Wiltshire will host the second Acid Horse festival next month, based around three days of music at a canal-side pub.
Taking place at The Barge Inn on Honeystreet in the Vale Of Pewsey, the event has been curated by tQ’s own John Doran and Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press. It’s a family (and well behaved dog)-friendly, two-stage festival celebrating underground, weird and psychedelic culture under the Alton Barnes chalk horse and neolithic long barrows, with a lineup that takes in some of this site’s favourite bands, artists and DJs.
The music programme includes John Francis Flynn, who was responsible for one of our favourite albums of last year, Look Over The Wall, See The Sky. Also headlining is Ireland-based, Syrian-born, Kurdish party starter Mohammad Syfkhan, who will bring his Middle Eastern wedding party music and Turkish pop to Wiltshire for the first time. Additionally, longtime tQ favourites Teeth Of The Sea, augmented with Kath Gifford on vocals, are promising "something really special" as the weekend’s final headliner.
The main stage headline DJ roster includes one of Acid Horse 2023’s clear highlights in Sophie Coletta, who launched last year’s event past the Oort Cloud and into interstellar space by mixing The Fall, Chris & Cosey and Can into a set of liquid acid techno, Balearic industrial and hard swung EBM. Judith Klempner, AKA Proteus, will also add Pewsey, Wiltshire to a list of DJ locations that already includes Berlin, Oslo, New York and Milan. Rounding things off on Sunday is Justin Robertson – one of the best party-friendly acid house DJs of the last three decades. Steve Davis will also return, playing a set of low-BPM ambient and experimental music.
After a roof-raising, joyous, kids version of Terry Riley’s In-C last year, Farmer Glitch And Friends are going to be leading everyone in attendance in a mass version of ‘I Feel Love’ and anyone who brings a synth, or a glockenspiel, or a djembe, or their own vocal cords can join in. Other returning stars include Queen of New Weird Everywhere Nat Sharp; the wild-haired man of Glastonbury Tor, Kavus Torabi, just returned from a tour with Gong, playing tracks from his new LP, The Banishing; and featuring a stellar array of guest musicians Deyar Yasin, Agathe Max, Marion Andrau, Dali De Saint Paul and Conny Prantera, UKAEA bring their impossibly heart-wrenching Birds Catching Fire In The Sky music to the chalky downs of Wiltshire.
Sophie Coletta at Acid Horse 2023, by Maria Jefferis
Further lineup highlights include VALVE; Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington’s prolific lockdown band Bulbils; Polish artist Wacław Zimpel; legendary counter-cultural figure Nocturnal Emissions; north-western guitar mallet minimalists Ex-Easter Island Head; one-woman gabber mayhem assault unit, Petronn Sphene; and Eric Chenaux.
The music programme is rounded out by the Welsh language goth elegies of Tristwch Y Fenywod (featuring members of Hawthonn and Guttersnipe); the garage rock explosion of Ubiquitous Meh!; sets of celestial synth transcendence from Action Group, Twilight Sequence, Hitliloma and Luminous Foundation; ecstatic D&B from Xylitol; Bristolian sci-fi prog action from ANTA; indefinable weirdness from Trans/Human, John Macedo and The Howling; youthful skronk rock action from Milkfiz; and coastal slurtronic folk from Kemper Norton.
There’s also a wide range of food choices available (including vegan and vegetarian options), and entertainment for kids that includes a Warhammer 40k painting session, a Mario Kart tournament and films.
Other attractions include impromptu campfire gigs; loads more DJs; the mysterious, heavily bearded and torrid ‘Naked Brunch’ duo; and your chance to see the greatest ceiling mural in a pub ever.
Nat Sharp at Acid Horse 2023, by Maria Jefferis
Tickets include three nights camping onsite, while there are also glamping tents available – you can email acidhorsewilts@gmail.com for details on those. The local area is a joy to walk around and Avebury is a neolithic stone’s throw away. Having performed at last year’s festival, Shovel Dance Collective praised Acid Horse as a "special event" set in a landscape "imbued with magic".
Weekend tickets with camping are priced at £150, while young people and kids aged under 15 can enter for £10. In order to get a ticket, send the money to Acidhorsewilts@gmail.com via PayPal, and follow it up with an an email to the same address listing the names of people in your party.
Acid Horse will take place from May 24 to 26, 2024. Find more information here.
