LIVE REVIEW: Future Now Festival 2025

Future Yard, Birkenhead, is home to an eclectic selection of people this Friday night. 6 music dads order their craft beers next to Punk kids who are trying to redo their eyeliner in the venue’s windows. The Post-Punk fans adjust their mustaches whilst 70s psychedelia enthusiasts re-tie their bandanas. Everyone you speak to asks if you’re staying for the whole weekend, a weekend that branches from Electronic Dance Rock to Surf Rock to Riotgrrrl, and of course we are. We're not missing a single moment of Future Now Festival. 

FRIDAY

The day opens with a scattering of local bands, Dollop, a hazy, shimmering wall of Britpop and STEEL, a heavy metal band accompanying a singer who flitters between Tori Amos and PJ Harvey. 

The headliners are introduced by Anna Erhard, a Berlin based eccentric Indie artist who perfectly embodies the spirit of Future Now. Her set is unashamedly DIY, sounding like the unhelpful wanderings of the mind during an exam, or interview, jangly guitar twirls around reflections on Botanical Gardens, preferably those only rated 2 stars, or the disturbing nature of the Blue Man Group. Her songs pop into her set like impulsive thoughts, each a magnetic, slightly trippy memory that rolls around your mind for the rest of the day. It is bouncy, and entirely bizarre, but somehow makes perfect sense to be happening at 8pm on a Friday. 

The night is starting to descend, and as Adult DVD enter the stage, they draw us down a dark alleyway, and into a seedy back room, neon lights and hazy clouds obscure them slightly, but the sound that they produce engulfs the entire space. The nasty, jagged dance beats of 'Yacht Money' explode from the synths, and they’re off, along with half the crowd. 

There is something almost too raucous about them, teetering on the edge of disaster as elbows fly towards sound desks and fingers brush the collection of electrical cables that adorn the stage. One wrong move would send the band glitching back into the 80s to join the electro-pop beats of New Order, or across the water to become a layer of an LCD Soundsystem track. Every tune seems monumental, surely the one during which the band explodes in a blazing flash of light, and yet it never is, beat drop after beat drop executed perfectly. Their last song, Bill Murray, is a jittering beat and wobbling melody, snarky and grinning at the audience for being half a room away from where their pint originally was, lost somewhere in a dance pit and a strobe light. It fades out, leaving the last light of the day for Home Counties. 

They turn up like a friend who brought a 6 pack just as you thought the night was slowing, beaming, buzzing with a final burst of energy. Their opening track, Back To The 70s, is in the same world as Squid or BCNR, a bouncing collection of sharp drums and synths. Their set follows the story of young people in London, love and landlords, dancing and deadlines, swinging with an unrelenting sense of fun. The vocals are clear and radiant, reminiscent of man/woman/chainsaw and the end of the night sees the entire crowd, punks or 6 music dads, spinning around to the disco beats. 

It is hard to imagine that, after this, the festival goers will have the energy for another two days, but on the way through the exit, everyone nods as if to say “same time tomorrow?”, and sure enough, the venue only gets busier as the weekend wears on. 

SATURDAY

Saturday arrives early for Birkenhead’s Future Now Festival, with a pair of sunglasses and a pint of grapefruit beer. Surfer rock band Los Bitchos have curated this day's lineup so it is, of course, sun drenched from start to finish. The August light bathes opener Child of Sowo in a bright warm glow, her silky voice melting into the butterfly adorned sky. She sounds a little bossa nova at times, and at others has the soft sensuality of Cleo Sol or the powerful grooves of Joy Crookes. She needs balconies and cocktails and flowing dresses to accompany her latest single Send Him No Flowers, and the garden of Future Yard is almost just that. 

Brighton based Yumi And The Weather are a psyche-rock introduction to the rest of the night, twisting and rippling with a palpable tension. They have the rhythm of a caravan bouncing along a dirt track and lyrics that they’ll have picked up from hitch hikers, if that hitch hiker was a dusty, heat-drunk Alvvays. 

Inside the venue, the headliners are starting up, beginning with the much awaited Mandrake Handshake. Everyone in the audience will claim that they’ve seen them at least four times, playing to an audience consisting of fewer people than the band, and unlike The Sex Pistols at Manchester, I would be inclined to believe them. The band squishes onto the, relatively large, stage at 7 O’Clock, hauling basses and synths and maracas and microphones with them. 

Their set is almost just one song, a constant like the rustle of trees, ebbing and flowing from chorus to verse like the wash of the tides. They are layered and spacey, soft Stereolab vocals accompanying a King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard like funk. They are woozy, and ethereal, the perfect remedy for the heat-stroke acquired throughout the rest of the day. 

Up next are self described wonk pop band Lime Garden, delivering three minute pop ballads, with mumbled hazy vocals, like a sleeptalking, heartbroken girlband. The melancholy lyrics of I Want To Be You and Clockwork are propelled forward by swinging guitar riffs and cascading synths in true Talking Heads style. They are no less summery than the rest, but perhaps lean more towards a Mary in the Junkyard style of dance than the Jorge Ben Jor beats that the rest of the day has seen. 

To round off this are Los Bitchos, introduced by Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like A Woman!, who come strutting in, poised and ready until the first bars of Talkie Talkie, Charlie Charlie ring out. Their set is magical, like an old European square that’s seen night after night of dancing, royals, riots, heartbreak, first times and last drinks, and all that’s to show for it is some worn down cobbles. Song after song they are solidly reliable and yet there is something deeply mystical about the momentum of their music, as if it could float around Future Yard for another 200 years. 

They roll through track after track, from the euphoria of Hi! to the driving kicks of Pista (Fresh Start), each bringing swinging hips and flicking arms from the audience. The Link Is About To Die features a wild display of bongo playing, eliciting whoops from the already intoxicated crowd, and elaborate footwork from the more daring amongst them. It is an explosion of bliss that would sound right at home on a tropicalia album, or besides Kit Sebastian, or Ezra Collective. There seems to be a rhythm that transcends time, and they have captured it, fitting into 60s Brazil, or 2025 London. And they certainly fit right into Birkenhead, headlining Saturday’s hypnotic lineup.

SUNDAY

Sunday is the final day of the Future Now Festival, and it has a distinctly different feel to the others. It is destined to be not just musically monumental, but politically monumental, as evidenced by the array of punk jackets and Palestinian flags that decorate bands and audience alike. 

The first band to grace the stage is Liverpool based Sourflake, a “punk band to shake ass to”, eyeliner as sharp as their wit and boots as heavy as their basslines. Lyrics are thrown rapidly like punches, accompanied by murky guitar lines and pounding drums. They end with a gritty punk reworking of Skepta’s Too Many Man, both hilarious and deeply thought provoking. 

There are a series of experimental electronic bands to follow, from the synth driven screamo of Dead Animals to the trance-like whimsy of Bathing Suits. Amongst these is Jodie Langford a powerhouse of spoken word punk, with topics that range from stained spag-bol tupperware to shots in clubs to the dangers of modern day digital media. She’s slightly punk, slightly hard style, and slightly frightening, but infinitely fun. 

Shelf Lives kick of the internal stage, introducing themselves with the line “everything is fucked”. Whether this was about the band or the state of the world is still unclear, but they are feisty and messy, raging against misogyny in Skirts & Salads and domestic violence in All The Problems. Each song is less than three minutes, outbursts of emotion in real Bikini Kill style. Ragged guitar lies below the flippant lyrics, screams of the audience clash against the drill like backing track. They have laid the groundwork perfectly for the intensity to come. 

The penultimate act of the festival is CLT DRP, a three piece electro-punk band who swarm onto stage with a violent ferocity. They are, at first glance, a chaotic patchwork of jagged punk vocals and hammering drums, but they are beautifully sewn together, the abrasive guitar never driving the audience away, the vocals whipping the audience into a carefully encouraged mosh pit. Their set ends with Cage, which jolts like an electrical wire, sparking Pussy Riot into action. 

The first 20 minutes of their set is spent taping the drum kit to the floor, wrapping bricks around the kick drum and gaffa tape around the snares. By the end, the stage looks apocalypse ready, but the second that Pussy Riot begins, every inch of tape is shown to be essential. 

Riot Days is based off of Maria Alyokhina’s memoir, a member of Pussy Riot and Russian political activist. They are quick to emphasise that they are not a band, but an art piece, a political movement, and that anyone can be Pussy Riot. That is the general ethos, and despite the harrowing, monotone performance, their set is stuffed with hope and perseverance. It is a tale of resistance, not to scare but to inspire. 

The entire story of their protest against Putin, and their subsequent arrests, is told in Russian, with captioned text illuminated on a projection screen. Phrases linger on the screen “Welcome to Hell” “Your mother is worried” “Go to jail or shut up”, burning themselves into the walls of Future Yard and the minds of the crowd alike. These words are accompanied by videos, CCTV footage of arrests, of protests, of documentary footage. A moment of silence is held after a clip of Russian journalist Irina Slavina, who set herself on fire as an act of protest. No one dares to look away, not even to wipe their tears, and the silence rests heavily between every breath, between every drum beat, for the rest of the night. 

There is no rest for the people who dedicate their lives in the way that Pussy Riot have, and equally, there is no rest in their performance. In the space of one short hour, 30 water bottles are emptied over the front rows, cigarette smoking performers circumnavigate the venue, and a carousel of Russia’s political prisoners are flashed across the screen. This is a visceral reminder of why we are here, why we care about Ukraine, or Gaza, or Sudan, and why art matters in this struggle. Their political actions will always matter, their convictions will always be worth standing by. 

It is approaching midnight when Pussy Riot end their set, the walk home has lost its warmth and the last buses out of Birkenhead are fast approaching their bays at the bus station, but the venue is still packed. No one has moved since the group was introduced, half of the audience are in tears, the other half are sitting at the sides, transfixed by the frenzied women, clad in “I love you Ukraine” t-shirts who tower over the stage. The bold phrases that once engulfed the screen now just hold the lettering “You’re free now…..and you?” a distinctive call to action. 

It is unlikely that anyone will leave a Pussy Riot performance unchanged, and there is an eerie silence that hangs over Future Yard for the next few hours. Glances are made back in the direction of the festival, even by those who have travelled far to attend, and the words “Are you?” echo, in the morning call of the birds, in the rumble of the traffic, in the tapping of office computers. Sunday was different, but it is hard to say whether after Sunday, anything will ever be the same.

Words - Esme-Morgan Jones

Photos - Paul Lang // @paullangphotographer