has a minimalist quality, wearing basic monotone black and white colours with a shade of lusty red to give it a sexy charm. The majority of the set was from their new album White Bardo, and contains songs that deal with mental health and suicide as well as relationships. Such heavy themes are performed with such grace and dignity and are made evermore dramatic with their cinematic imagery imbued with horror iconography and romanticism. Their musical influences draw on modern day examples such as Black Honey and Wolf Alice, but also influential is the tones of PJ Harvey, Bat for Lashes and The Cure. This is a band who aren’t style over substance even if style is very much their thing.

For whatever reason, the line-up was severely behind schedule. It was no fault of the bands. It hadn’t clocked me until 9pm when The Dirt were due to be on when things weren’t right. The Dirt are no strangers to Nottingham. I saw them first at The Chapel in the Angel pub before Christmas and automatically liked the cut of their tune. The married duo of Jack Horner and Sachiko Wakizaka deliver music in unison that is provocative, paramount, layered with meaning, tones and structure. Horner has all the skills of a great performer. He stands, rattling off lyrics like a machine gun, everything is all hit and no miss. He juggles his words with precision and flair, they are punchy, perverse and politically charged. This is combined with Wakizaka’s mesmerizing guitar playing. Elemental in nature, it provides a great backdrop to Horner’s sharp words and all the better for it as she is armed with a majestic sunburnt Rickenbacker - sometimes we go to gigs not just to admire the music being played, but admire the instruments it’s played on. The Dirt live in their own weird and wonderful world, one shaped by verbal examination of everyday life and the intricacies of making distorted music that is also nice to hear. It’s a world we were all invited into and where some of us wish to stay.

The Waterfront festival proved that you don’t need a conventional venue to host live music, you just need a broad imagination and things will fall into place. The vast array of acts on display from all corners of the globe were proof, if needed, that Nottingham can be a centre of great music. It just needs the minds and willingness of dedicated people to ensure that things like this become a regularity where no matter the genre, any type of music can be championed and will therefore thrive in this city.